The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)

The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)
Артур Шопенгауэр

Arthur Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)

Appendix: Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy

C'est le privilège du vrai génie, et surtout du génie qui ouvre une carrière, de faire impunément de grandes fautes. —Voltaire.

It is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the work of a great mind than to give a distinct and full exposition of its value. For the faults are particular and finite, and can therefore be fully comprehended; while, on the contrary, the very stamp which genius impresses upon its works is that their excellence is unfathomable and inexhaustible. Therefore they do not grow old, but become the instructor of many succeeding centuries. The perfected masterpiece of a truly great mind will always produce a deep and powerful effect upon the whole human race, so much so that it is impossible to calculate to what distant centuries and lands its enlightening influence may extend. This is always the case; for however cultivated and rich the age may be in which such a masterpiece appears, genius always rises like a palm-tree above the soil in which it is rooted.

But a deep-reaching and widespread effect of this kind cannot take place suddenly, because of the great difference between the genius and ordinary men. The knowledge which that one man in one lifetime drew directly from life and the world, won and presented to others as won and arranged, cannot yet at once become the possession of mankind; for mankind has not so much power to receive as the genius has power to give. But even after a successful battle with unworthy opponents, who at its very birth contest the life of what is immortal and desire to nip in the bud the salvation of man (like the serpents in the cradle of Hercules), that knowledge must then traverse the circuitous paths of innumerable false constructions and distorted applications, must overcome the attempts to unite it with old errors, and so live in conflict till a new and unprejudiced generation grows up to meet it. Little by little, even in youth, this new generation partially receives the contents of that spring through a thousand indirect channels, gradually assimilates it, and so participates in the benefit which was destined to flow to mankind from that great mind. So slowly does the education of the human race, the weak yet refractory pupil of genius, advance. Thus with Kant's teaching also; its full strength and importance will only be revealed through time, when the spirit of the age, itself gradually transformed and altered in the most important and essential respects by the influence of that teaching, will afford convincing evidence of the power of that giant mind. I have, however, no intention of presumptuously anticipating the spirit of the age and assuming here the thankless rôle of Calchas and Cassandra. Only I must be allowed, in accordance with what has been said, to regard Kant's works as still very new, while many at the present day look upon them as already antiquated, and indeed have laid them aside as done with, or, as they express it, have left them behind; and others, emboldened by this, ignore them altogether, and with brazen face go on philosophising about God and the soul on the assumption of the old realistic dogmatism and its scholastic teaching, which is as if one sought to introduce the doctrines of the alchemists into modern chemistry. For the rest, the works of Kant do not stand in need of my feeble eulogy, but will themselves for ever praise their author, and though perhaps not in the letter, yet in the spirit they will live for ever upon earth.

Certainly, however, if we look back at the first result of his teaching, at the efforts and events in the sphere of philosophy during the period that has elapsed since he wrote, a very depressing saying of Goethe obtains confirmation: “As the water that is displaced by a ship immediately flows in again behind it, so when great minds have driven error aside and made room for themselves, it very quickly closes in behind them again by the law of its nature” (Wahrheit und Dichtung, Theil 3, s. 521). Yet this period has been only an episode, which is to be reckoned as part of the lot referred to above that befalls all new and great knowledge; an episode which is now unmistakably near its end, for the bubble so long blown out yet bursts at last. Men generally are beginning to be conscious that true and serious philosophy still stands where Kant left it. At any rate, I cannot see that between Kant and myself anything has been done in philosophy; therefore I regard myself as his immediate successor.

What I have in view in this Appendix to my work is really only a defence of the doctrine I have set forth in it, inasmuch as in many points that doctrine does not agree with the Kantian philosophy, but indeed contradicts it. A discussion of this philosophy is, however, necessary, for it is clear that my train of thought, different as its content is from that of Kant, is yet throughout under its influence, necessarily presupposes it, starts from it; and I confess that, next to the impression of the world of perception, I owe what is best in my own system to the impression made upon me by the works of Kant, by the sacred writings of the Hindus, and by Plato. But I can only justify the contradictions of Kant which are nevertheless present in my work by accusing him of error in these points, and exposing mistakes which he committed. Therefore in this Appendix I must proceed against Kant in a thoroughly polemical manner, and indeed seriously and with every effort; for it is only thus that his doctrine can be freed from the error that clings to it, and its truth shine out the more clearly and stand the more firmly. It must not, therefore, be expected that the sincere reverence for Kant which I certainly feel shall extend to his weaknesses and errors also, and that I shall consequently refrain from exposing these except with the most careful indulgence, whereby my language would necessarily become weak and insipid through circumlocution. Towards a living writer such indulgence is needed, for human frailty cannot endure even the most just refutation of an error, unless tempered by soothing and flattery, and hardly even then; and a teacher of the age and benefactor of mankind deserves at least that the human weakness he also has should be indulged, so that he may not be caused pain. But he who is dead has thrown off this weakness; his merit stands firm; time will purify it more and more from all exaggeration and detraction. His mistakes must be separated from it, rendered harmless, and then given over to oblivion. Therefore in the polemic against Kant I am about to begin, I have only his mistakes and weak points in view. I oppose them with hostility, and wage a relentless war of extermination against them, always mindful not to conceal them indulgently, but rather to place them in the clearest light, in order to extirpate them the more surely. For the reasons given above, I am not conscious either of injustice or ingratitude towards Kant in doing this. However, in order that, in the eyes of others also, I may remove every appearance of malice, I wish first to bring out clearly my sincere reverence for Kant and gratitude to him, by expressing shortly what in my eyes appears to be his chief merit; and I shall do this from a standpoint so general that I shall not require to touch upon the points in which I must afterwards controvert him.

