,.z CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF E. T. Paine Date Due ■ MAR 2 1 9 SI 1 * , « , H, :Ji) JUfll 8 19M fl '','M.y fy ^4- flgfefcwi^jr>. APR g Cornell University Library B2798 .C13 Critical philosophy .a'JffiMKSLSiiik by olin 3 1924 029 022 957 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029022957 THE CEITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT PUBLISHED BY JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW gtabtoliets to ±lte glnttrrsttg MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK London Hamilton, Adams and Co. Cambridge Macmillan and Bowes Edinburgh Douglas and Foulis MDCCCLXXX1X THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT BY EDWARD CAIE1), LL.D. PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS ^publishers to the Snibcrattp 1889 All rights reserved CONTENTS. BOOK I. THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. CHAPTER X. THE IDEAS OF REASON. How the Solution of the Problem of the Analytic leads to the Problem of the Dialectic — Different Aspects of the Problem of the Dialectic — The Limita- tion of Experience as Connected with the Thought of that which is Beyond the Limit — -That that Thought is Involved in the Opposition of the Analytic Unity of Self-Consciousness to the Synthetic Unity of the Consciousness of Objects — Kant's Recurrence to the Guiding Thread of Formal Logic — The Syllogism as the Determination of Thought by Prin- ciples — Need of First Principles — That the Principles of the Understanding are not First Principles — Possibility of a Practical First Principle — Difficulty in the Idea of a First Principle of Knowledge — That First Principles are not Immediately Related to Perceptions — That they must be Ideas of the Unconditioned, and that, therefore, they Involve a Synthesis of Pure Thought — The Three Ideas, as Corresponding to the Three Metaphysical Sciences —Transition from Formal to Transcendental Logic — The Infinite Regress of Experience — That that Regress could find its Terminus only in a Knowledge of the Noumenon, which we can Think, but cannot Know — Deduction of Three Ideas from the Three Forms of Syllogism — That Kant Suggests a Better Way of Connecting the Ideas with the Syllogistic Forms — The Imperfect Syllogisms of Consciousness and Self-Consciousness, and their Possible Union in the Perfect Syllogism of the Consciousness of God — Possible Synthesis of Rational Psychology and Rational Cosmology in Rational Theology — Reason why Kant Rejects the Idea of such a Synthesis — Kant's View of the whole System of Ideas of Reason, as one Syllogism — That his Two Forms of this Syl- logism are virtually One, ... . Pp. 1 — 23 vi CONTENTS. CHAPTEE XL RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS PARALOGISMS. The Idea of the Soul— Why the Categories cannot be applied to it— T . e Source of the Paralogism of Rational Psychology— Advance from the First Form of Self-Consciousness through the Berkeleian and the Kantian Reflexion— That Rational Psychology takes the Subject as an Object and seeks to Determine it by Categories— That Descartes fell into that Paralogism— Kant's Distinction of the Consciousness of the Self as Subject, from the Knowledge of it as Object— That the Subject Self cannot be Determined as a, Substance, nor as qualitatively Simple, nor as quanti- tatively Individual, nor as actually Existent in Contrast with Objects as Possible— That, on Kant's view, the Idea of the Soul cannot be objectified, nor the Soul as a known Object brought into Correspondence with the Idea— That the Pure Ego of Kant is not a Res Complete, but an Abstrac- tion, though it is Conceived as Supplying a Regulative Idea for Psycho- logy — That Self-Consciousness could not Supply even a Regulative Idea, if its Unity were purely Analytic, . . . Pp. 24 — 3S CHAPTER XII, THE ANTITHETIC OF PURE REASON, AND THE CRITICISM OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. Connexion of the Idea of the World as a Whole with the Hypothetical Syllogism— That this Idea gives rise to a Series of Dilemmas— Dilemma as to Finitude or Infinity of the World in Space and Time — Dilemma as to the Simplicity and Complexity of Objects — Dilemma as to the Finitude or Infinity of the Series of Causes — Dilemma as to the Necessity or Con- tingency of Things— The Sceptical and Critical Methods of Dealing with the Dilemmas of Reason — Three Problems of the Dialectic — That the Antinomies cannot be Solved Dogmatically — That the Collected Theses form One System of Philosophy, and the Collected Antithesis an Opposite System — That the Source of the Antinomies must be Discoverable in the Nature of our Rational Faculty — Impossibility of a Dogmatic, and Pos- sibility of a Critical Solution of the Antinomies — That both the Rival Dogmatic Systems of Rational Cosmology rest on a Confusion of Pheno- mena with Things in Themselves, and that, therefore, neither of them can Solve the Problem — That the Ideas furnish Regulative but not Con- stitutive Principles of Knowledge — Critical Solution of the Antinomies — That the Dynamical Antinomies Admit of a Twofold Solution — Summary of Kant's Criticism of Rational Cosmology — The Problem of Rational Cos- mology—Hegel's Opposition to the Two Kantian Principles: (1) That Pure Thought is Analytic ; and (2) that Applied Thought is only Exter- nally Synthetic — The Necessity of Contradiction — How it is Ignored bv Common Sense, till Reflexion awakes the Consciousness of it That Kant regards it as an Accident due, not to the Nature of Thought, but to its Application to the Foreign Matter of Sense — That, in consequence he finds the Contradiction so caused Insoluble — The Mathematical Antinomies CONTENTS. Vll and Kant's Solution of them — Criticism of that Solution : (1) In Reference to Space ; (2) in Reference to Time — The Antinomy of Mind and Matter in Descartes — One-sided Solutions of it by Leibniz and Locke — Kant's Advance Towards a Better Solution — How far it is Satisfactory — Second Stage of Reflexion in which the Analogies are used as Principles of Investigation — Necessity of a Third Stage' as shown by the Dynamical Antinomies — Kant's Double Solution of these Antinomies — Reason for this Peculiarity — How the Dialectical Character of the Category of Causality leads to the Idea of a Causa Sui — Criticism of Kant's View of this Transition — That it is a Movement of Thought which brings into view the Unity of Things with the Thought for which they are, and, therefore, their Organic Unity with each Other — That this Idea has to be applied even to the Inorganic World as viewed in Relation to the Organic— The Final Application of it to the World as viewed in relation to the Intelligence — Changes in the Kantian Theory, which this Conception would Necessitate — Kant's Contrast of the Empirical and Intelligible Characters — Its Inconsistency with Kant's Own Principles — That the Phenomenon ought to be regarded as an Abstraction, and the Noumenon as a Res Oompleta — Difficulty as to the Phenomenal View of the Soul as an Object — That the same difficulty applies to the Phenomenal View of ' Inorganic Matter, though in a more Direct Way to the Phenomenal View of Life and Mind Pp. 39—101 CHAPTEE XIII. THE IDEAL OE PURE REASON AND THE CRITICISM OF RATIONAL THEOLOGY. Relation of the Problems of Rational Theology to the Problems of Rational Psychology and Cosmology — Two Main Problems of Rational Theology — The Transcendental Principle of Complete Determination — Its Source, partly in Logical, partly in Transcendental Principles — The Ens Real- issirnum viewed as an Individual completely Determined a priori, which contains in itself the Material of all Possibility — Its Relation to Finite Things — Kant's Criticism of this Idea — General Defect of the Arguments for the Being of God — Relations of the Three Arguments — Kant's Criticism of the Ontological, of the Cosmological, and of the Physico- Theological Arguments — Negative Result of the Criticism of Rational Theology — That it still leaves room for a Moral Theology — Criticism of Kant's view of the Relation of the Idea of God to the Unity of Experi- ence — The Three Elements in the Idea of God : (1) the Idea of Completed Experience ; (2) the Idea of the Unity of all Positive Predicates ; (3) the Idea of an Intuitive Understanding — That, if we Exclude the Second Idea as Logically Impossible, the First and the Third Ideas become Identified — That Kant balances the First and Second against each other so as to Ex- clude the Third — That Kant's Criticism of the Ontological Argument involves an Imperfect Consciousness of the Results of his own Deduction, in so far as that Deduction involves the Relativity of Perception and Con- ception — That Kant's Objection to the Ontological Argument is good I CONTENTS. against the Dogmatic Philosophy which he attacked, but does not Exclude the Ultimate Unity o^Thpught and Being-That his Objections to the other Two Arguments also tell rather against their Form than their Mssmce— That the Process of Thought in them ought to be Conceived as Regressive, and therefore Negative as well as Positive — Negative side of the Cosmological Argument— Transition from it to the Physico-Theological Argument— That the Physico-Theological Argument and the Monotheistic Idea of God go together, and indicate a Step Beyond the Elementary Pan- theistic form of Religion— Transition to the Ontological Argument and the Christian Idea of God— Result of this Criticism of Kant, Pp. 102—129 CHAPTER XIV. THE REGULATIVE USE OF THE IDEAS OF REASON. Limitation of the Ideas of Reason in Relation to Experience — The Principles of Homogeneity, of Specification, and of Affinity — Relation of these Three Principles — That they do not directly enable us to know Objects, but only to Organize our Experience — Their Relation to the Three Ideas of Reason — Ignava Ratio and Perversa Ratio — The Three Aspects of the Ideas of Reason as viewed by Kant — That Kant's Third Principle is an Imperfect Synthesis of the other Two — Ultimate point to which the Critique of Pure Reason brings us — Relation of its Problem to the Problems of the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgment, . . Pp.130 — 142 CONTENTS. ix BOOK II. KANT'S ETHICAL WOKKS. CHAPTER I. THE RELATION OF THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. Relation of the Problems of the Critiques of Pure and Practical Season — Kant's Fundamental Antinomy — His Mode of Dealing with it in the Critique of Pure Reason — The Thing in itself as it appears at the Beginning and at the End of the Critiqueof Pure Reason — Kant's Two Conflicting Lines of Thought as they appear : (1) in the Aesthetic ; (2) in the Analytic; (3) in the Dia- lectic — The Noumenon as an Ideal of Knowledge — Question whether it can be an Ideal without being More — Why it is not More for Kant — That the Critique of Pure, Reason shows that there is Room Beyond the System of Nature for another kind of Reality — How the Polemical Use of Reason helps him to Maintain this — Importance of this Negative Result of the Critique of Pure Reason — That neither the Subject, nor anything Involved in its Pure Consciousness of itself, can be brought under the Categories — That, in particular, this Exemption holds good for the Practical Conscious- ness — That the Consciousness of Self as a Self-Determining Subject, is Involved in the Consciousness of Moral Obligation, which is the Practical Aspect of the Rational Consciousness of Ideas — That the Ideal of Reason, as Practical, ceases to be a Problem and becomes an Imperative — Sum- mary of the Criticism of Kant's view of the Function of Ideas in Know- ledge — Questions to be Answered in a similar Criticism of the Moral Consciousness— Criticism of Kant's Distinction of Faith and Knowledge, Pp. 143—170 CHAPTER II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. Common Objection to Kant's Formal View of Morality— That he is a. Repre- sentative of one of the two Main Tendencies of Ethical Theory— Kant's ' Determination of the Good Will as the Only Thing properly to be called Good— The Meaning of the Good Will shown by the Analysis of Duty— The Idea of the Moral Law as the Sole Motive of Good Action— That the Sole Content of the Moral Law is the Idea of Law in General— That Moral Action is Reason willing itself as an End— Contrast of the Self- Determination of Reason with its Determination by Objects ; or, what is the same thing for Kant, by Pleasure and Pain— Happiness as an Empiri- cal and Subjective Principle of Action— That the Moral Principle must be CONTENTS. Formal— Questions suggested by the Kantian View of the Moral Prin- ciple—Distinction of the Motive Which Arises from our Consciousness of Self as Subject, from the Motives which Arise from our Nature as Objects —That the Conscious Self cannot be Determined by the Desires, unless it takes them np into its Maxims— The Two Questions suggested by Kant s Conception of the Motives : (1) How the Ego can be Determined even by a Motive derived from its own Nature ; and (2) How it can be Determined by Motives not Derived from its own Nature— Kant's Answer to the First Question, that the Self-Derived Motive is the Idea of Law— Hegel's Objections— That Hegel does not do full Justice to Kant's Theory- Kant's View of the Relation of the Formal Idea of Law to Self-Conscious- ness—That, in Kant's View, to Realise the Moral Law is to Realise the Ideas of Reason which are bound up with Self-Consciousness— That this Involves an Abstraction from all the Motives of our Natural Life— That, nevertheless, we are Obliged to Typify the End we seek to Realise, as a Natural World under Moral Laws— Kant's Use of the Idea of Type to Solve the Difficulties due to the Formal Character of his Principle- Parallelism between the Critiques of Pure and of Practical Reason — That Kant's Method of Abstraction must in Both Cases be Reversed — That his Correction of the ordinary Practical Consciousness goes as far as, and no farther than, his Correction of the ordinary Theoretical Consciousness — His Partial Rejection of Dualism in both — That he Omits to Notice how Self-Consciousness changes the Content of Natural Desire — -Truth and Error of Asceticism — Kant's Denial that Moral Good can be Known as Objective Good, though we are Obliged to Typify it as such — That the Necessity for such a Type indicates that Kant has Exaggerated the Nega- tive Aspect of Morality — That this Exaggeration may be Explained by the Way in which the Moral Consciousness develops — That the Opposi- tion of the Rational and the Moral must be Conceived as merely Relative, and therefore capable of Reconciliation — That this is Proved even by the History of Ascetic Systems of Morality— That Kant supplies a Means of Correcting his own Error in his alternative Formulas for the Moral Law — His Distinction between Acting under Law and Acting from a Con- sciousness of the Law — Difference of Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives— What must be the Content of a Categorical Imperative — Kant's Application of his First Formula to the Duties of Perfect and Imperfect Obligation— Question as to the Asserted Impossibility of Universalising the Maxim involved in the Breach of a Perfect Obligation — That Kant does not Attempt to give a similar Negative Deduction of Duties of Imperfect Obligation— That an Impartial Will cannot Rest on a merely Formal or Negative Principle— That, as the Consciousness of Law changes Law, so the Consciousness of Desire changes Desire— Kant's Transition to the Second Formula for the Moral Law— Application of it to Duties of Perfect and Imperfect Obligation— That this Formula can yield Definite Results only if the Particular or Natural Life of the Individual as an Object be Presupposed to be Identified with his Universal Nature as a Subject— The Third Formula and the Idea of a possible Kingdom of Ends —Why, for Kant, it is merely Possible -Kant's Separation of the Particular Desires from Practical Reason— Question whether Pleasure or Happiness can be an End for Itself, as Distinct from the Realisation of Objective CONTENTS. xi Ends — That the Desire of Objects is never merely the Desire of Pleasure, and, therefore, never Absolutely Opposed to the Good Will— That Subjec- tive Morality always Presupposes an Objective Realisation of Morality in the Life of an Organised Society — That the Opposition between Subjective and Objective Law is only Relative — How the Inner Law becomes Opposed to the Outer Law in Stoicism — That this Opposition is a Transi- tion Stage between a less and more C omprehensive Social Morality — That this Transition is Indicated in Stoicism by the Idea of Philanthropy, and in the Kantian Ethics by the Idea of a Kingdom of Ends, Pp. 171-240. CHAPTER III. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. That the Moral Law is the Law of Freedom — Freedom first Defined Negatively in Opposition to the Necessity of Nature — Difficulty that we must View Ourselves both as Subjects for which Nature is, and as Natural Objects — Question how the Self as Subject can be Free from the Law of Necessity, while the Self as Object is Subjected to it — Treatment of this Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Season — Change of the Aspect of the Problem in the Critique of Practical Reason — Connexion of Freedom with the Moral Law — Question how other Content than the Moral Law can be Taken up into the Will — That it must be Taken up by an Act of Self -Determination — Difficulty of Conceiving how the Matter of Necessity can be brought under the Form of Freedom — Kant's Solution of the Difficulty by the Dis- tinction of the Noumenal and Phenomenal Points of View — That this Explains only how we cannot Represent the Law of Freedom as Realised, but not how we can really Act on other Motives — Kant's Repudiation of the Idea of Liberty of Indifference — Insufficiency of the Way in which he Escapes from Admitting that Idea— Why the Opposition of the Motives of Desire and the Motive of Reason is taken by Kant as Absolute — That the Relation of Objects to the Subject cannot be Taken as a Relation of Externality, or Determination by Objects as the Negation of Self -Determina- tion — That an External Necessity exists for a Self-Conscious Being, only because he is in Process of Development — That the Universality or Rationality of the Will is Revealed in an Imperfect Form in our First Consciousness of Serf — How the Idea of the Good Will, as that which Alone is Free, arises out of the Relative Opposition of Duty to Desire — Relation of this Negative Idea of Freedom to the Positive Idea of it — Kant's Position in Relation to these two Ideas — That Freedom cannot belong to the Self as Exclusive of all other Things and Beings — Element of Truth in the Idea of Liberty of Indifference — The Analysis of Caprice —The Contradiction involved in it, as Leading to an Idea of Freedom as Obedience to Law ; which, however, is at first represented as an External Law — How the Consckrasness of an Inner Law arises in Opposition to the Outer Law — That neither of these Ideas of Freedom is satisfactory, but that they both furnish Elements for the True Idea, Pp. 241-276. xii CONTENTS. CHAPTEE IV. MORAL FEELING. Determination of Peeling by the Moral Law— Enigmatical Character of the Feeling so Produced— Question whether it is to be Viewed as Pleasure or Pain— The Possibility of Reverence for Persons— The Limitation of Moral Peeling to Reverence, and Practiced, not Pathological, Love— How far Kant goes in admitting a Positive Unity of Desire with the Good Will- That he fixes Moral Feeling at what is merely a Point of Transition— That the Natural Desires are not to be taken as Simple Positive Impulses— The Rise of Reverence in Connexion with the Development of Social Order— How it becomes Reverence for an Abstract Law, . . Pp. 277-288 CHAPTEE V. THE SUMMUM BONUM. Kant's Attempt to get Beyond his own Dualism — Its Dialectic Necessity — Dif- ference between the Chief Good and the Complete Good — Three Questions as to the Summum Bonum — Question how Happiness and Virtue are to be Connected — Kant's Criticism of the Stoic and Epicurean Answers — The Antinomy of Practical Reason, and Kant's Solution of it — The Postulate of the Existence of God as Necessary for the Connexion of Happiness with Goodness — This Postulate not to be made the Basis of the Moral Law — Effect of the Absence of it in Greek Ethics — Relation of the Postulates to the Ideas of Reason — That they do not give us Knowledge of their Objects, but only enable us to Assert their Reality — Principle on which Kant's Idea of the Summum Bonum is to be Criticised — That his Dilemma of Analysis and Synthesis is not Exhaustive — That these two Postulates involve a Progressus in infinitum, and the introduction of a Deusex machina— Fallacy of the Former — That the Postulate of God will Solve the Difficulty only if taken in another than the Kantian Sense — That, in Supporting the Postu- late of Immortality, Kant seems to lay Emphasis rather on our Limits, than on that which enables us to Transcend them — That in Supporting the Postulate of God, he Externalises Religion by Denying that we are Related to God simply as Rational, and therefore Moral Beings — That Morality is Directly Related to Religion, unless it be Reduced to the Pursuit of an Unreal Ideal — In what Sense it can be Admitted that we have only Faith and not Knowledge of the Ultimate Reality — The Faith of Reason, .... . . Pp. 289-314 CHAPTEE VI. APPLIED ETHICS— THE PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. Difficulties of Applied Ethics for Kant — His Dualism and his Attempt to Transcend it — How far the Postulates carry us in that Direction New Form of the Difficulty in Applied Ethics — How the Problems of Juris- prudence and Ethics Agree and Differ — Law as a Correlative Determination CONTENTS. xiii of Rights and Duties— What is involved in the Idea of Legal Eight— The Idea of a Compulsion which is in Accordance with Freedom — Why Equitable Eight, and the Right of Necessity, are Excluded from Juris- prudence—That Freedom is the First of Rights, and that it Involves Equality— Distinction of Persons and Things— The Actual and the Ideal State of Nature— Origin of the Right of Persons over Things — Property^ Intelligible, as Opposed to Empirical Possession— Exclusiveness of Private Property, based on an Original, but Ideal, Community of Possession— Jus in rem — Jus in personam — Jus reatiter personate — Its Eeciprocity — The Rational Necessity of the State— The Social Contract as an Idea of Reason — That it is a Sacred and Irrevocable Contract — That the Guilt of De- stroying the State, by Slaying the Sovereign, is inexpiable.