Professor Noiré, when he had written for this work the antecedents of Kant's philosophy, sent me another most valuable contribution, containing a full analysis of that philosophy, considered not only as the continuation, but as the fulfilment of all other philosophical systems, and more particularly of the systems of Berkeley and Hume. For that work it was unfortunately impossible to find room in these volumes; but I still hope that it will not be withheld, in German at least, from those who, both in England and Germany, have learnt to appreciate Professor Noiré's accurate and luminous statements. Leaving therefore the task of tracing minutely the intimate relation between Kant and his predecessors to the more experienced hand of my friend, I shall here be satisfied with pointing out in the broadest way the connection, and, at the same time, the diametrical opposition between Kant and those two great heroes of speculative thought, Berkeley and Hume.
Berkeley holds that all knowledge that seems to come to us from without through the senses or through experience is mere illusion, and that truth exists in the ideas of the pure understanding and of reason only.
Kant proves that all knowledge that comes to us from pure understanding and from pure reason only is mere illusion, and that truth is impossible without experience. Hume holds that true causality is impossible, whether in experience or beyond experience.
Kant proves that experience itself is impossible without the category of causality, and, of course, without several other categories also which Hume had overlooked, though they possess exactly the same character as the concept of causality.9 The gist of Kant's philosophy, as opposed to that of Hume, can be expressed in one line: That without which experience is impossible, cannot be the result of experience, though it must never be applied beyond the limits of possible experience.
Such broad statements and counter-statements may seem to destroy the finer shades of philosophical thought, yet in the end even the most complicated and elaborate systems of philosophy rest on such broad foundations; and what we carry about with us of Plato or Aristotle, of Descartes or Leibniz, consists in the end of little more than a few simple outlines of the grand structures of their philosophical thoughts. And in that respect no system admits of being traced in simpler and broader outlines than that of Kant. Voluminous and complicated it is, and yet Kant himself traces in a few lines the outcome of it, when he says (Critique): 'But it will be said, is this really all that pure reason can achieve, in opening prospects beyond the limits of experience? Nothing more than two articles of faith? Surely even the ordinary understanding could have achieved as much without taking counsel of philosophers!
'I shall not here dwell on the benefits,' he answers, which, by the laborious efforts of its criticism, philosophy has conferred on human reason, granting even that in the end they should turn out to be merely negative. On this point something will have to be said in the next section. But, I ask, do you really require that knowledge, which concerns all men, should go beyond the common understanding, and should be revealed to you by philosophers only? The very thing which you find fault with is the best confirmation of the correctness of our previous assertions, since it reveals to us, what we could not have grasped before, namely, that in matters which concern all men without distinction, nature cannot be accused of any partial distribution of her gifts; and that, with regard to the essential interests of human nature, the highest philosophy can achieve no more than that guidance which nature has vouchsafed even to the meanest understanding.'
I hope that the time will come when Kant's works, and more particularly his Critique of Pure Reason, will be read, not only by the philosopher by profession, but by everybody who has once seen that there are problems in this life of ours the solution of which alone makes life worth living. These problems, as Kant so often tells us, are all the making of reason, and what reason has made, reason is able to unmake. These problems represent in fact the mythology of philosophy, that is, the influence of dying or dead language on the living thought of each successive age; and an age which has found the key to the ancient mythology of religion, will know where to look for the key that is to unlock the mythology of pure reason. Kant has shown us what can and what cannot be known by man. What remains to be done, even after Kant, is to show how man came to believe that he could know so much more than he can know, and this will have to be shown by a Critique of Language.10
How strange it is that Kant's great contemporary, 'the Magus of the North,' should have seen this at once, and that for a whole century his thought has remained dormant. 'Language,' Hamann writes, 'is not only the foundation for the whole faculty of thinking, but the central point also from which proceeds the misunderstanding of reason by herself.' And again:11 'The question with me is not, What is Reason? but, What is Language? And here I suspect is the ground of all paralogisms and antinomies with which Reason has been charged.' And again: 'Hence I feel almost inclined to believe that our whole philosophy consists more of language than of reason, and the misunderstanding of numberless words, the prosopopæias of the most arbitrary abstraction, the antithesis nay, the commonest figures of speech of the sensus communis have produced a whole world of problems, which can no more be raised than solved. What we want is a Grammar of Reason.'