Kant's greatest merit is the distinction of the phenomenon from the thing in itself, based upon the proof that between things and us there still always stands the intellect, so that they cannot be known as they may be in themselves. He was led into this path through Locke (see Prolegomena zu jeder Metaph., § 13, Anm. 2). The latter had shown that the secondary qualities of things, such as sound, smell, colour, hardness, softness, smoothness, and the like, as founded on the affections of the senses, do not belong to the objective body, to the thing in itself. To this he attributed only the primary qualities, i. e., such as only presuppose space and impenetrability; thus extension, figure, solidity, number, mobility. But this easily discovered Lockeian distinction was, as it were, only a youthful introduction to the distinction of Kant. The latter, starting from an incomparably higher standpoint, explains all that Locke had accepted as primary qualities, i. e., qualities of the thing in itself, as also belonging only to its phenomenal appearance in our faculty of apprehension, and this just because the conditions of this faculty, space, time, and causality, are known by us a priori. Thus Locke had abstracted from the thing in itself the share which the organs of sense have in its phenomenal appearance; Kant, however, further abstracted the share of the brain-functions (though not under that name). Thus the distinction between the phenomenon and the thing in itself now received an infinitely greater significance, and a very much deeper meaning. For this end he was obliged to take in hand the important separation of our a priori from our a posteriori knowledge, which before him had never been carried out with adequate strictness and completeness, nor with distinct consciousness. Accordingly this now became the principal subject of his profound investigations. Now here we would at once remark that Kant's philosophy has a threefold relation to that of his predecessors. First, as we have just seen, to the philosophy of Locke, confirming and extending it; secondly, to that of Hume, correcting and making use of it, a relation which is most distinctly expressed in the “Prolegomena” (that most beautiful and comprehensible of all Kant's important writings, which is far too little read, for it facilitates immensely the study of his philosophy); thirdly, a decidedly polemical and destructive relation to the Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy. All three systems ought to be known before one proceeds to the study of the Kantian philosophy. If now, according to the above, the distinction of the phenomenon from the thing in itself, thus the doctrine of the complete diversity of the ideal and the real, is the fundamental characteristic of the Kantian philosophy, then the assertion of the absolute identity of these two which appeared soon afterwards is a sad proof of the saying of Goethe quoted above; all the more so as it rested upon nothing but the empty boast of intellectual intuition, and accordingly was only a return to the crudeness of the vulgar opinion, masked under bombast and nonsense, and the imposing impression of an air of importance. It became the fitting starting-point for the still grosser nonsense of the clumsy and stupid Hegel. Now as Kant's separation of the phenomenon from the thing in itself, arrived at in the manner explained above, far surpassed all that preceded it in the depth and thoughtfulness of its conception, it was also exceedingly important in its results. For in it he propounded, quite originally, in a perfectly new way, found from a new side and on a new path, the same truth which Plato never wearies of repeating, and in his language generally expresses thus: This world which appears to the senses has no true being, but only a ceaseless becoming; it is, and it is not, and its comprehension is not so much knowledge as illusion. This is also what he expresses mythically at the beginning of the seventh book of the Republic, the most important passage in all his writings, which has already been referred to in the third book of the present work. He says: Men, firmly chained in a dark cave, see neither the true original light nor real things, but only the meagre light of the fire in the cave and the shadows of real things which pass by the fire behind their backs; yet they think the shadows are the reality, and the determining of the succession of these shadows is true wisdom. The same truth, again quite differently presented, is also a leading doctrine of the Vedas and Puranas, the doctrine of Mâyâ, by which really nothing else is understood than what Kant calls the phenomenon in opposition to the thing in itself; for the work of Mâyâ is said to be just this visible world in which we are, a summoned enchantment, an inconstant appearance without true being, like an optical illusion or a dream, a veil which surrounds human consciousness, something of which it is equally false and true to say that it is and that it is not. But Kant not only expressed the same doctrine in a completely new and original way, but raised it to the position of proved and indisputable truth by means of the calmest and most temperate exposition; while both Plato and the Indian philosophers had founded their assertions merely upon a general perception of the world, had advanced them as the direct utterance of their consciousness, and presented them rather mythically and poetically than philosophically and distinctly. In this respect they stand to Kant in the same relation as the Pythagoreans Hicetas, Philolaus, and Aristarchus, who already asserted the movement of the earth round the fixed sun, stand to Copernicus. Such distinct knowledge and calm, thoughtful exposition of this dream-like nature of the whole world is really the basis of the whole Kantian philosophy; it is its soul and its greatest merit. He accomplished this by taking to pieces the whole machinery of our intellect by means of which the phantasmagoria of the objective world is brought about, and presenting it in detail with marvellous insight and ability. All earlier Western philosophy, appearing in comparison with the Kantian unspeakably clumsy, had failed to recognise that truth, and had therefore always spoken just as if in a dream. Kant first awakened it suddenly out of this dream; therefore the last sleepers (Mendelssohn) called him the “all-destroyer.” He showed that the laws which reign with inviolable necessity in existence, i. e., in experience generally, are not to be applied to deduce and explain existence itself that thus the validity of these laws is only relative, i. e., only arises after existence; the world of experience in general is already established and present; that consequently these laws cannot be our guide when we come to the explanation of the existence of the world and of ourselves. All earlier Western philosophers had imagined that these laws, according to which the phenomena are combined, and all of which – time and space, as well as causality and inference – I comprehend under the expression “the principle of sufficient reason,” were absolute laws conditioned by nothing, æternæ veritates; that the world itself existed only in consequence of and in conformity with them; and therefore that under their guidance the whole riddle of the world must be capable of solution. The assumptions made for this purpose, which Kant criticises under the name of the Ideas of the reason, only served to raise the mere phenomenon, the work of Mâyâ, the shadow world of Plato, to the one highest reality, to put it in the place of the inmost and true being of things, and thereby to make the real knowledge of this impossible; that is, in a word, to send the dreamers still more soundly to sleep. Kant exhibited these laws, and therefore the whole world, as conditioned by the form of knowledge belonging to the subject; from which it followed, that however far one carried investigation and reasoning under the guidance of these laws, yet in the principal matter, i. e., in knowledge of the nature of the world in itself and outside the idea, no step in advance was made, but one only moved like a squirrel in its wheel. Thus, all the dogmatists may be compared to persons who supposed that if they only went straight on long enough they would come to the end of the world; but Kant then circumnavigated the world and showed that, because it is round, one cannot get out of it by horizontal movement, but that yet by perpendicular movement this is perhaps not impossible. We may also say that Kant's doctrine affords the insight that we must seek the end and beginning of the world, not without, but within us.

All this, however, rests on the fundamental distinction between dogmatic and critical or transcendental philosophy. Whoever wishes to make this quite clear to himself, and realise it by means of an example, may do so very briefly by reading, as a specimen of dogmatic philosophy, an essay of Leibnitz entitled “De Rerum Originatione Radicali,” and printed for the first time in the edition of the philosophical works of Leibnitz by Erdmann (vol. i. p. 147). Here the origin and excellence of the world is demonstrated a priori, so thoroughly in the manner of realistic-dogmatism, on the ground of the veritates æternæ and with the assistance of the ontological and cosmological proofs. It is indeed once admitted, by the way, that experience shows the exact opposite of the excellence of the world here demonstrated; but experience is therefore given to understand that it knows nothing of the matter, and ought to hold its tongue when philosophy has spoken a priori. Now, with Kant, the critical philosophy appeared as the opponent of this whole method. It takes for its problem just these veritates æternæ, which serve as the foundation of every such dogmatic structure, investigates their origin, and finds it in the human mind, where they spring from the peculiar forms which belong to it, and which it carries in itself for the purpose of comprehending an objective world. Thus, here, in the brain, is the quarry which supplies the material for that proud dogmatic edifice. But because the critical philosophy, in order to attain to this result, was obliged to go beyond the veritates æternæ upon which all the preceding dogmatism was founded, and make these truths themselves the objects of investigation, it became transcendental philosophy. From this, then, it also follows that the objective world, as we know it, does not belong to the true being of the thing in itself, but is merely its phenomenal appearance conditioned by those very forms which lie a priori in the intellect (i. e., the brain), therefore it cannot contain anything but phenomena.

Kant, indeed, did not attain to the knowledge that the phenomenon is the world as idea, and the thing in itself is the will. But he showed that the phenomenal world is conditioned just as much through the subject as through the object, and because he isolated the most universal forms of its phenomenal appearance, i. e., of the idea, he proved that we may know these forms and consider them in their whole constitution, not only by starting from the object, but also just as well by starting from the subject, because they are really the limits between object and subject which are common to them both; and he concluded that by following these limits we never penetrate to the inner nature either of the object or of the subject, consequently never know the true nature of the world, the thing in itself.

He did not deduce the thing in itself in the right way, as I shall show presently, but by means of an inconsistency, and he had to pay the penalty of this in frequent and irresistible attacks upon this important part of his teaching. He did not recognise the thing in itself directly in the will; but he made a great initial step towards this knowledge in that he explained the undeniable moral significance of human action as quite different from and not dependent upon the laws of the phenomenon, nor even explicable in accordance with them, but as something which touches the thing in itself directly: this is the second important point of view for estimating his services.