— That the Ideal Form of the State is a Republic, in which the Principle of Repre- sentation is Applied — Necessity for a Division of the Three Powers in the State — Relative Justification for States which Diverge from the Ideal — The Social Contract as a Modification of the Formal Principle of Morals - Particular Consequences of the Application of it to the State — The Sovereign to be Reduced to an Executive Power — Kant's View of Penal Justice — Practical Modifications of the Principle of Lex talionis, in Cases of Murder — Beccaria's Objection to the Death-Penalty, and Kant's Answer — The Ideal of International Law — The Necessity of its Realisation — Articles for a Future Law of Nations — The Establishment of a Republic as a Step towards a League of States which may Prepare for a World- Republic — What is, and what ought to be — Criticism of Kant's View of Jurisprudence — The Possibility of a Compulsion that is Consistent with Freedom — Necessity of the State to Secure the Rights of Persons— That the Existence of the State seems Inconsistent with Kant's View of those Rights — That this Contradiction would exist even in a Republic — Com- parison of the Views of Rousseau and Kant on the Social Contract — Kant's Imperfect Vindication of the Authority of the State — Criticism of his Conception of the Jus realiter personate — That it points to the Idea that the Unity of the Family, and also of the State, is Organic — Con- sequences of this View — That it involves, (1) that the Jus Civile is prior to the Jus Naturale — The Modern World Cosmopolitan in Principle, though not yet a World-Republic — That it involves, (2) the Ultimate Unity of Law and Morality — Discussion of the Objection that the Organism of the State is not Self-Conscious, and that, therefore, Individuals are Isolated in their Inner Moral Life — That we know Mind, on the same terms as we know Matter — Early Confusion of the Spiritual and the Natural, and Subsequent Abstract Division of them — That, in a sense, we interpret Both by the Consciousness of Self, but that the Conscious- ness of Self is not, therefore, prior in time to the Consciousness of the Natural and Spiritual World — Three Ways of Viewing the Relation of the Social Unity to the Moral Nature of Man — The View of Hobbes, and that of Kant — Third View, according to which the Moral and Social Life are Essentially Related — Subjective Morality as a Movement of Transition to a Higher Social Morality — Ultimate Concordance of Law and Morality — That the Three Theories of Penal Justice may be Reconciled, Pp. 315-378 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. APPLIED ETHICS— THE SYSTEM OF THE MORAL VIRTUES. Virtue and Duty— That Morality implies Compulsion, but only Self-Com- pulsion — The Ends of Moral Action to be deduced from the Moral Law as determining the Maxims— Obligations of Right and Obligations of Virtue —The two Moral Ends, our own Perfection and the Happiness of Others — The Meaning of Perfection in the case of Man — In what Sense we have to regard the Happiness of Others as our end — Duties of Perfect and Im- perfect Obligation — That Merit is Possible only as regards the Latter — Three General Remarks on the Characteristics of Duty — That Virtue is not Habit simply, but Free Habit — Exclusion of Duties to God and of Duties to Beings Lower than Man — How there can be Duties to Ourselves — Duties to Ourselves as having an Animal Nature — Negative Duties to Ourselves as Moral Beings — Value of Self -Knowledge — Positive Duties to Ourselves as Moral Beings — Duties to Others, Summed up in Respect or Reverence, and Love — That they are not Duties as Mere Feelings, but as Maxims of Will — Duties of Love or Benevolence — Duties of Respect or Reverence — The Ideal of Friendship, and Philanthropy — Moral Uses of Religion — Criticism of the Above— The Problem of Morality as Conceived by Kant — Antinomy thence arising — Objection to the Stoic Idea of a Pure Self- Determination of Reason — Kant's Attitude towards it — How the Passions can be taken up into the Self-Determination of Reason — Am- biguity in Kant's Doctrine on this Head — Question whether Men are Isolated in their Inner Moral Life— The Social Nature of the Moral Consciousness — Kant's Combination of Egoism and Altruism, and its Defects — That our Duties cannot be Legitimately Divided into Duties to Ourselves and Duties to Others— Casuistry— How it Arises in Kant's Ethics, ... pp. 379.405 CONTENTS. XV BOOK III. THE CEITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. CHAPTER I. KANT'S GENERAL INTRODUCTION. Gradual Development of the Idea of a Critique of Judgment — Its Division into Two Parts — Its Relation to the other Critiques — The Eunetion of Reflective Judgment in Knowledge — Its Relation to Reason — That Judgment in this Sense includes Reason — That the Idea of Design underlies the Process of Judgment — The Judgment of Taste as Based on a Peeling of the Adapta- tion of Objects to our Faculties — General Purport of this Introduction, Pp. 406-419 CHAPTER II. THE CRITIQUE OE AESTHETIC JUDGMENT— THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME. Division of this Critique into Analytic and Dialectic — The Quality of the Judg- ment of Taste — Its Quantity — Its Relation — Comparison of the Moral and Aesthetic Judgments — Eeiz und BUhrung — Beauty and Perfection — The Normal Idea as a basis for the Ideal of Beauty — Modality of the Judg- ment of Taste — Agreement and Difference of the Sublime and the Beauti- ful — That Natural Objects are Beautiful by what they are, Sublime by what they are not, but Suggest — Two Eorms of the Sublime : (1) The Mathematically Sublime ; (2) the Dynamically Sublime— That a Feeling for the Sublime implies Moral Culture — Moral Influence of the Beautiful and the Sublime — The Deduction of Aesthetic Judgments— Social Interest of Beauty — Moral Interest in the Beauties of Nature— The Definition of Artistic Genius— That Art cannot be Taught— That Genius is the Power of expressing Aesthetic Ideas — The Nature of Creative Imagination— The Symbolic in Art— The Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgments— Solution of the Antinomy of Taste— That the Design involved in Beauty is merely Ideal, as is shown by the a priori character of Aesthetic Judgments — The Beauti- ful as Symbolic of Moral Ideas— That the Study of Classic Models takes the place of Method in Art, . . Pp. 420-451 CHAPTER III. CRITICISM OE KANT'S VIEW OF THE FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. Relation of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment to the other Critiques— That i under the Category of Quality, Aesthetic Pleasure breaks down the CONTENTS. Absolute Opposition between Moral and Sensuous Feeling— That its Quantity, in like manner, is Inconsistent with the Division between Sense and Understanding-That the Beautiful implies not only a Harmony of Sense and Understanding, but of both with Reason— That the hense 01 Beauty is a Peeling which Corresponds to the Idea of an Intuitive Under- standing— How the Beautiful is Purposive, but only Subjectively Fur- posive— The Illusion and the Truth in Beauty -The Judgment of Taste as Modified by the Conception of an Object and its Perfection— Defect in Kant's View of the Connexion between the Good and the Beautiful- Criticism of his View of the Modality of the Judgment of Taste-Criticism of his View of the Sublime— Its Contrast with the Beautiful, as Belated to Reason and not to Understanding-That Kant does not Conststently Maintain this Contrast-His View of Genius as the Power of Expressing Aesthetic Ideas— Relation of the Peeling of Beauty in Nature and Art to Morality— That the Aesthetic Consciousness is akin to Religion and Philosophy, . • • Pp. 452-476. CHAPTER IV. THE CRITIQUE OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT : APPLICATION OF THE IDEA OP DESIGN OR PINAL CAUSE TO NATURE. Problem of the Critique of Teleologkal Judgment— Apparent Design arising from the Unity of Space as the Form of External Perception— That External Adaptation presupposes the Previous Determination of an End — Conditions under which we are Forced to Regard a Thing as an End — That they are found Realised in Organic Beings only— Subjective Neces- sity of the Teleological Principle for the Explanation of the Organic — Question whether there is a Final End of Nature — That there is no such End found in Nature itself, nor even in Man as a Natural Being — Relation of Teleology to Theology — The Antinomy of Teleology and its Solution — Four Views as to Final Causes in Nature — The Ideality of Design on the Basis of Casuality or Fatality — The Reality of Design on the Basis of Hylozoism or Theism — That the Opposition of the Possible and the Actual in Theoretical and Practical Reason is due to the Conditions of our Finite Intelligence — How this affects the Application of the Idea of Design — That that Idea is only a Heuristic Principle — Relation of Teleology to Science and to Theology — Scientific Value of the Principle of Design, especially in Tracing the Origin of Species — Limitations of the Mechanical Explanation of the Origin of Species — That there is no Need for a Teleo- logical Principle to Explain the Intelligence itself — Different Ways of Explaining the Connection of Efficient and Final Causes — That the Final End of Nature is not to be Found in the Happiness of Man — That it may he Found in his Moral Culture and Discipline — Limit of Physico-Theology — How far Moral Theology can carry us beyond that Limit — That the Practical Postulate of the Existence of God determines, not his Nature but only his Relation to the World — The Nature of Practical Faith in God, . ... Pp. 477-506. CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. CRITICISM OF THE CRITIQUE OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. Goethe's View of the Critique, of Judgment— That the Strain upon Kant's Dualism is greatest in this Critique— The Mediating Principles intro- duced—That Taste is a Mediating Feeling, which apprehends the Unity of the Noumenal and Phenomenal— How far Kant admits this View of it— Beauty as forefelt Harmony of