That Kant's Critique will ever become a popular book, in the ordinary sense of the word, is impossible; but that it will for ever occupy a place in the small tourist's library which every thoughtful traveller across this short life's journey will keep by his side, I have no doubt. Kant, it must be admitted, was a bad writer, but so was Aristotle, so was Descartes, so was Liebniz, so was Hegel; and, after a time, as in climbing a mountain, the very roughness of the road becomes an attraction to the traveller. Besides, though Kant is a bad builder, he is not a bad architect, and there will be few patient readers of the Critique who will fail to understand Goethe's expression that on reading Kant, or rather, I should say, on reading Kant again and again, we feel like stepping into a lighted room. I have tried hard, very hard, to remove some of the darkness which has hitherto shrouded Kant's masterwork from English readers, and though I know how often I have failed to satisfy myself, I still hope I shall not have laboured quite in vain. Englishmen who, in the turmoil of this century, found leisure and mental vigour enough to study once more the thoughts of Plato, and perceiving their bearing on the thoughts of our age, may well brace themselves to the harder work of discovering in Kant the solution of many of the oldest problems of our race, problems which, with most of us, are still the problems of yesterday and of to-day. I am well aware that for Kant there is neither the prestige of a name, such as Plato, nor the cunning of a translator, such as Jowett. But a thinker who in Germany could make himself listened to during the philosophical apathy of the Wolfian age, who from his Ultima Thule of Königsberg could spring forward to grasp the rudder of a vessel, cast away as unseaworthy by no less a captain than Hume, and who has stood at the helm for more than a century, trusted by all whose trust was worth having, will surely find in England, too, patient listeners, even though they might shrink, as yet, from embarking in his good ship in their passage across the ocean of life.
Kant's Metaphysic in relation to Physical Science
We live in an age of physical discovery, and of complete philosophical prostration, and thus only can we account for the fact that physical science, and, more particularly, physiology, should actually have grasped at the sceptre of philosophy. Nothing, I believe, could be more disastrous to both sciences.
No one who knows my writings will suspect me of undervaluing the progress which physical studies have made in our time, or of ignoring the light which they have shed on many of the darkest problems of the mind. Only let us not unnecessarily move the old landmarks of human knowledge. There always has been, and there always must be, a line of demarcation between physical and metaphysical investigations, and though the former can illustrate the latter, they can never take their place. Nothing can be more interesting, for instance, than recent researches into the exact processes of s
ensuous perception. Optics and Acoustics have carried us deep into the inner workings of our bodily senses, and have enabled us to understand what we call colours and sounds, as vibrations, definite in number, carried on from the outer organs through vibrating media to the brain and the inmost centre of all nervous activity. Such observations have, no doubt, made it more intelligible, even to the commonest understanding, what metaphysicians mean when they call all secondary qualities subjective, and deny that anything can be, for instance, green or sweet, anywhere but in the perceiving subject. But the idea that these physical and physiological researches have brought us one inch nearer to the real centre of subjective perception, that any movement of matter could in any way explain the simplest sensuous perception, or that behind the membranes and nerves we should ever catch hold of what we call the soul, or the I, or the self, need only to be stated to betray its utter folly. That men like Helmholtz and Du Bois-Reymond should find Kant's metaphysical platform best adapted for supporting their physical theories is natural enough. But how can any one who weighs his words say that the modern physiology of the senses has in any way supplemented or improved Kant's theory of knowledge?12 As well might we say that spectrum analysis has improved our logic, or the electric light supplemented our geometry. 'Empirical psychology,' as Kant says, 'must be entirely banished from metaphysic, and is excluded from it by its very idea.13
Metaphysical truth is wider than physical truth, and the new discoveries of physical observers, if they are to be more than merely contingent truths, must find their appointed place and natural refuge within the immoveable limits traced by the metaphysician. It was an unfortunate accident that gave to what ought to have been called prophysical, the name of metaphysical science, for it is only after having mastered the principles of metaphysic that the student of nature can begin his work in the right spirit, knowing the horizon of human knowledge, and guided by principles as unchangeable as the polestar. It would be childish to make this a question of rank or precedence it is simply a question of work and order.
It may require, for instance, a greater effort, and display more brilliant mental qualities, to show that nature contains no traces of repeated acts of special creation, than to prove that such a theory would make all unity of experience, and consequently all science, impossible. But what are all the negative arguments of the mere observer without the solid foundation supplied by the metaphysician? And with how much more of tranquil assurance would the geologist pursue his observations and develop his conclusions, if he just remembered these few lines of Kant: 'When such an arising is looked upon as the effect of a foreign cause, it is called creation. This can never be admitted as an event among phenomena, because its very possibility would destroy unity of experience.'14
What can have been more delightful to the unprejudiced observer than the gradual diminution of the enormous number of what were called, by students of nature who had never troubled their heads about the true meaning of these terms, genera and species? But when the true meaning, and thereby the true origin, of genera and species was to be determined, is it not strange that not one word should ever have been said on the subjective character of these terms? Whatever else a genus or species may be, surely they are, first of all, concepts of the understanding, and, without these concepts, whatever nature might present to us, nothing would ever be to us a genus or a species.