We may regard as the third the complete overthrow of the Scholastic philosophy, a name by which I wish here to denote generally the whole period beginning with Augustine, the Church Father, and ending just before Kant. For the chief characteristic of Scholasticism is, indeed, that which is very correctly stated by Tennemann, the guardianship of the prevailing national religion over philosophy, which had really nothing left for it to do but to prove and embellish the cardinal dogmas prescribed to it by religion. The Schoolmen proper, down to Suarez, confess this openly; the succeeding philosophers do it more unconsciously, or at least unavowedly. It is held that Scholastic philosophy only extends to about a hundred years before Descartes, and that then with him there begins an entirely new epoch of free investigation independent of all positive theological doctrine. Such investigation, however, is in fact not to be attributed to Descartes and his successors,[1 - Bruno and Spinoza are here entirely to be excepted. They stand each for himself and alone, and belong neither to their age nor their quarter of the globe, which rewarded the one with death and the other with persecution and insult. Their miserable existence and death in this Western world is like that of a tropical plant in Europe. The banks of the sacred Ganges were their true spiritual home; there they would have led a peaceful and honoured life among men of like mind. In the following lines, with which Bruno begins his book Della Causa Principio et Uno, for which he was brought to the stake, he expresses clearly and beautifully how lonely he felt himself in his age, and he also shows a presentiment of his fate which led him to delay the publication of his views, till that inclination to communicate what one knows to be true, which is so strong in noble minds, prevailed:“Ad partum properare tuum, mens ægra, quid obstat;Seclo hæc indigno sint tribuenda licet?Umbrarum fluctu terras mergente, cacumenAdtolle in clarum, noster Olympe, Jovem.”Whoever has read this his principal work, and also his other Italian writings, which were formerly so rare, but are now accessible to all through a German edition, will find, as I have done, that he alone of all philosophers in some degree approaches to Plato, in respect of the strong blending of poetical power and tendency along with the philosophical, and this he also shows especially in a dramatic form. Imagine the tender, spiritual, thoughtful being, as he shows himself to us in this work of his, in the hands of coarse, furious priests as his judges and executioners, and thank Time which brought a brighter and a gentler age, so that the after-world whose curse was to fall on those fiendish fanatics is the world we now live in.] but only an appearance of it, and in any case an effort after it. Descartes was a man of supreme ability, and if we take account of the age he lived in, he accomplished a great deal. But if we set aside this consideration and measure him with reference to the freeing of thought from all fetters and the commencement of a new period of untrammelled original investigation with which he is credited, we are obliged to find that with his doubt still wanting in true seriousness, and therefore surrendering so quickly and so entirely, he has, indeed, the appearance of wishing to throw off at once all the early implanted opinions belonging to his age and nation, but does so only apparently and for a moment, to assume them again immediately and hold them all the more firmly; and so is it with all his successors down to Kant. Goethe's lines are, therefore, very applicable to a free independent thinker of this kind:

“Saving Thy gracious presence, he to me
A long-legged grasshopper appears to be,
That springing flies, and flying springs,
And in the grass the same old ditty sings.”[2 - Bayard Taylor's translation of “Faust,” vol. i. p. 14. – Trs.]

Kant had reasons for assuming the air of also intending nothing more. But the pretended spring, which was permitted because it was known that it leads back to the grass, this time became a flight, and now those who remain below can only look after him, and can never catch him again.

Kant, then, ventured to show by his teaching that all those dogmas which had been so often professedly proved were incapable of proof. Speculative theology, and the rational psychology connected with it, received from him their deathblow. Since then they have vanished from German philosophy, and one must not allow oneself to be misled by the fact that here and there the word is retained after the thing has been given up, or some wretched professor of philosophy has the fear of his master in view, and lets truth take care of itself. Only he who has observed the pernicious influence of these conceptions upon natural science, and upon philosophy in all, even the best writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, can estimate the extent of this service of Kant's. The change of tone and of metaphysical background which has appeared in German writing upon natural science since Kant is remarkable; before him it was in the same position as it still occupies in England. This merit of Kant's is connected with the fact that the unreflecting pursuit of the laws of the phenomenon, the elevation of these to the position of eternal truths, and thus the raising of the fleeting appearance to the position of the real being of the world, in short, realism undisturbed in its illusion by any reflection, had reigned throughout all preceding philosophy, ancient, mediæval, and modern. Berkeley, who, like Malebranche before him, recognised its one-sidedness, and indeed falseness, was unable to overthrow it, for his attack was confined to one point. Thus it was reserved for Kant to enable the idealistic point of view to obtain the ascendancy in Europe, at least in philosophy; the point of view which throughout all non-Mohammedan Asia, and indeed essentially, is that of religion. Before Kant, then, we were in time; now time is in us, and so on.

Ethics also were treated by that realistic philosophy according to the laws of the phenomenon, which it regarded as absolute and valid also for the thing in itself. They were therefore based now upon a doctrine of happiness, now upon the will of the Creator, and finally upon the conception of perfection; a conception which, taken by itself, is entirely empty and void of content, for it denotes a mere relation that only receives significance from the things to which it is applied. “To be perfect” means nothing more than “to correspond to some conception which is presupposed and given,” a conception which must therefore be previously framed, and without which the perfection is an unknown quantity, and consequently has no meaning when expressed alone. If, however, it is intended tacitly to presuppose the conception “humanity,” and accordingly to make it the principle of morality to strive after human perfection, this is only saying: “Men ought to be as they ought to be,” – and we are just as wise as before. In fact “perfect” is very nearly a mere synonym of “complete,” for it signifies that in one given case or individual, all the predicates which lie in the conception of its species appear, thus are actually present. Therefore the conception “perfection,” if used absolutely and in the abstract, is a word void of significance, and this is also the case with the talk about the “most perfect being,” and other similar expressions. All this is a mere jingle of words. Nevertheless last century this conception of perfection and imperfection had become current coin; indeed it was the hinge upon which almost all speculation upon ethics, and even theology, turned. It was in every one's mouth, so that at last it became a simple nuisance. We see even the best writers of the time, for example Lessing, entangled in the most deplorable manner in perfections and imperfections, and struggling with them. At the same time, every thinking man must at least dimly have felt that this conception is void of all positive content, because, like an algebraical symbol, it denotes a mere relation in abstracto. Kant, as we have already said, entirely separated the undeniably great ethical significance of actions from the phenomenon and its laws, and showed that the former directly concerned the thing in itself, the inner nature of the world, while the latter, i. e., time, space, and all that fills them, and disposes itself in them according to the law of causality, is to be regarded as a changing and unsubstantial dream.

The little I have said, which by no means exhausts the subject, may suffice as evidence of my recognition of the great merits of Kant, – a recognition expressed here both for my own satisfaction, and because justice demands that those merits should be recalled to the memory of every one who desires to follow me in the unsparing exposure of his errors to which I now proceed.

It may be inferred, upon purely historical grounds, that Kant's great achievements must have been accompanied by great errors. For although he effected the greatest revolution in philosophy and made an end of Scholasticism, which, understood in the wider sense we have indicated, had lasted for fourteen centuries, in order to begin what was really the third entirely new epoch in philosophy which the world has seen, yet the direct result of his appearance was only negative, not positive. For since he did not set up a completely new system, to which his disciples could only have adhered for a period, all indeed observed that something very great had happened, but yet no one rightly knew what. They certainly saw that all previous philosophy had been fruitless dreaming, from which the new age had now awakened, but what they ought to hold to now they did not know. A great void was felt; a great need had arisen; the universal attention even of the general public was aroused. Induced by this, but not urged by inward inclination and sense of power (which find utterance even at unfavourable times, as in the case of Spinoza), men without any exceptional talent made various weak, absurd, and indeed sometimes insane, attempts, to which, however, the now interested public gave its attention, and with great patience, such as is only found in Germany, long lent its ear.

The same thing must once have happened in Nature, when a great revolution had altered the whole surface of the earth, land and sea had changed places, and the scene was cleared for a new creation. It was then a long time before Nature could produce a new series of lasting forms all in harmony with themselves and with each other. Strange and monstrous organisations appeared which did not harmonise either with themselves or with each other, and therefore could not endure long, but whose still existing remains have brought down to us the tokens of that wavering and tentative procedure of Nature forming itself anew.

Since, now, in philosophy, a crisis precisely similar to this, and an age of fearful abortions, was, as we all know, introduced by Kant, it may be concluded that the services he rendered were not complete, but must have been negative and one-sided, and burdened with great defects. These defects we now desire to search out.