the World with the Intelligence— Why Kant at first confined this Critique to Aesthetic Judgment, why he after- wards Extended it to Teleological Judgment — Formal Purpose in Perception, with Reference to Understanding and Reason — What Material Purpose would mean — How Kant deals with each of them— The Idea of the World as an Organic System — That Kant makes that Idea only a Principle of Reflexion— That, on his view, we Know Objects only as Mechanically Caused, though we are Forced to Think of Organised Beings under the Idea of Final Cause— Why we need to Use the latter Category— Two Senses of the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature — Kant's Interpretation of that Principle— That it leaves the Adaptation of the Objective World to the Intelligence Accidental — That the Consciousness of Beauty only Implies the Subjective Adaptation of the Idea of the Object ; and that even the Organic does not make the Objective Application of the Idea of Design necessary — Relation of our Intelligence to the Idea of the World as an Organism — Why Kant denies it — That, as Self-Consciousness is an Organic Unity, it is only the Organic that is Perfectly Intelligible — That, in calling Atten- tion to the Relation of Objects to the Unity of Apperception, Kant implicitly Acknowledges the above Principle, and, therefore, the Necessity of an Organic View of the World — Reason why there appears to be greater Difficulty in explaining Organisms which are not Minds — That the Diffi- culty is Removed when we See that all the Categories are Elements in Self-Consciousness — That Science necessarily excludes Final Causes, and hands over the Problem to Philosophy — That the Darwinian Theory post- pones, but does not exclude the Teleological View of Things — Relation of the Scientific to the Philosophical Problem— Question whether the Teleo- logical Problem of Philosophy is Legitimate — Kant's Answer — In what Sense he Admits a Teleology of Nature — That the Moral Law makes us Regard all Nature as a Means to the Life of Man as a Moral Being — Kant's Essay on The Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View — His Doctrine that History is to be Viewed as the Process of the Moral Education of Man— His View of the Growth of Civil Society — How his Idea is to be Used as a Guide to the Study of History — That this Essay involves a Modification of Kant's View of Man as a Social and as a Natural Being, and also a New View of the Relation of Goodness to Happiness — How the Egoism of Natural Passion is made to Subserve Moral Ends — Kant's Ultimate Point in the Reconciliation of the two Tendencies of his Philosophy — His View of the Natural Struggle for Existence as the Necessary Means to the Realisation of Reason — Con- nexion of this Critique with Kant's Treatise on Religion within the Bounds of Pure Reason, ...... Pp. 507-562. CONTENTS. BOOK IV KANT'S TREATISE ON RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF MERE REASON. CHAPTER I. KANT'S VIEW OF THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO NATURAL RELIGION. That Kant introduces God only as necessary to realise the Combination of Happi- ness and Goodness — That thus Religion becomes only an External Comple- ment of Morality — Difficulty of Eeconciling this View with Christianity — The Problem of Original Sin — Kant's View of its Nature— How he accounts for it in Consistency with Freedom — How, consequently, Conversion to Good must be conceived — How Atonement and Justification through Christ are interpreted by Kant — The Triumph of Good by Suffering and Death — Origin and Nature of the Church — That the Idea of the Church can be Piealised only by an Approximation — Question as to the Relation of Justifi- cation and Sanctih'eation — The Gradual Purification of the Creed of the Church from Fetichism — That the Essential Part of the History of Religion is the History of the Christian Church — Difficulties of Church History — Practical Necessity of Basing the Church upon the Christian Revelation — Outlines of a Rational Interpretation of the Christian Mysteries — The True Relation of Natural to Revealed Religion — Moral Dangers of Inverting that Relation — That the Belief in a Conscious Operation of Grace is Superstition — Relation of Ceremonies and Outward Means of Grace to True Religion, Pp. 563-588 CHAPTER II. CRITICISM OF KANT'S VIEW OF THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO NATURAL RELIGION. Import of Kant's Effort to Connect his own View of Religion with Christianity —That the Principles of Kant would logically admit only the Idea of a World-Governor— Kant's Attempt to go beyond that Idea— The Pauline Doctrine of the Solidarity of Men both in their Fall and in their Redemption —That Kant could not Admit it without Qualification— That, nevertheless, he Admits, in a sense, the Doctrine of Original Sin — How he Explains Good and Evil by Reference to Intelligible Acts— That he thus Explains the Doctrines of Imputed Guilt and Imputed Righteousness— What Elements in these Doctrines he Conceives as Fictitious— That he is obliged to Reject the Social and Objective Elements in the Christian Doctrine— Comparison CONTENTS. xix of Kant's View of the Moral Life, with that of the Stoics— That Kant's Divergence from the Stoic View would necessitate a Complete Reconstruc- tion of his own Idea of the Moral End— Connection of Kant's View with the Principle of the Protestant Reformation— That Kant himself suggests how we may Reach a Conception of the Good as Objective ; and therefore, as Involving a Reconciliation of the Natural and the Spiritual — That he also points to a Conception of the Moral Law as Primarily Social — His Doctrine as to the Visible and the Invisible Church — Thattheldeaof a Church is incon- sistent with his Ethical Individualism — That, nevertheless, he Suggests » Conception of the Individual as, in his Moral Life, essentially related to other Individuals, and to God— Kant's Difficulty in Admitting the Objective Mediation of Christianity — Main Defect in his Conception of Religion — How this Defect is Supplied in St. Paul's View of Christianity— How an Approximation to that View may be made on Kantian Principles — Religion as combining the Ideas of Necessity and of Freedom,; . Pp. 589-629 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. THE GENERAL RESULT OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY. That Kant is best Criticised in View of the Development of his Own Thought — How the Form of his Problem was determined by previous Speculation — The Distinction of Phenomena and Noumena as connected with the Op- position of the Conscious Subject to Objects — How the Noumena remain Problematic for Theoretical Reason — How they become Realities for Practical Reason — That in the Idea of the Summum Bonum the terms of Kant's Dualism are first brought together — That his View of Aesthetic Pleasure carries us beyond Dualism — That this Mediating Tendency is still more prominent in his Teleological View of the Organic World, and, most of all, in his Idea of Human History — That it is shown also in his Treatment of the Christian Religion — The Method of Kant — Its Funda- mental Defect — How he himself Teaches us to Correct it — Results of such Correction — That the Transcendental Regress must be Viewed as a Progress towards a more Complete View of Things — That the Three Critiques may be Regarded as Stages in the Development of such a View — That the Germs of the Later German Idealism are to be found in Kant, both as respects its Form and its Matter, .... Pp. 630-646 Index, ... .P. 647. T THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. BOOK I. THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. CHAPTER X. THE IDEAS OF REASON. estimate the value of the Ideas of Reason was the How the solution of the primary object of the Critique. For, as to the a priori j^w™ o£tlie Principles of the Understanding, Kant held that, in the first thl D probiem of c it t * he Dialectic. instance, and for themselves, they needed no deduction ; and that it never would have occurred to us to ask for one, if they had not been carried beyond their proper sphere. As principles of experience, they are vindicated by their fruitfulness, by the continual advance of scientific knowledge which has been made possible by means of them. But there is that in us which leads us to apply them beyond the sphere of experience. " Our faculty of knowledge feels a higher want than merely to spell out phenomena according to their synthetic unity in order to be able to read them as experience." We seek not merely to con- nect phenomena, but to find an ultimate unity beneath all their difference. "We are not content merely to trace back the present phenomena of the world to those that immediately precede them in the chain of causation ; we desire to com- plete the chain and find some absolutely first principle on VOL. II. A THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BOOK i. which it hangs. Finally, we are not satisfied even with the conception of the world as a whole of inter-connected parts, which may be apprehended by the intelligence, unless we can discover also a unity between it and the intelligence that apprehends it. In this way we are haunted by the thought of a unity beneath all the diversity of the knowable world, of a completed whole in which all that diversity is exhausted, and finally of a unity of the intelligence and the intelligible world. Hence, we are apt to despise the piece-work of empirical science in which every answer only leads to a new question, and to grasp at any theory which seems to throw light on the ultimate reality which is the final answer to all inquiry ; and, failing such a theory, we are constantly tempted to use the principles, which have proved so effective in extending our knowledge in the world of experience, — as keys to the ultimate secret. Yet, when we do attempt thus to use them, we find that they sud- denly fail us, and give rise to confusion and contradiction : and, this confusion and contradiction cannot but reflect back a doubt upon the knowledge which we have acquired by means of these principles, and even upon the principles themselves. For, "if we cannot distinguish whether certain questions are within our horizon or not, we are never sure of the claims or the possessions of our intelligence." 1 Different To solve such difficulties and remove such doubts there was aspects of the SSi«ctfc 0fthe on ty one ex P e dient, viz., that of discovering some still deeper principle, which should at once vindicate and limit the principles of pure understanding's — vindicate them within the sphere in which they are properly applicable, and at the same time, show where that sphere terminates. This is what has already been done in the Analytic. But the result is only the first step towards the solution of our problem. For we have now to ask what is the explanation of those " obstinate questionings," which carry us beyond the sensible objects to which the valid application of the principles of pure understanding is limited. 