MIRACLES 



he first clearly stated the problem: "How is knowledge 

 possible?" In trying to solve this problem introspec- 

 tively, by a subtle analysis of his own mental activity, 

 he reached the conviction that the most important and 

 soundest of all knowledge — namely, mathematical — con- 

 sists of synthetic a priori judgments, and that pure 

 science is only possible on condition that there are strict 

 a priori ideas, independent of all experience, without 

 a posteriori judgments. Kant regarded this highest 

 faculty of the human mind as innate, and made no 

 inquiry into its development, its physiological mech- 

 anism, and its anatomic organ, the brain. Seeing the 

 very imperfect knowledge which human anatomy had of 

 the complicated structure of the brain at the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century, it was impossible to have at 

 that time a correct idea of its physiological function. 



What seems to us to-day to be an innate capacity, or 

 an a priori quality, of our phronema, is really a phylo- 

 genetic result of a long series of brain-adaptations, 

 formed by a posteriori sense-perceptions and experi- 

 ences. 



Kant's much-lauded critical theory of knowledge is 

 therefore just as dogmatic as his idea of "the thing in 

 itself," the unintelligible entity that lurks behind the 

 phenomena. This dogma is erroneously built on the 

 correct idea that our knowledge, obtained through the 

 senses, is imperfect; it extends only so far as the specific 

 energy of the senses and the structure of the phronema 

 admit. But it by no means follows that it is a mere 

 illusion, and least of all that the external world exists 

 only in our ideas. All sound men believe, when they 

 use their senses of touch and space, that the stone they 

 feel fills a certain part of space, and this space does 

 really exist. When all men who can see agree that the 

 sun rises and sets every day, this proves a relative 

 motion of the two heavenly bodies, and so the real 



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