First of all we shall present to ourselves clearly and examine the fundamental thought in which the aim of the whole “Critique of Pure Reason” lies. Kant placed himself at the standpoint of his predecessors, the dogmatic philosophers, and accordingly he started with them from the following assumptions: – (1.) Metaphysics is the science of that which lies beyond the possibility of all experience. (2.) Such a science can never be attained by applying principles which must first themselves be drawn from experience (Prolegomena, § 1); but only what we know before, and thus independently of all experience, can reach further than possible experience. (3.) In our reason certain principles of this kind are actually to be found: they are comprehended under the name of Knowledge of pure reason. So far Kant goes with his predecessors, but here he separates from them. They say: “These principles, or this knowledge of pure reason, are expressions of the absolute possibility of things, æternæ veritates, sources of ontology; they stand above the system of the world, as fate stood above the gods of the ancients.” Kant says, they are mere forms of our intellect, laws, not of the existence of things, but of our idea of them; they are therefore valid merely for our apprehension of things, and hence they cannot extend beyond the possibility of experience, which, according to assumption 1, is what was aimed at; for the a priori nature of these forms of knowledge, since it can only rest on their subjective origin, is just what cuts us off for ever from the knowledge of the nature of things in themselves, and confines us to a world of mere phenomena, so that we cannot know things as they may be in themselves, even a posteriori, not to speak of a priori. Accordingly metaphysics is impossible, and criticism of pure reason takes its place. As opposed to the old dogmatism, Kant is here completely victorious; therefore all dogmatic attempts which have since appeared have been obliged to pursue an entirely different path from the earlier systems; and I shall now go on to the justification of my own system, according to the expressed intention of this criticism. A more careful examination, then, of the reasoning given above will oblige one to confess that its first fundamental assumption is a petitio principii. It lies in the proposition (stated with particular clearness in the Prolegomena, § 1): “The source of metaphysics must throughout be non-empirical; its fundamental principles and conceptions must never be taken from either inner or outer experience.” Yet absolutely nothing is advanced in proof of this cardinal assertion except the etymological argument from the word metaphysic. In truth, however, the matter stands thus: The world and our own existence presents itself to us necessarily as a riddle. It is now assumed, without more ado, that the solution of this riddle cannot be arrived at from a thorough understanding of the world itself, but must be sought in something entirely different from the world (for that is the meaning of “beyond the possibility of all experience”); and that everything must be excluded from that solution of which we can in any way have immediate knowledge (for that is the meaning of possible experience, both inner and outer); the solution must rather be sought only in that at which we can arrive merely indirectly, that is, by means of inferences from universal principles a priori. After the principal source of all knowledge has in this way been excluded, and the direct way to truth has been closed, we must not wonder that the dogmatic systems failed, and that Kant was able to show the necessity of this failure; for metaphysics and knowledge a priori had been assumed beforehand to be identical. But for this it was first necessary to prove that the material for the solution of the riddle absolutely cannot be contained in the world itself, but must be sought for only outside the world in something we can only attain to under the guidance of those forms of which we are conscious a priori. But so long as this is not proved, we have no grounds for shutting ourselves off, in the case of the most important and most difficult of all questions, from the richest of all sources of knowledge, inner and outer experience, in order to work only with empty forms. I therefore say that the solution of the riddle of the world must proceed from the understanding of the world itself; that thus the task of metaphysics is not to pass beyond the experience in which the world exists, but to understand it thoroughly, because outer and inner experience is at any rate the principal source of all knowledge; that therefore the solution of the riddle of the world is only possible through the proper connection of outer with inner experience, effected at the right point, and the combination thereby produced of these two very different sources of knowledge. Yet this solution is only possible within certain limits which are inseparable from our finite nature, so that we attain to a right understanding of the world itself without reaching a final explanation of its existence abolishing all further problems. Therefore est quadam prodire tenus, and my path lies midway between the omniscience of the earlier dogmatists and the despair of the Kantian Critique. The important truths, however, which Kant discovered, and through which the earlier metaphysical systems were overthrown, have supplied my system with data and materials. Compare what I have said concerning my method in chap. xvii. of the Supplements. So much for the fundamental thought of Kant; we shall now consider his working out of it and its details.

Kant's style bears throughout the stamp of a pre-eminent mind, genuine strong individuality, and quite exceptional power of thought. Its characteristic quality may perhaps be aptly described as a brilliant dryness, by virtue of which he was able to grasp firmly and select the conceptions with great certainty, and then to turn them about with the greatest freedom, to the astonishment of the reader. I find the same brilliant dryness in the style of Aristotle, though it is much simpler. Nevertheless Kant's language is often indistinct, indefinite, inadequate, and sometimes obscure. Its obscurity, certainly, is partly excusable on account of the difficulty of the subject and the depth of the thought; but he who is himself clear to the bottom, and knows with perfect distinctness what he thinks and wishes, will never write indistinctly, will never set up wavering and indefinite conceptions, compose most difficult and complicated expressions from foreign languages to denote them, and use these expressions constantly afterwards, as Kant took words and formulas from earlier philosophy, especially Scholasticism, which he combined with each other to suit his purposes; as, for example, “transcendental synthetic unity of apperception,” and in general “unity of synthesis” (Einheit der Synthesis), always used where “union” (Vereinigung) would be quite sufficient by itself. Moreover, a man who is himself quite clear will not be always explaining anew what has once been explained, as Kant does, for example, in the case of the understanding, the categories, experience, and other leading conceptions. In general, such a man will not incessantly repeat himself, and yet in every new exposition of the thought already expressed a hundred times leave it in just the same obscure condition, but he will express his meaning once distinctly, thoroughly, and exhaustively, and then let it alone. “Quo enim melius rem aliquam concipimus eo magis determinati sumus ad eam unico modo exprimendam,” says Descartes in his fifth letter. But the most injurious result of Kant's occasionally obscure language is, that it acted as exemplar vitiis imitabile; indeed, it was misconstrued as a pernicious authorisation. The public was compelled to see that what is obscure is not always without significance; consequently, what was without significance took refuge behind obscure language. Fichte was the first to seize this new privilege and use it vigorously; Schelling at least equalled him; and a host of hungry scribblers, without talent and without honesty, soon outbade them both. But the height of audacity, in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously only been heard in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument of German stupidity. In vain, meanwhile, Jean Paul wrote his beautiful paragraph, “Higher criticism of philosophical madness in the professorial chair, and poetical madness in the theatre” (Æsthetische Nachschule); for in vain Goethe had already said —

“They prate and teach, and no one interferes;
All from the fellowship of fools are shrinking;
Man usually believes, if only words he hears,
That also with them goes material for thinking.”[3 - “Faust,” scene vi., Bayard Taylor's translation, vol. i. p. 134. – Trs.]

But let us return to Kant. We are compelled to admit that he entirely lacks grand, classical simplicity, naïveté, ingénuité, candeur. His philosophy has no analogy with Grecian architecture, which presents large simple proportions revealing themselves at once to the glance; on the contrary, it reminds us strongly of the Gothic style of building. For a purely individual characteristic of Kant's mind is a remarkable love of symmetry, which delights in a varied multiplicity, so that it may reduce it to order, and repeat this order in subordinate orders, and so on indefinitely, just as happens in Gothic churches. Indeed, he sometimes carries this to the extent of trifling, and from love of this tendency he goes so far as to do open violence to truth, and to deal with it as Nature was dealt with by the old-fashioned gardeners, whose work we see in symmetrical alleys, squares, and triangles, trees shaped like pyramids and spheres, and hedges winding in regular curves. I will support this with facts.

After he has treated space and time isolated from everything else, and has then dismissed this whole world of perception which fills space and time, and in which we live and are, with the meaningless words “the empirical content of perception is given us,” he immediately arrives with one spring at the logical basis of his whole philosophy, the table of judgments. From this table he deduces an exact dozen of categories, symmetrically arranged under four heads, which afterwards become the fearful procrustean bed into which he violently forces all things in the world and all that goes on in man, shrinking from no violence and disdaining no sophistry if only he is able to repeat everywhere the symmetry of that table. The first that is symmetrically deduced from it is the pure physiological table of the general principles of natural science – the axioms of intuition, anticipations of perception, analogies of experience, and postulates of empirical thought in general. Of these fundamental principles, the first two are simple; but each of the last two sends out symmetrically three shoots. The mere categories were what he calls conceptions; but these principles of natural science are judgments. In accordance with his highest guide to all wisdom, symmetry, the series must now prove itself fruitful in the syllogisms, and this, indeed, is done symmetrically and regularly. For, as by the application of the categories to sensibility, experience with all its a priori principles arose for the understanding, so by the application of syllogisms to the categories, a task performed by the reason in accordance with its pretended principle of seeking the unconditioned, the Ideas of the reason arise. Now this takes place in the following manner: The three categories of relation supply to syllogistic reasoning the three only possible kinds of major premisses, and syllogistic reasoning accordingly falls into three kinds, each of which is to be regarded as an egg out of which the reason hatches an Idea; out of the categorical syllogism the Idea of the soul, out of the hypothetical the Idea of the world, and out of the disjunctive the Idea of God. In the second of these, the Idea of the world, the symmetry of the table of the categories now repeats itself again, for its four heads produce four theses, each of which has its antithesis as a symmetrical pendant.