1 A. 238 ; B. 297. CHAP. x. THE IDEAS OE BEASON. 3 Why are we tempted to use these principles beyond their proper sphere ? Whence comes the very suggestion of the existence of objects beyond that sphere ? And, if such objects exist, and if by the Analytic we are prohibited from determining them by the principles of the understanding, have we any other means of doing so ? Finally, if these objects are utterly beyond the reach of our faculty of knowledge, what is the function performed by the Ideas of them in relation to our knowledge ? Are we to sup- pose that these Ideas are mere phantoms of reason which lure us away from the true path of knowledge, or are they guiding principles which have a useful office to discharge in our intel- lectual life, and which mislead us only when that office is mis- conceived ? It is in the attempt to answer these questions that the The limitation L - 1 of experience originality of the Dialectic consists. The doctrine of the with tte Cted limitation of knowledge to experience is a common-place of that ihieh is -r> • beyond the philosophical Positivism, which is as old as Bacon and, indeed, iwt- much older. But, as no one till Kant clearly asked the question, " What is experience ? " so no one before him at- tempted to show what limits experience, or whence comes the consciousness of the limitation. For, it is one thing to be limited, and another to be conscious of limitation ; and the latter implies a consciousness of something beyond the limit, if it be only the idea of the subject for which the object so limited exists. The intelligence can limit its knowledge to an experience which is mediated by sense, only in so far as it derives from itself the thought of an object or objects to which the principles of its knowledge will not apply. Now, the Analytic has already prepared us to recognise '£*^™gg how such Ideas may arise, and, indeed, how they must arise, ^position of the analytic to in relation to experience. For it has shown us that the t^synttotic categories and principles upon which experience and science are based, are principles for the determination of the manifold of sense in relation to the unity of the conscious self ; but that the pure consciousness of self is negatively related to the 4 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BOOK i. objects which it thus determines. In its pure analytic unity, it is opposed to the merely synthetic unity of experience. Hence, if it is capable of finding or producing the unity of the objective world by determining the data of sense in relation to itself; if, indeed, this is the only way in which it can come to the consciousness of itself; still, on the other hand, it does not find in the objective world so determined the pure correlate of its own unity. But this very contrast must carry it beyond the objective world, and awake in it the idea of an object which does correspond to the unity of the intelligence for which it is. And thus we can understand why the mind should be haunted by the idea of an object which is at once more completely de- termined, and more simple, than the objects of experience as we actually find them. CTer*'recOTs If Kant had proceeded in this way, he would have shown thread to more clearly the connexion of the Analytic and the Dialectic, formal Logic. J though he might have been somewhat embarrassed by the difficulty of deriving the three Ideas of Reason directly from the analytic judgment of self-consciousness. As it is, he ap- parently makes things easier for himself, by returning to the " guiding thread " of formal Logic, which he had used in the Critique. For Logic speaks not only of apprehension and judgment, but also of a process and a faculty which we have not yet considered, the process of reasoning and the faculty of Reason. Accordingly, we have now to inquire whether this faculty is merely logical and formal, or whether it is not also the source of certain a priori conceptions of objects. For, as in the case of the understanding, it is possible that the formal use of reason may guide us to the discovery of its real use. - ta b the y diT™ Now, reasoning is the process of mediate inference, i.e., thought by inference through a middle term. In a syllogism, there is, principles. ^ n f ' first, a general rule apprehended by the understanding; secondly, the subsumption of a conception under the condition of this rule by judgment ; and lastly, — what is the peculiar work of reason, — the determination of this conception by the chap. x. THE IDEAS OE REASON. 5 predicate of the rule. In other words, a syllogism is a judg- ment made by means of the subscription of its condition (the middle term) under a rule. The problem of reason in its logical use is always to connect a given predicate with a given subject, and the major of the syllogism supplies the rule by which this connexion may be made. Or, starting from the conception of a subject, reason seeks to find some more general conception by means of which it may be brought under a rule ; nor is its work completely finished, till it finds the most general condition under which such determination is possible. " The proposition ' Caius is mortal,' might be got by us out of experi- ence, by means of the understanding. But, as a rational being, I seek for a conception containing the condition under which the predicate is connected with the subject, and this I find in the conception of man. Then, having subsumed this condition, taken in all its extent, under the rule (All men are mortal), I determine the subject (Caius) accordingly." 1 The major pro- position or rule may, of course,. be subjected to the same process, and this may be repeated again and again in a series of prosyllo- gisms, till we arrive at the first absolute and sufficient condition for the application of the predicate to the subject. Now this is just saying, that the aim of reason is to find a principle by which every synthesis in our knowledge may be explained, and that it can only be satisfied with a first principle. Eeason is, therefore, the faculty of principles, or the faculty that gives unity to knowledge by means of principles. And if it has any real use, if there are any a priori conceptions of objects in- volved in the very nature of reason, we may expect that these conceptions will furnish the first principles of all our know- ledge. 2 For the purposes of formal Logic, any general proposition, The need of inasmuch as it can be made the major of a syllogism, may serve p ™ nci i> les - as a principle. But, in the narrower and proper sense of the word, we can give the name of principle only to a proposition, which » 1 A. 322 ; B. 378. 2 A. 299 seq. ; B. 355 seq. 6 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE -REASON. BOOK T ' forms an absolute beginning for knowledge, i.e., to a proposition which does not depend on any other proposition, and on which all other propositions depend. Now, no empirical generalisation can have this character; for in no empirical generalisation is the subject necessarily, and therefore immediately, connected with the predicate. It is always a fair question to ask, why a particular predicate is empirically connected with a subject, though not contained in it ; and the answer to such a question must be given in a series of prosyllogisms by which the cause of the connexion is assigned, and the cause of that cause ad infinitum. Besides, all such propositions relating to matters of fact presuppose what we have hitherto called the a priori principles of the understanding, and, for that reason, cannot themselves be regarded as principles. Stho'itidOT™ ^an we tnen regard even the principles of the understanding notV*?"" 1 as principles of knowledge in this highest sense ? J This also principles. . .-i-1-i-.-ii. ■ is impossible, if we have rightly denned their nature m the Analytic. For the principles of the understanding are not the pure categories, which in themselves have no objective meaning. It is only when we subsume the pure forms of perception under them, that the categories become principles of a priori synthesis — conditions of possible experience. As, then, it is only in re- lation to a given matter that the understanding is synthetic, so its principles cannot be regarded as first principles of syn- thesis, or absolute starting-points for knowledge. Its synthesis always has a presupposition. When, e.g., we say " Everything that happens has a cause," the conception of what happens does not in itself involve the conception of a cause ; but the principle of causality shows how we may attain a definite empirical ap- prehension of that which happens, i.e., by considering it as an effect. But the necessity of a conception, with a view to em- pirical knowledge is a different thing from the immediate necessity of a principle, which rests entirely upon itself. 1 In German, Kant is able to use the two words Principien and Grundscitze to distinguish principles of reason and understanding. f!HAP - x - THE IDEAS OE REASON. 7 It appears then that what is necessary to constitute a first Possibility of a J practical first principle is, that it should be a synthetical proposition based on P rinci P le - a pure conception. Of the meaning and use of such a principle, we may find an illustration in the codification of the Law. For the aim of codification is to simplify legislation, and legislation can be simplified only by reducing the endless multiplicity of civil statutes to a unity of principle. Now, this is quite a pos- sible thing, since the laws of civil society are in their idea only the limitation of the freedom of each member of the society to conditions which make it consistent with the freedom of all the other members. These laws, therefore, relate to that which is essentially the product of our own activity. In the region of practice, human reason has true causality, and ideas are efficient causes of existences in harmony with them. Here, therefore, truth is to be discovered, not by looking to what is, but to what might to be. " The Platonic Eepublic has become proverbial as an example of an idle dream of perfection ; and Erucker especi- ally finds a peculiar absurdity in the Platonic assertion that no prince could rule well if he did not guide himself by ideas. . . But a constitution of the greatest possible human freedom, a constitution the laws of which are only the conditions under which the freedom, of each can subsist consistently with the freedom of all, (I do not say a constitution on the greatest happiness principle, for that would at once follow as the necessary result of the other,) is at least a necessary idea of reason ; and it must always be present to the true legislator, not only in the first sketch of his constitution, but in all the particular laws of his state. In considering such an