Genus and species, in that restricted sense, as applied to organic beings, represent only one side of that fundamental process on which all thought is founded, namely, the conception of the General and the Special. Here, again, a few pages of Kant15 would have shown that the first thing to be explained is the process by which we conceive the genus or the general, and that the only adequate explanation of it is what Kant calls its transcendental deduction, i.e. the proof that, without it, experience itself would be impossible; and that therefore, so far from being a concept abstracted from experience, it is a sine qua non of experience itself.
If this is once clearly understood, it will be equally understood that, as we are the makers of all concepts, we are also the makers of genera and species, and that long before logicians came to define and deface these terms, they were what we now are anxious to make them again, terms for objects which have either a common origin or a common form. Long before Aristotle forced the terms and to assume a subordinate relation to each other, language, or the historical logic of the human race, had formed these terms, and meant them to be not subordinate, but co-ordinate.
Genos meant kin, and the first genos was the gens or the family, comprehending individuals that could claim a common ancestor, though differing in appearance as much as a grandfather and a babe. Eidos or species, on the contrary, meant appearance or form, and the first eidos was probably the troop of warriors, comprehending individuals of uniform appearance, nothing being asserted as to their common origin. This was the historic or prehistoric beginning of these two fundamental categories of thought—and what has the theory of evolution really done for them? It has safely brought them back to their original meaning. It has shown us that we can hold together, or comprehend, or conceive, or classify, or generalise or speak in two ways, and in two ways only—either by common descent (genealogically), or by common appearance (morphologically). Difference of form is nothing, if we classify genealogically, and difference of descent is nothing, if we classify morphologically. What the theory of evolution is doing for us is what is done by every genealogist, aye, what was done in ancient time by every paterfamilias, namely, to show by facts that certain individuals, however different from each other in form and appearance, had a common ancestor, and belonged therefore to the same family or kin. In every case where such proof has been given, we gain in reality a more correct general concept, i.e. we are able to think and to speak better. The process is the same, whether we trace the Bourbons and Valois back to Hugo Capet, or whether we derive the Hippos and the Hipparion from a common ancestor. In both cases we are dealing with facts and with facts only. Let it be established that there is no missing link between them, or between man and monkey, and we shall simply have gained a new concept, as we should gain a new concept by establishing the unbroken continuity of the Apostolic succession. Only let us see clearly that in physical and historical researches, too, we are dealing with facts, and with facts only, which cannot excite any passion, and that the wider issues as to the origin of genera and species belong to a different sphere of human knowledge, and after having been debated for centuries, have been determined once for all by Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
If one remembers the dust-clouds of words that were raised when the question of the origin of species was mooted once more in our days, it is truly refreshing to read a few of Kant's calm pages on that subject, written one hundred years ago. 'Reason,'16 he writes, 'prepares the field for the understanding,
'1st. Through the principle of homogeneousness of the manifold as arranged under higher genera;
'2ndly. Through the principle of the variety of the homogeneous in lower species; to which,
'3rdly, it adds a law of affinity of all concepts, which requires a continual transition from every species to every other species, by a gradual increase of diversity. We may call these the principles of homogeneousness, of specification, and of continuity of forms.'
And with reference to the practical application of these metaphysical principles to the study of nature, he writes again with true philosophical insight:17 'I often see even intelligent men quarrelling with each other about the characteristic distinctions of men, animals, or plants, nay, even of minerals, the one admitting the existence of certain national characteristics, founded on descent, or decided and inherited differences of families, races, etc., while others insist that nature has made the same provision for all, and that all differences are due to accidental environment. But they need only consider the peculiar character of the matter, in order to understand that it is far too deeply hidden for both of them to enable them to speak from any real insight
into the nature of the object. It is nothing but the twofold interest of reason, one party cherishing the one, another party the other, or pretending to do so. But this difference of the two maxims of manifoldness and unity in nature, may easily be adjusted, though as long as they are taken for objective knowledge they cause not only disputes, but actually create impediments which hinder the progress of truth, until a means is found of reconciling the contradictory interests, and thus giving satisfaction to reason.
'The same applies to the assertion or denial of the famous law of the continuous scale of created beings, first advanced by Leibniz, and so cleverly trimmed up by Bonnet. It is nothing but a carrying out of the principle of affinity resting on the interest of reason, for neither observation, nor insight into the constitution of nature could ever have supplied it as an objective assertion. The steps of such a ladder, as far as they can be supplied by experience, are far too wide apart from each other, and the so-called small differences are often in nature itself such wide gaps, that no value can be attached to such observations as revealing the intentions of nature, particularly as it must always be easy to discover certain similarities and approximations in the great variety of things. The method, on the contrary, of looking for order in nature, according to such a principle, and the maxim of admitting such order (though it may be uncertain where and how far) as existing in nature in general, is certainly a legitimate and excellent regulative principle of reason, only that, as such, it goes far beyond where experience or observation could follow it. It only indicates the way which leads to systematical unity, but does not determine anything beyond.'
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