We pay the tribute of our admiration to the really exceedingly acute combination which produced this elegant structure, but we shall none the less proceed to a thorough examination of its foundation and its parts. But the following remarks must come first.

It is astonishing how Kant, without further reflection, pursues his way, following his symmetry, ordering everything in accordance with it, without ever taking one of the subjects so handled into consideration on its own account. I will explain myself more fully. After he has considered intuitive knowledge in a mathematical reference only, he neglects altogether the rest of knowledge of perception in which the world lies before us, and confines himself entirely to abstract thinking, although this receives the whole of its significance and value from the world of perception alone, which is infinitely more significant, generally present, and rich in content than the abstract part of our knowledge. Indeed, and this is an important point, he has nowhere clearly distinguished perception from abstract knowledge, and just on this account, as we shall afterwards see, he becomes involved in irresolvable contradictions with himself. After he has disposed of the whole sensible world with the meaningless “it is given,” he makes, as we have said, the logical table of judgments the foundation-stone of his building. But here again he does not reflect for a moment upon that which really lies before him. These forms of judgment are indeed words and combinations of words; yet it ought first to have been asked what these directly denote: it would have been found that they denote conceptions. The next question would then have been as to the nature of conceptions. It would have appeared from the answer what relation these have to the ideas of perception in which the world exists; for perception and reflection would have been distinguished. It would now have become necessary to examine, not merely how pure and merely formal intuition or perception a priori, but also how its content, the empirical perception, comes into consciousness. But then it would have become apparent what part the understanding has in this, and thus also in general what the understanding is, and, on the other hand, what the reason properly is, the critique of which is being written. It is most remarkable that he does not once properly and adequately define the latter, but merely gives incidentally, and as the context in each case demands, incomplete and inaccurate explanations of it, in direct contradiction to the rule of Descartes given above.[4 - Observe here that I always quote the “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” according to the paging of the first edition, for in Rosenkranz's edition of Kant's collected works this paging is always given in addition. Besides this, I add the paging of the fifth edition, preceded by a V.; all the other editions, from the second onwards, are the same as the fifth, and so also is their paging.] For example, at p. 11; V. 24, of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” it is the faculty of principles a priori; but at p. 299; V. 356, it is said that reason is the faculty of principles, and it is opposed to the understanding, which is the faculty of rules! One would now think that there must be a very wide difference between principles and rules, since it entitles us to assume a special faculty of knowledge for each of them. But this great distinction is made to lie merely in this, that what is known a priori through pure perception or through the forms of the understanding is a rule, and only what results from mere conceptions is a principle. We shall return to this arbitrary and inadmissible distinction later, when we come to the Dialectic. On p. 330; V. 386, reason is the faculty of inference; mere judging (p. 69; V. 94) he often explains as the work of the understanding. Now, this really amounts to saying: Judging is the work of the understanding so long as the ground of the judgment is empirical, transcendental, or metalogical (Essay on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 31, 32, 33); but if it is logical, as is the case with the syllogism, then we are here concerned with a quite special and much more important faculty of knowledge – the reason. Nay, what is more, on p. 303; V. 360, it is explained that what follows directly from a proposition is still a matter of the understanding, and that only those conclusions which are arrived at by the use of a mediating conception are the work of the reason, and the example given is this: From the proposition, “All men are mortal,” the inference, “Some mortals are men,” may be drawn by the mere understanding. On the other hand, to draw the conclusion, “All the learned are mortal,” demands an entirely different and far more important faculty – the reason. How was it possible for a great thinker to write the like of this! On p. 553; V. 581, reason is all at once the constant condition of all voluntary action. On p. 614; V. 642, it consists in the fact that we can give an account of our assertions; on pp. 643, 644; V. 671, 672, in the circumstance that it brings unity into the conceptions of the understanding by means of Ideas, as the understanding brings unity into the multiplicity of objects by means of conceptions. On p. 646; V. 674, it is nothing else than the faculty which deduces the particular from the general.

The understanding also is constantly being explained anew. In seven passages of the “Critique of Pure Reason” it is explained in the following terms. On p. 51; V. 75, it is the faculty which of itself produces ideas of perception. On p. 69; V. 94, it is the faculty of judging, i. e., of thinking, i. e., of knowing through conceptions. On p. 137 of the fifth edition, it is the faculty of knowledge generally. On p. 132; V. 171, it is the faculty of rules. On p. 158; V. 197, however, it is said: “It is not only the faculty of rules, but the source of principles (Grundsätze) according to which everything comes under rules;” and yet above it was opposed to the reason because the latter alone was the faculty of principles (Principien). On p. 160; V. 199, the understanding is the faculty of conceptions; but on p. 302; V. 359, it is the faculty of the unity of phenomena by means of rules.

Against such really confused and groundless language on the subject (even though it comes from Kant) I shall have no need to defend the explanation which I have given of these two faculties of knowledge – an explanation which is fixed, clearly defined, definite, simple, and in full agreement with the language of all nations and all ages. I have only quoted this language as a proof of my charge that Kant follows his symmetrical, logical system without sufficiently reflecting upon the subject he is thus handling.

Now, as I have said above, if Kant had seriously examined how far two such different faculties of knowledge, one of which is the specific difference of man, may be known, and what, in accordance with the language of all nations and all philosophers, reason and understanding are, he would never, without further authority than the intellectus theoreticus and practicus of the Schoolmen, which is used in an entirely different sense, have divided the reason into theoretical and practical, and made the latter the source of virtuous conduct. In the same way, before Kant separated so carefully conceptions of the understanding (by which he sometimes means his categories, sometimes all general conceptions) and conceptions of the reason (his so-called Ideas), and made them both the material of his philosophy, which for the most part deals only with the validity, application, and origin of all these conceptions; – first, I say, he ought to have really examined what in general a conception is. But this very necessary investigation has unfortunately been also neglected, and has contributed much to the irremediable confusion of intuitive and abstract knowledge which I shall soon refer to. The same want of adequate reflection with which he passed over the questions: what is perception? what is reflection? what is conception? what is reason? what is understanding? allowed him to pass over the following investigations, which were just as inevitably necessary: what is it that I call the object, which I distinguish from the idea? what is existence? what is object? what is subject? what is truth, illusion, error? But he follows his logical schema and his symmetry without reflecting or looking about him. The table of judgments ought to, and must, be the key to all wisdom.

I have given it above as the chief merit of Kant that he distinguished the phenomenon from the thing in itself, explained the whole visible world as phenomenon, and therefore denied all validity to its laws beyond the phenomenon. It is certainly remarkable that he did not deduce this merely relative existence of the phenomenon from the simple undeniable truth which lay so near him, “No object without a subject,” in order thus at the very root to show that the object, because it always exists merely in relation to a subject, is dependent upon it, conditioned by it, and therefore conditioned as mere phenomenon, which does not exist in itself nor unconditioned. Berkeley, to whose merits Kant did not do justice, had already made this important principle the foundation-stone of his philosophy, and thereby established an immortal reputation. Yet he himself did not draw the proper conclusions from this principle, and so he was both misunderstood and insufficiently attended to. In my first edition I explained Kant's avoidance of this Berkeleian principle as arising from an evident shrinking from decided idealism; while, on the other hand, I found idealism distinctly expressed in many passages of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” and accordingly I charged Kant with contradicting himself. And this charge was well founded, if, as was then my case, one only knew the “Critique of Pure Reason” in the second or any of the five subsequent editions printed from it. But when later I read Kant's great work in the first edition, which is already so rare, I saw, to my great pleasure, all these contradictions disappear, and found that although Kant does not use the formula, “No object without a subject,” he yet explains, with just as much decision as Berkeley and I do, the outer world lying before us in space and time as the mere idea of the subject that knows it. Therefore, for example, he says there without reserve (p. 383): “If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must disappear, for it is nothing but a phenomenon in the sensibility of our subject, and a class of its ideas.” But the whole passage from p. 348-392, in which Kant expounded his pronounced idealism with peculiar beauty and clearness, was suppressed by him in the second edition, and instead of it a number of remarks controverting it were introduced. In this way then the text of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” as it has circulated from the year 1787 to the year 1838, was disfigured and spoilt, and it became a self-contradictory book, the sense of which could not therefore be thoroughly clear and comprehensible to any one. The particulars about this, and also my conjectures as to the reasons and the weaknesses which may have influenced Kant so to disfigure his immortal work, I have given in a letter to Professor Rosenkranz, and he has quoted the principal passage of it in his preface to the second volume of the edition of Kant's collected works edited by him, to which I therefore refer. In consequence of my representations, Professor Rosenkranz was induced in the year 1838 to restore the “Critique of Pure Reason” to its original form, for in the second volume referred to he had it printed according to the first edition of 1781, by which he has rendered an inestimable service to philosophy; indeed, he has perhaps saved from destruction the most important work of German literature; and this should always be remembered to his credit. But let no one imagine that he knows the “Critique of Pure Reason” and has a distinct conception of Kant's teaching if he has only read the second or one of the later editions. That is altogether impossible, for he has only read a mutilated, spoilt, and to a certain extent ungenuine text. It is my duty to say this here decidedly and for every one's warning.