idea, we must, in the first instance, abstract from all present hindrances to its realisation, — hindrances which may, perhaps, spring, not so much from the inevitable limits of humanity, as from the neglect of true ideas in legislation. For nothing can be more harmful and un- worthy of a philosopher, than the vulgar spirit of deference to so-called adverse experience, when, in truth, this experience vsjould never have existed, if at the proper time the regula- 8 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BOOK u tions of civil society, had been modelled upon the ideas of reason. „ if the idea of "1 Difficulty of But, while we may reasonably seek in our reason for ideas the idea of ., , •, ■ offaSS Ie which shall form objective principles of morality and law, ro a, quite another thing to seek there for principles of knowledge, i.e., for principles which have their origin purely in the mind, and yet enable us to know objects not produced by the mind. Such an attempt seems, indeed, to carry absurdity on the face of it. How by means of pure thought are we to know things given independently of thought? The knowledge which we get from the pure understanding is not analogous to this ; for, though its principles of synthesis precede experience, they are justified not from themselves, but as the grounds of the possibility of experience. Here, however, what is required is a knowledge of objects by a synthesis of pure thought, which is neither derived from experience nor presupposed in it, and, indeed, which neither is, nor can be, realised in ex- perience. First prlnei- However this question mav be answered, (and it is the pies are not reiSed to° ly object of the Dialectic to answer it,) we can now lay down percep ion. characters which must belong to the Ideas of Eeason ; we can see what is the kind of knowledge to which reason points, and which is needed to satisfy it. In the first place, it is a know- ledge which is related to the knowledge which we get through the understanding, in somewhat the same way as the principles of the understanding are related to the manifold of sense. For, just as the understanding gives unity to the perceptions by bringing them under its rules, so reason seeks to give unity to the rules of the understanding by bringing them under prin- ciples. It seeks, in short, to give complete unity and universality to the work of the understanding. Hence, it does not relate itself immediately to the perceptions of sense. It pre- supposes the work of the understanding, and would not be possible apart from that work ; but it sets before the under- 1 A. 316 ; B. 372. CHAP. x. THE IDEAS OF REASON. 9 standing an ideal of completeness and unity which the understanding itself could never suggest. 1 In the second place, the unity and universality to which They must be J J Ideas of the reason points is nothing less than the Unconditioned. For uuco " ditioned ' reason goes back by prosyllogisms from condition to condition, and can never find rest in anything but an absolute first prin- ciple, or a condition which has itself no previous condition. Thus, even in its logical use, reason seeks for the unconditioned to complete and give unity to its knowledge of the conditioned. And if in its transcendental use, it is the source of certain peculiar conceptions, which have objective value, these concep- tions must be Ideas of the Unconditioned. In other words, if we assert that reason supplies out of itself a knowledge of the things which are its objects, we mean simply that, wherever the conditioned is given, there reason itself supplies the whole series of its conditions. And this is equivalent to saying that reason is the source of a consciousness of an unconditioned principle for all conditioned existence presented to us in experience. Now, this step from conditioned to unconditioned implies a and, therefore, involve a pure a priori synthesis. For though, from the conception of the synthesis of *■ r 1/ o ? r p Ure thought. conditioned, we may by analysis derive the conception of a condition, we cannot derive it from the conception of the unconditioned, except by synthesis. And this synthesis is transcendent, i.e., it is a synthesis the object of which cannot be represented as a phenomenon, or verified in sensuous experience. For experience by its very nature is of the con- ditioned ; it is a knowledge of objects through principles which determine phenomena only in relation to each other, i.e., as con- ditioned by each other. The objects of reason are, therefore, objects of pure thought. Now, what are the Ideas of reason, i.e., what are the The three Ideas. different forms in which this idea of the unconditioned pre- sents itself to us 1 Kant answers that they must correspond 1 A. 306 ; B. 363. 10 THE CRITIQUE OE PURE REASON. BOOK i. to different forms of syllogism, the categorical, the hypotheti- cal, and the disjunctive. Now, if we follow the regressive movement of reason according to these three forms, we are led by it to three forms of the unconditioned : " the unconditioned of the categorical synthesis in a subject ; the unconditioned of the hypothetical synthesis of the members of a series ; and the unconditioned of the disjunctive synthesis of parts in a, syste- matic whole." 1 In other words, the series of prosyllogisms ends in the idea of a subject, which is no longer a predicate ; in the idea of a presupposition, which has itself no presupposi- tion ; and in the idea of an aggregate of the members of a division, in which no new member is required to complete the extension of the conception. Looking, therefore, to the move- ment of reason toward these three goals of thought, we see that there are three ideas of the unconditioned which are set before reason by its very nature, if not as determinate objects, yet at least as problems which it must seek to solve. And thus we are driven by reason to ask, whether there really are unconditioned objects, determined in these three ways ; or whether our tendency to seek such unconditioned objects has its use merely " in giving such direction to the understanding as may enable it at once to extend its researches to the utmost, and maintain the greatest unity and harmony with itself." Even if we have here a mere set of insoluble problems, mere questions without possible answers, the questions are, at least, not arbi- trary, but forced on us by the natural exercise of our rational powers. And, therefore, the decision that they are insoluble, and that these ideas have no objective value, — if that should be the decision to which we are led, — will only enable us to see more clearly their value as ideals, or guiding principles of science. ™QudT c " The three Ideas of reason correspond to the three most metaphyseal general relations of our thoughts or ideas to existence. All our Ideas refer, on the one hand, to a subject, and, on the 1 A. 323 ; B. 379. *i;u.'n <'!>;. chap. x. THE IDEAS OF SEASON. 1 1 other hand, to objects; and these objects again may be re- garded in two points of view, either as phenomena or as things in themselves. If, then, the three orders of syllogism have a re- ference to the three forms of the unconditioned which are implied ■ in all knowledge, it is obvious that they must bring us (l)toan absolute subject, as the unity presupposed in all thought, (2) to an absolute unity and complete synthesis of all the conditions of phenomena, and (3) to an absolute unity of the conditions of all objects of thought whatsoever. But the thinking being, regarded as the absolute or unconditioned subject, is the object of the science of Rational Psychology ; the complete unity of all phenomena, or things in space and time, is the object of the science of Eational Cosmology ; and the absolute reality, the ens entium, or reality that includes and transcends all other realities, is the object of the science of Eational Theology. If, therefore, reason is able to solve all the problems which it suggests, it will enable us to establish all these sciences on a firm basis ; or, if not, to find the key to the difficulties which render such sciences impossible. In an earlier chapter, I have shown how we are to regard Transition from Format the transition of Kant from the old Loffic to the new ; how he *° rrmucm- ° J dental Logic. was led to seek for conceptions corresponding to the forms of judgment, and ideas corresponding to the forms of syllogism. 1 In Kant's view, the old Logic had explained the process of thought in so far . as it has to deal with a content already taken into the mind and united with it, a content, therefore, which it could analyse and recombine without going beyond itself; just as in the judgment of self-consciousness, " I am I," the mind might be said to analyse itself into a subject and an object, and again to recombine the elements so separated. In thus dealing with a content conceived to be already taken into the mind and united with the consciousness of itself, all the mind could do was to bring the whole conception, as a subject, under a predicate got by analysis from itself; and if any i ' See above, Vol. 1. pp. 221 seq., 324 seq. 12 THE CBITIQUB OE PURE REASON. BO0K L mediation or proof were required for such a judgment, it could be attained only by a further analysis, which should connect the predicate with the subject through a more general concep- tion. Thus in analytic thought, all that syllogism could do was to bring the identity of a conception with itself to its ultimate terms. The new Logic, on the other hand, deals with synthesis, in which the mind goes beyond itself either to take in a content which has not been united with itself before, or to combine a new content with that which has been already so united. But how can a synthesis with the mind, of that which is not involved in its pure consciousness of itself, be achieved ? Or how, even supposing a content already appro- priated by the mind, can a new content be synthetically united with it ? Evidently in both cases, — in order to unite a content with itself and to unite a new content with that which has already been so united, — the mind must derive from itself the necessary connecting conceptions. It must derive from its own identity the predicates under which it brings the new content it would appropriate. Such predication, however, in which a pure conception derived from the mind is applied to a perception as something given, seems always to want media- tion. In other words, the mind, conscious of the difference between the matter which it has appropriated and the con- ception it has applied to the matter, looks for some further conception to explain its union with its present object. Hence, a syllogistic regress becomes necessary. We seek for a middle term to connect thought with its object, and this can be found only in the conception of an object which is already united with thought. But in relation to such an object the same problem reappears again and again ad infinitum. ^■es 8 fi of te We can now ' b y aid of the A ^¥ic> give more definiteness to these conceptions. For we have seen that the predicate which the understanding must use to bring perception into re- lation to itself, must be the conception of an object in which the manifold of perception is combined ; and that it is only in experience. CHAP. x. THE IDEAS OF REASON. 