Yet the way in which Kant introduces the thing in itself stands in undeniable contradiction with the distinctly idealistic point of view so clearly expressed in the first edition of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” and without doubt this is the chief reason why, in the second edition, he suppressed the principal idealistic passage we have referred to, and directly declared himself opposed to the Berkeleian idealism, though by doing so he only introduced inconsistencies into his work, without being able to remedy its principal defect. This defect, as is known, is the introduction of the thing in itself in the way chosen by him, the inadmissibleness of which was exposed at length by G. E. Schulze in “Ænesidemus,” and was soon recognised as the untenable point of his system. The matter may be made clear in a very few words. Kant based the assumption of the thing in itself, though concealed under various modes of expression, upon an inference from the law of causality – an inference that the empirical perception, or more accurately the sensation, in our organs of sense, from which it proceeds, must have an external cause. But according to his own account, which is correct, the law of causality is known to us a priori, consequently is a function of our intellect, and is thus of subjective origin; further, sensation itself, to which we here apply the law of causality, is undeniably subjective; and finally, even space, in which, by means of this application, we place the cause of this sensation as object, is a form of our intellect given a priori, and is consequently subjective. Therefore the whole empirical perception remains always upon a subjective foundation, as a mere process in us, and nothing entirely different from it and independent of it can be brought in as a thing in itself, or shown to be a necessary assumption. The empirical perception actually is and remains merely our idea: it is the world as idea. An inner nature of this we can only arrive at on the entirely different path followed by me, by means of calling in the aid of self-consciousness, which proclaims the will as the inner nature of our own phenomenon; but then the thing in itself will be one which is toto genere different from the idea and its elements, as I have explained.

The great defect of the Kantian system in this point, which, as has been said, was soon pointed out, is an illustration of the truth of the beautiful Indian proverb: “No lotus without a stem.” The erroneous deduction of the thing in itself is here the stem; yet only the method of the deduction, not the recognition of a thing in itself belonging to the given phenomenon. But this last was Fichte's misunderstanding of it, which could only happen because he was not concerned with truth, but with making a sensation for the furtherance of his individual ends. Accordingly he was bold and thoughtless enough to deny the thing in itself altogether, and to set up a system in which, not, as with Kant, the mere form of the idea, but also the matter, its whole content, was professedly deduced a priori from the subject. In doing this, he counted with perfect correctness upon the want of judgment and the stupidity of the public, which accepted miserable sophisms, mere hocus-pocus and senseless babble, for proofs; so that he succeeded in turning its attention from Kant to himself, and gave the direction to German philosophy in which it was afterwards carried further by Schelling, and ultimately reached its goal in the mad sophistry of Hegel.

I now return to the great mistake of Kant, already touched on above, that he has not properly separated perceptible and abstract knowledge, whereby an inextricable confusion has arisen which we have now to consider more closely. If he had sharply separated ideas of perception from conceptions merely thought in abstracto, he would have held these two apart, and in every case would have known with which of the two he had to do. This, however, was unfortunately not the case, although this accusation has not yet been openly made, and may thus perhaps be unexpected. His “object of experience,” of which he is constantly speaking, the proper object of the categories, is not the idea of perception; neither is it the abstract conception, but it is different from both, and yet both at once, and is a perfect chimera. For, incredible as it may seem, he lacked either the wisdom or the honesty to come to an understanding with himself about this, and to explain distinctly to himself and others whether his “object of experience, i. e., the knowledge produced by the application of the categories,” is the idea of perception in space and time (my first class of ideas), or merely the abstract conception. Strange as it is, there always runs in his mind something between the two, and hence arises the unfortunate confusion which I must now bring to light. For this end I must go through the whole theory of elements in a general way.

The “Transcendental Æsthetic” is a work of such extraordinary merit that it alone would have been sufficient to immortalise the name of Kant. Its proofs carry such perfect conviction, that I number its propositions among incontestable truths, and without doubt they are also among those that are richest in results, and are, therefore, to be regarded as the rarest thing in the world, a real and great discovery in metaphysics. The fact, strictly proved by him, that a part of our knowledge is known to us a priori, admits of no other explanation than that this constitutes the forms of our intellect; indeed, this is less an explanation than merely the distinct expression of the fact itself. For a priori means nothing else than “not gained on the path of experience, thus not come into us from without.” But what is present in the intellect, and has not come from without, is just what belongs originally to the intellect itself, its own nature. Now if what is thus present in the intellect itself consists of the general mode or manner in which it must present all its objects to itself, this is just saying that what is thus present is the intellect's forms of knowing, i. e., the mode, fixed once for all, in which it fulfils this its function. Accordingly, “knowledge a priori” and “the intellect's own forms” are at bottom only two expressions for the same things thus to a certain extent synonyms.

Therefore from the doctrine of the Transcendental Æsthetic I knew of nothing to take away, only of something to add. Kant did not carry out his thought to the end, especially in this respect, that he did not reject Euclid's whole method of demonstration, even after having said on p. 87; V. 120, that all geometrical knowledge has direct evidence from perception. It is most remarkable that one of Kant's opponents, and indeed the acutest of them, G. E. Schulze (Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie, ii. 241), draws the conclusion that from his doctrine an entirely different treatment of geometry from that which is actually in use would arise; and thus he thought to bring an apagogical argument against Kant, but, in fact, without knowing it, he only began the war against the method of Euclid. Let me refer to § 15 of the first book of this work.

After the full exposition of the universal forms of perception given in the Transcendental Æsthetic, one necessarily expects to receive some explanation as to its content, as to the way in which the empirical perception comes into our consciousness, how the knowledge of this whole world, which is for us so real and so important, arises in us. But the whole teaching of Kant contains really nothing more about this than the oft-repeated meaningless expression: “The empirical element in perception is given from without.” Consequently here also from the pure forms of perception Kant arrives with one spring at thinking at the Transcendental Logic. Just at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 50; V. 74), where Kant cannot avoid touching upon the content of the empirical perception, he takes the first false step; he is guilty of the πρωτον ψευδος. “Our knowledge,” he says, “has two sources, receptivity of impressions and spontaneity of conceptions: the first is the capacity for receiving ideas, the second that of knowing an object through these ideas: through the first an object is given us, through the second it is thought.” This is false; for according to it the impression, for which alone we have mere receptivity, which thus comes from without and alone is properly “given,” would be already an idea, and indeed an object. But it is nothing more than a mere sensation in the organ of sense, and only by the application of the understanding (i. e., of the law of causality) and the forms of perception, space and time, does our intellect change this mere sensation into an idea, which now exists as an object in space and time, and cannot be distinguished from the latter (the object) except in so far as we ask after the thing in itself, but apart from this is identical with it. I have explained this point fully in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21. With this, however, the work of the understanding and of the faculty of perception is completed, and no conceptions and no thinking are required in addition; therefore the brute also has these ideas. If conceptions are added, if thinking is added, to which spontaneity may certainly be attributed, then knowledge of perception is entirely abandoned, and a completely different class of ideas comes into consciousness, non-perceptible abstract conceptions. This is the activity of the reason, which yet obtains the whole content of its thinking only from the previous perception, and the comparison of it with other perceptions and conceptions. But thus Kant brings thinking into the perception, and lays the foundation for the inextricable confusion of intuitive and abstract knowledge which I am now engaged in condemning. He allows the perception, taken by itself, to be without understanding, purely sensuous, and thus quite passive, and only through thinking (category of the understanding) does he allow an object to be apprehended: thus he brings thought into the perception. But then, again, the object of thinking is an individual real object; and in this way thinking loses its essential character of universality and abstraction, and instead of general conceptions receives individual things as its object: thus again he brings perception into thinking. From this springs the inextricable confusion referred to, and the consequences of this first false step extend over his whole theory of knowledge. Through the whole of his theory the utter confusion of the idea of perception with the abstract idea tends towards a something between the two which he expounds as the object of knowledge through the understanding and its categories, and calls this knowledge experience. It is hard to believe that Kant really figured to himself something fully determined and really distinct in this object of the understanding; I shall now prove this through the tremendous contradiction which runs through the whole Transcendental Logic, and is the real source of the obscurity in which it is involved.

In the “Critique of Pure Reason,” p. 67-69; V. 92-94; p. 89, 90; V. 122, 123; further, V. 135, 139, 153, he repeats and insists: the understanding is no faculty of perception, its knowledge is not intuitive but discursive; the understanding is the faculty of judging (p. 69; V. 94), and a judgment is indirect knowledge, an idea of an idea (p. 68; V. 93); the understanding is the faculty of thinking, and thinking is knowledge through conceptions (p. 69; V. 94); the categories of the understanding are by no means the conditions under which objects are given in perception (p. 89; V. 122), and perception in no way requires the functions of thinking (p. 91; V. 123); our understanding can only think, not perceive (V. pp. 135, 139). Further, in the “Prolegomena,” § 20, he says that perception, sensation, perceptio, belongs merely to the senses; judgment to the understanding alone; and in § 22, that the work of the senses is to perceive, that of the understanding to think, i. e., to judge. Finally, in the “Critique of Practical Reason,” fourth edition, p. 247; Rosenkranz's edition, p. 281, he says that the understanding is discursive; its ideas are thoughts, not perceptions. All this is in Kant's own words.

From this it follows that this perceptible world would exist for us even if we had no understanding at all; that it comes into our head in a quite inexplicable manner, which he constantly indicates by his strange expression the perception is given, without ever explaining this indefinite and metaphorical expression further.

Now all that has been quoted is contradicted in the most glaring manner by the whole of the rest of his doctrine of the understanding, of its categories, and of the possibility of experience as he explains it in the Transcendental Logic. Thus (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 79; V. 105), the understanding through its categories brings unity into the manifold of perception, and the pure conceptions of the understanding refer a priori to objects of perception. P. 94; V. 126, the “categories are the condition of experience, whether of perception, which is found in it, or of thought.” V. p. 127, the understanding is the originator of experience. V. p. 128, the categories determine the perception of objects. V. p. 130, all that we present to ourselves as connected in the object (which is yet certainly something perceptible and not an abstraction), has been so connected by an act of the understanding. V. p. 135, the understanding is explained anew as the faculty of combining a priori, and of bringing the multiplicity of given ideas under the unity of apperception; but according to all ordinary use of words, apperception is not the thinking of a conception, but is perception. V. p. 136, we find a first principle of the possibility of all perception in connection with the understanding. V. p. 143, it stands as the heading, that all sense perception is conditioned by the categories. At the same place the logical function of the judgment also brings the manifold of given perceptions under an apperception in general, and the manifold of a given perception stands necessarily under the categories. V. p. 144, unity comes into perception, by means of the categories, through the understanding. V. p. 145, the thinking of the understanding is very strangely explained as synthetically combining, connecting, and arranging the manifold of perception. V. p. 161, experience is only possible through the categories, and consists in the connection of sensations, which, however, are just perceptions. V. p. 159, the categories are a priori knowledge of the objects of perception in general. Further, here and at V. p. 163 and 165, a chief doctrine of Kant's is given, this: that the understanding first makes Nature possible, because it prescribes laws for it a priori, and Nature adapts itself to the system of the understanding, and so on. Nature, however, is certainly perceptible and not an abstraction; therefore, the understanding must be a faculty of perception. V. p. 168, it is said, the conceptions of the understanding are the principles of the possibility of experience, and the latter is the condition of phenomena in space and time in general; phenomena which, however, certainly exist in perception. Finally, p. 189-211; V. 232-265, the long proof is given (the incorrectness of which is shown in detail in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23) that the objective succession and also the coexistence of objects of experience are not sensuously apprehended, but are only brought into Nature by the understanding, and that Nature itself first becomes possible in this way. Yet it is certain that Nature, the course of events, and the coexistence of states, is purely perceptible, and no mere abstract thought.

I challenge every one who shares my respect towards Kant to reconcile these contradictions and to show that in his doctrine of the object of experience and the way it is determined by the activity of the understanding and its twelve functions, Kant thought something quite distinct and definite. I am convinced that the contradiction I have pointed out, which extends through the whole Transcendental Logic, is the real reason of the great obscurity of its language. Kant himself, in fact, was dimly conscious of the contradiction, inwardly combated it, but yet either would not or could not bring it to distinct consciousness, and therefore veiled it from himself and others, and avoided it by all kinds of subterfuges. This is perhaps also the reason why he made out of the faculties of knowledge such a strange complicated machine, with so many wheels, as the twelve categories, the transcendental synthesis of imagination, of the inner sense, of the transcendental unity of apperception, also the schematism of the pure conceptions of the understanding, &c., &c. And notwithstanding this great apparatus, not even an attempt is made to explain the perception of the external world, which is after all the principal fact in our knowledge; but this pressing claim is very meanly rejected, always through the same meaningless metaphorical expression: “The empirical perception is given us.” On p. 145 of the fifth edition, we learn further that the perception is given through the object; therefore the object must be something different from the perception.

If, now, we endeavour to investigate Kant's inmost meaning, not clearly expressed by himself, we find that in reality such an object, different from the perception, but which is by no means a conception, is for him the proper object for the understanding; indeed that it must be by means of the strange assumption of such an object, which cannot be presented in perception, that the perception first becomes experience. I believe that an old deeply-rooted prejudice in Kant, dead to all investigation, is the ultimate reason of the assumption of such an absolute object, which is an object in itself, i. e., without a subject. It is certainly not the perceived object, but through the conception it is added to the perception by thought, as something corresponding to it; and now the perception is experience, and has value and truth, which it thus only receives through the relation to a conception (in diametrical opposition to my exposition, according to which the conception only receives value and truth from the perception). It is then the proper function of the categories to add on in thought to the perception this directly non-perceptible object. “The object is given only through perception, and is afterwards thought in accordance with the category” (Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, p. 399). This is made specially clear by a passage on p. 125 of the fifth edition: “Now the question arises whether conceptions a priori do not also come first as conditions under which alone a thing can be, not perceived certainly, but yet thought as an object in general,” which he answers in the affirmative. Here the source of the error and the confusion in which it is involved shows itself distinctly. For the object as such exists always only for perception and in it; it may now be completed through the senses, or, when it is absent, through the imagination. What is thought, on the contrary, is always an universal non-perceptible conception, which certainly can be the conception of an object in general; but only indirectly by means of conceptions does thought relate itself to objects, which always are and remain perceptible. For our thinking is not able to impart reality to perceptions; this they have, so far as they are capable of it (empirical reality) of themselves; but it serves to bring together the common element and the results of perceptions, in order to preserve them, and to be able to use them more easily. But Kant ascribes the objects themselves to thought, in order to make experience and the objective world dependent upon understanding, yet without allowing understanding to be a faculty of perception. In this relation he certainly distinguishes perception from thought, but he makes particular things sometimes the object of perception and sometimes the object of thought. In reality, however, they are only the object of the former; our empirical perception is at once objective, just because it proceeds from the causal nexus. Things, not ideas different from them, are directly its object. Particular things as such are perceived in the understanding and through the senses; the one-sided impression upon the latter is at once completed by the imagination. But, on the contrary, as soon as we pass over to thought, we leave the particular things, and have to do with general conceptions, which cannot be presented in perception, although we afterwards apply the results of our thought to particular things. If we hold firmly to this, the inadmissibleness of the assumption becomes evident that the perception of things only obtains reality and becomes experience through the thought of these very things applying its twelve categories. Rather in perception itself the empirical reality, and consequently experience, is already given; but the perception itself can only come into existence by the application to sensation of the knowledge of the causal nexus, which is the one function of the understanding. Perception is accordingly in reality intellectual, which is just what Kant denies.