13 relation to, and in distinction from, an object, (or rather a world of objects,) so constituted, that the ego can be conscious of itself. But, if it is only as combined under conceptions that perceptions form part of our experience, it follows that experi- ence is a connected consciousness in which each element is mediated for us by the others. Thus an object of experience is an object for us, not, so to speak, in its own right, but only by reason of the place it holds in the context of ex- perience, in which it is connected with all other objects by universal laws. But this means that an object of experience can be determined as an object only in reference to another object, which again is so determined in relation to another object, and so on ad infinitum. Once admit, therefore, that it is the connexion in which objects stand with each other in experience which determines them as objects and so enables us to combine them with self-consciousness, and every object refers us to another for its warrant ; for we have, in order to determine it as object for the self, to presuppose another object already so determined, and so on ad infinitum. The result, therefore, is that the mind in determining objects is involved in a regress which cannot find an end, and a series of middle terms, connecting object with object ad infinitum, takes the place of the one middle term which is wanted to connect the object with the mind itself. It may now be seen how Kant comes to regard the syllo- ™idSTts gistic process as pointing to a movement of reason, which in™oumenon, carries us beyond the judgments of experience to a principle upon which they all rest. As the analytic judgment of thought requires syllogism to make it " complete," by basing it on a middle term derived from a further analysis, which discovers the most general conception that can be used to connect the predicate with the subject ; so the synthetic judgment of ex- perience, by which an object is determined for us in relation to other objects, requires an Idea to supply the final mediation, by which the object may be fixed once for all as an object in rela- 14 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B00K L tion to the mind that knows it, without being referred back to any other object ; by which, in short, it may be determined as an object without conditions. But this seems to involve a con- tradiction ; for it was by bringing them under such conditions that the data of sense were referred to objects at all. What is wanted, therefore, is that the ego itself should come out of its position, as a mere subject which connects given perceptions with each other, and so determines them as objective ; i.e., that it should itself give rise to an object with which all the others may be connected. The idea of an intuitive understanding, an understanding which in the consciousness of itself includes the consciousness of its object, or which produces the object by the same act of thought by which it is conscious of itself, appears, therefore, as the • necessary terminus or goal, toward which all our knowledge points ; or, as the only kind of consciousness in which we could find a final satisfaction of the questions of our intelligence. Hence, we do not wonder to find the conception of such an understanding suggesting itself to Kant as an ideal of knowledge ; though, according to his view, it is an ideal from which we are eternally divided by the sensuous conditions under which alone knowledge is possible to us. The impossi- j a the preceding chapter, I attempted to explain how it is that theneci'sSty Kant is always suspended at this point between the necessity thenouSoo. of thinking a unity of the mind with its object (such as is ex- pressed in the phrase " intuitive understanding") as the ideal of knowledge, and the equal necessity of denying that our know- ledge can ever be brought into correspondence with that ideal. For it is the peculiar characteristic of our intelligence that in itself it is purely analytic, and that, therefore, it can be synthetic only in relation to a given matter. Kant, indeed, had already grasped a principle that might have carried him beyond this point of view, when he saw that even the analytic judgment of self-consciousness presupposes the synthetic judg- ment, by which the supposed foreign matter is brought together under the principles of pure understanding so as to chap. x. THE IDEAS OF REASON. 15 produce the consciousness of an objective world. For, if so, then the foreign matter, as well as the principles under which it is brought, must be regarded as necessarily related to self- consciousness. And the reflexion which _ reveals to us this necessary relation, must lead to a further determination of objects as not merely objects for consciousness, but objects in which there is nothing foreign to consciousness. Thus, just as science corrects our first view of phenomena as mere un- connected appearances in space and time, by the conception of the necessary relations which bind them together as objects determined by the analogies of experience, so Kant's criticism would teach us further to correct our view of them as necessar- ily connected objects, by showing that they can- have such a connexion only in relation to a subject, which in all its consciousness of them is yet in perfect unity of thought with itself. Kant, however, as he falls back on the analytic unity of thought with itself in opposition to its synthetic determination of a given matter, can regard this further unity of experience with the subject of it only as an ideal, which is implied in experience, but which in experience there is no means of verifying. But this ideal, as we have seen, presented itself to Kant in induction of 7 ' r the three ideas three forms, which he deduced 1 from the forms of syllogism, o™ S yiio^ ™ s in the same way in which he had deduced the categories from the forms of judgment. The plausibleness, and at the same time the illusiveness, of this process in the latter case has been already discussed, and the same criticism applies also to Kant's treatment of the ideas of reason. It was because formal Logic, though professedly dealing with a process of mere analysis, yet contained in itself a shadow or residuum of the real synthetic process of knowledge, that the categories could be supposed to be derived from it. Hence Kant could ' deduce ' the a priori conceptions from the logical account of judgment, without seeming to desert the analytic idea of thought, while yet 'This, of coarse, refers to the metaphysical, not the transcendental deduction. 1 6 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BOOK I. he got the advantage of the suggestion of synthesis. For this advantage, however, he had to pay dearly. If it spared him the difficult task of developing the categories out of the unity of the understanding, it at the same time hid from him the necessity of fundamentally altering his view of thought as essentially analytical. Now, just as Kant did not ask how, on the analytic idea of thought, judgment could exist at all, but simply took it as existing, and used it to discover the categories ; so he does not ask how, on the analy- tic idea of thought, we can go on from judgment to syllo- gism, but simply takes the syllogism for granted, and examines its various forms in order to get from them a guiding-thread to the ideas of reason. Thus he takes the three ideas — of the noumenal subject, the noumenal object, and of the noumenal unity of all being — as respectively derived from the categorical, the hypothetical, and the disjunctive syllogism. We find, how- ever, that he has to do considerable violence to the different syllogistic forms in order to connect each of them with one of the metaphysical sciences ; for there is nothing in these forms which would lead us to' expect that the ideas derived from them should have such a restricted application. The ostensible deduction, therefore, rather hides than reveals the real process by which Kant reaches the different ideas. f b n ettowly te I fc is » however, possible to attain a truer view of the real thl°dea e sof nfr movement of thought, which is concealed under this artificial reason with a fu^m U ^ e °^ ^ogic, if we consider how these ideas present themselves in the effort of the mind to find ultimate principles by which the judgments of experience may be mediated. For, in Kant's view, it is the peculiar and characteristic work of reason to seek for an idea which may put an end to the continual regress of empirical thought from one phenomenon to another. In other words, it is the essential aim of reason to fill up the gulf, which is still left between the subject and the predicate in the judgment of experience, and so, in combining each with the other, to combine both with the thought for which they are. And CHAP. x. THE IDEAS OF REASON. 17 on Kant's own showing, if thought could overcome, or recon- cile, the differences between the elements which it combines in the object, it would at the same time overcome, or recon- cile, the difference between itself and its object. Judgment and syllogism thus represent respectively the differentiating and the integrating movements of thought, the movement by which it goes out of its unity to that which is other than itself, and the movement by which it returns to itself again, enriched by the process through which it has gone. Now, if we n»e imperfect syllogisms of adopt this point of view, we may regard pure self-consciousness n^ 8 c ™feif OU6 " as in itself a syllogism ; for it involves at once the expression, tS^S^S and the reconciliation, of a difference. Here, however, the two ° Je ° " premises are, as it were, merged in the conclusion, because the moment of differentiation immediately passes into the moment of integration. The subject and the object self are distinguished only to be immediately identified. Hence, Kant generally regards self-consciousness, not as a syllogism, but rather as the simplest of analytic judgments, the "analytic unity of apperception." On the other hand, the objective consciousness may also be regarded as a syllogism, seeing that in it the endless difference of phenomena in space and time is brought back into the unity of one world. This syllogism, however, has the opposite fault to that exemplified in the syllogism of self-consciousness ; for in it the two premises are so widely separated that it is impossible to unite them perfectly in the conclusion, and the effort to attain such a unity gives rise to an infinite series of prosyllogisms. For