Besides in the passages quoted, the assumption of Kant here criticised will be found expressed with admirable clearness in the “Critique of Judgment,” § 36, just at the beginning; also in the “Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science,” in the note to the first explanation of “Phenomenology.” But with a naïveté which Kant ventured upon least of all with reference to this doubtful point, it is to be found most distinctly laid down in the book of a Kantian, Kiesewetter's “Grundriss einer algemeinen Logik,” third edition, part i., p. 434 of the exposition, and part ii., § 52 and 53 of the exposition; similarly in Tieftrunk's “Denklehre in rein Deutschem Gewande” (1825). It there appears so clearly how those disciples who do not themselves think become a magnifying mirror of the errors of every thinker. Once having determined his doctrine of the categories, Kant was always cautious when expounding it, but his disciples on the contrary were quite bold, and thus exposed its falseness.

According to what has been said, the object of the categories is for Kant, not indeed the thing in itself, but yet most closely akin to it. It is the object in itself; it is an object that requires no subject; it is a particular thing, and yet not in space and time, because not perceptible; it is an object of thought, and yet not an abstract conception. Accordingly Kant really makes a triple division: (1.) the idea; (2.) the object of the idea; (3.) the thing in itself. The first belongs to the sensibility, which in its case, as in that of sensation, includes the pure forms of perception, space and time. The second belongs to the understanding, which thinks it through its twelve categories. The third lies beyond the possibility of all knowledge. (In support of this, cf. Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, p. 108 and 109.) The distinction of the idea from the object of the idea is however unfounded; this had already been proved by Berkeley, and it appears from my whole exposition in the first book, especially chap. i. of the supplements; nay, even from Kant's own completely idealistic point of view in the first edition. But if we should not wish to count the object of the idea as belonging to the idea and identify it with the idea, it would be necessary to attribute it to the thing in itself: this ultimately depends on the sense which is attached to the word object. This, however, always remains certain, that, when we think clearly, nothing more can be found than idea and thing in itself. The illicit introduction of that hybrid, the object of the idea, is the source of Kant's errors; yet when it is taken away, the doctrine of the categories as conceptions a priori also falls to the ground; for they bring nothing to the perception, and are not supposed to hold good of the thing in itself, but by means of them we only think those “objects of the ideas,” and thereby change ideas into experience. For every empirical perception is already experience; but every perception which proceeds from sensation is empirical: this sensation is related by the understanding, by means of its sole function (knowledge a priori of the law of causality), to its cause, which just on this account presents itself in space and time (forms of pure perception) as object of experience, material object, enduring in space through all time, yet as such always remains idea, as do space and time themselves. If we desire to go beyond this idea, then we arrive at the question as to the thing in itself, the answer to which is the theme of my whole work, as of all metaphysics in general. Kant's error here explained is connected with his mistake, which we condemned before, that he gives no theory of the origin of empirical perception, but, without saying more, treats it as given, identifying it with the mere sensation, to which he only adds the forms of intuition or perception, space and time, comprehending both under the name sensibility. But from these materials no objective idea arises: this absolutely demands the relation of the idea to its cause, thus the application of the law of causality, and thus understanding; for without this the sensation still remains always subjective, and does not take the form of an object in space, even if space is given with it. But according to Kant, the understanding must not be assigned to perception; it is supposed merely to think, so as to remain within the transcendental logic. With this again is connected another mistake of Kant's: that he left it to me to adduce the only valid proof of the a priori nature of the law of causality which he rightly recognised, the proof from the possibility of objective empirical perception itself, and instead of it gives a palpably false one, as I have already shown in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23. From the above it is clear that Kant's “object of the idea” (2) is made up of what he has stolen partly from the idea (1), and partly from the thing in itself (3). If, in reality, experience were only brought about by the understanding applying its twelve different functions in order to think through as many conceptions a priori, the objects which were previously merely perceived, then every real thing would necessarily as such have a number of determinations, which, as given a priori, absolutely could not be thought away, just like space and time, but would belong quite essentially to the existence of the thing, and yet could not be deduced from the properties of space and time. But only one such determination is to be found – that of causality. Upon this rests materiality, for the essence of matter consists in action, and it is through and through causality (cf. Bk. II. ch. iv.) But it is materiality alone that distinguishes the real thing from the picture of the imagination, which is then only idea. For matter, as permanent, gives to the thing permanence through all time, in respect of its matter, while the forms change in conformity with causality. Everything else in the thing consists either of determinations of space or of time, or of its empirical properties, which are all referable to its activity, and are thus fuller determinations of causality. But causality enters already as a condition into the empirical perception, and this is accordingly a thing of the understanding, which makes even perception possible, and yet apart from the law of causality contributes nothing to experience and its possibility. What fills the old ontologies is, with the exception of what is given here, nothing more than relations of things to each other, or to our reflection, and a farrago of nonsense.

The language in which the doctrine of the categories is expressed affords an evidence of its baselessness. What a difference in this respect between the Transcendental Æsthetic and the Transcendental Analytic! In the former, what clearness, definiteness, certainty, firm conviction which is freely expressed and infallibly communicates itself! All is full of light, no dark lurking-places are left: Kant knows what he wants and knows that he is right. In the latter, on the other hand, all is obscure, confused, indefinite, wavering, uncertain, the language anxious, full of excuses and appeals to what is coming, or indeed of suppression. Moreover, the whole second and third sections of the Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding are completely changed in the second edition, because they did not satisfy Kant himself, and they have become quite different from the first edition, though not clearer. We actually see Kant in conflict with the truth in order to carry out his hypothesis which he has once fixed upon. In the Transcendental Æsthetic all his propositions are really proved from undeniable facts of consciousness, in the Transcendental Analytic, on the contrary, we find, if we consider it closely, mere assertions that thus it is and must be. Here, then, as everywhere, the language bears the stamp of the thought from which it has proceeded, for style is the physiognomy of the mind. We have still to remark, that whenever Kant wishes to give an example for the purpose of fuller explanation, he almost always takes for this end the category of causality, and then what he has said turns out correct; for the law of causality is indeed the real form of the understanding, but it is also its only form, and the remaining eleven categories are merely blind windows. The deduction of the categories is simpler and less involved in the first edition than in the second. He labours to explain how, according to the perception given by sensibility, the understanding produces experience by means of thinking the categories. In doing so, the words recognition, reproduction, association, apprehension, transcendental unity of apperception, are repeated to weariness, and yet no distinctness is attained. It is well worth noticing, however, that in this explanation he does not once touch upon what must nevertheless first occur to every one – the relation of the sensation to its external cause. If he did not intend this relation to hold good, he ought to have expressly denied it; but neither does he do this. Thus in this way he evades the point, and all the Kantians have in like manner evaded it. The secret motive of this is, that he reserves the causal nexus, under the name “ground of the phenomenon,” for his false deduction of the thing in itself; and also that perception would become intellectual through the relation to the cause, which he dare not admit. Besides this, he seems to have been afraid that if the causal nexus were allowed to hold good between sensation and object, the latter would at once become the thing in itself, and introduce the empiricism of Locke. But this difficulty is removed by reflection, which shows us that the law of causality is of subjective origin, as well as the sensation itself; and besides this, our own body also, inasmuch as it appears in space, already belongs to ideas. But Kant was hindered from confessing this by his fear of the Berkeleian idealism.