here the first premise must be regarded as expressing the difference of objects from each other, and from the one subject for which they are, while the second premise expresses their essential relation to each other and to that subject, and, therefore, their unity as elements in one world. But, in Kant's view, this unity is never realised so completely as to overcome the dualism between the mind and its object. Hence, we may fairly put the matter thus : self- consciousness is not a true syllogism, because in it the terms of VOL. II. B 18 THE CRITIQUE OE PURE REASON. Boun - *• the conclusion are never so widely separated as to need a middle term ; while the objective consciousness is not a true syllogism, because in it they are so widely separated that no principle can be found which will unite them. beunitedtaT But this wa 7 of statin 8' tlie case immediately receives a SSSJSfto partial correction when we observe that these two imperfect BMaof God? " syllogisms are necessarily connected together. Self-conscious- ness is possible only as a return to self through the con- sciousness of the object, or, in Kant's words, it is the mind's consciousness of the unity of its own action in determining its objects; and the consciousness of the objective world is possible only in relation to the unity of apperception, i.e., to a unity which can become conscious of itself. May we not, then, regard these opposite imperfections of what we may call the subjective and the objective syllogisms as due to the abstraction which separates them from each other ? May it not be just because he seeks to determine the subject in abstraction from the object that Kant is forced to conceive the unity of self-consciousness as purely analytic? And may it not be just hecause he abstracts from the subject in con- sidering the relations of objects, that he is obliged to regard objective consciousness as merely synthetic, i.e., as externally uniting objects which in spite of their relation still remain external to each other ? If it be so, then will not the correc- tion of this abstraction, and the restoration of the unity of thought which it destroys, enable us to rise to a truer view of the movement of thought as neither purely analytic nor purely synthetic, but both at once ? And will it not thus enable us to see that that movement corresponds to the true idea of syllogism, i.e., as a rational evolution of thought, wherein an original unity manifests itself in difference and through difference returns to itself again ? Finally, does not such a movement of differentiation and integration, which Kant prac- tically admits, correspond to that very "intuitive understanding," to which he so often refers, but which he as often rejects ? CHAP. x. T HE n) EA g F REASON". 1 9 Now, without attempting directly to answer such questions, ^^ th we may observe that the three Ideas of reason which Kant ^k^T 8 sets before us correspond closely to the three syllogisms of anJcomSfogy , . . , be removed in which we have spoken. In fact, Kant's criticism of Rational .g£«° n £. Psychology and Rational Cosmology exactly corresponds to the views above stated as to the subjective and objective syllo- gisms ; while his discussion of Rational Theology shows clearly what it was that hindered him from solving the problem in the manner just indicated. In his discussion of Rational Psychology, what he shows is that the judgment of self-con- sciousness does not determine the subject as a thing in itself. Why ? Because in it the subject-self is never given by itself, but always determined in relation to the object-self and to other objects given in sense. If, therefore, we take away all refer- ence to objects, we can say nothing of the subject ; while, if we retain such reference, we are not speaking of the pure subject in itself, and, therefore, not of the real or absolute subject. Either, therefore, we turn an abstraction into a reality, or, if we take the concrete reality, we find that we are dealing not with a thing in itself, but simply with a phenomenon. The subject in itself collapses into an identity of which nothing can be said ; or, we can define it only as an activity which attaches predicates to other objects, remaining itself undetermined. On the other hand, in dealing with Rational Cosmology, Kant has to ( make the opposite criticism. The external world as an object is not a res completa, or real being which can stand by itself and find its complete determination in itself. Take it in itself, and it turns into an endless chain of necessarily related phenomena, which is nowhere attached to any fixed point, and in which each link finds its determination in some- thing beyond, and that again in something beyond and so on ad infinitum. But this means that, when we take the external world as a thing in itself, the conception of it breaks clown in contradiction. We need not, however, wonder that " phenomena in their existence as phenomena should be as Kant answers in the 20 THE CRITIQUE OF PUKE REASON. BOOKX good as nothing at all, i.e., that they should be self-con- tradictory, and that, therefore, the presupposition of their existence should carry with it contradictory consequences " ; for this means only that objects, conceived in abstraction from the subject for which alone they are, come into contradic- tion with themselves ; since in this abstraction we are forced to attribute to them at once independent existence and properties which are inconsistent with such existence. The solution of the antinomy thus arising is to be found simply in treating these objects as phenomena, and so correcting the error into which we were necessarily led by the abstract point of view from which we had formerly regarded them. Now, the result of this double reflexion upon the imperfec- tion of the subjective and of the objective consciousness, taken separately, might be expected to be the assertion of their essential unity. For, if we cannot find any ultimate reality — i.e., any reality that does not imply a relation to something else, either in the subject without the object or in the object without the subject — where should we look for it except in the unity which embraces both ? And if Rational Theology is the science that deals with this unity, is it not from it alone that we must expect to get the ultimate truth of things ? Has not Kant's exposition of the imperfect, because abstract, character of Rational Psychology and Rational : Cosmology just been preparing us for such a conclusion ? So at first we might expect. But at this point we find that Kant turns his weapons, and changes the direction of his criticism. While in the two former cases he had shown that the ultimate truth cannot be reached, because it would imply the separation of object and subject from each other in spite of their necessary relativity; here he argues that it- cannot be attained, because it would imply the union of sub- ject and object with each other in spite of their essential difference. This double aspect of the criticism of Kant inevitably forces us to raise the question whether the argu- CHAP. x. THE IDEAS OF EEASON. 21 ment, by which the Paralogisms of Eational Psychology are explained and the Antinomies of Eational Cosmology are solved, does not cut away the ground from the reasonings by which the Ideal of Pure Eeason is proved to be unreal or unknowable. If it is maintained that the knowledge of the ego in itself and the knowledge of the object in itself are each impossible, because we know them only in relation to each other, can it be said that- we must reject the knowledge of both in their unity, because we can know them only in distinction from each other ? Now, without anticipating the special points to be discussed ISeSiis in the sequel, we may remark that the possibility of the Sam!" 1 negative answer to this question given by Kant in his criticism of Eational Theology, rests upon the opposition of perception and conception which is retained to the last in the Analytic. For, though the Transcendental Deduction is specially intended to show the necessary unity of perception and conception with a view to knowledge, it still falls short of a proof that they are in themselves essentially related. The object perceived is, indeed, represented as necessarily in harmony with the unity of the subject, and the subject as self-conscious only in relation to the object ; yet, as it is by abstraction of the subjective process from its result that the consciousness of the self is conceived to arise, so the consciousness of self is not, and cannot be, regarded as including or transcending the consciousness of the object, or the consciousness of the object as an element in the consciousness of self. Hence, the abstraction which opposes subject and object finally gains the victory over the idea of their relativity ; and, instead of advancing* *,to a synthesis of the consciousness of the' self and the consciousness of the object in the consciousness of God, Kant falls back upon a dualism, which, opposing the two former to each other, empties the latter of all its meaning. £ ^^ o{ Before leaving the general discussion of the Ideas of ^Jmtf Eeason, it is desirable to refer to a passage in which Kant syllogism. BOOK I. 22 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. recognises that the three syllogisms or Ideas of reason form a unity, or make up one great syllogism ; though, as has been already indicated, he fails to draw the inference that there is a higher process of thought, in which analysis and synthesis must be taken up as moments. " Finally," he declares, " we have to observe that there is a certain manifest connexion and unity of the transcendental ideas, and that pure reason by means of them brings all its knowledge into a system. To advance from the knowledge of the self (or the soul) to the knowledge of the world, and by means of the latter to the knowledge of God, is so natural a progress that it is comparable to the logical movement of reason from premises to conclusion. Whether there is here in reality a secret relation- ship of the same kind as that between the logical and the transcendental procedure is one of the questions, the answer to which we must expect in the sequel of this inquiry." 1 In the note introduced in the second edition, the syllogism appears to take another order. " Metaphysic," he says, "has for the proper end of its inquiries only three ideas: — God, Freedom, and Immortality; so that the second idea united with the first must lead to the third as a necessary conclusion." The difference, however, of the order of the Ideas in this passage from that of the Critique is immediately explained as due to the special character of the latter. "In a systematic development of these ideas this order would be the fittest as being the synthetic order, but in the critical treatment of them which must precede this, the analytic order will be better adapted to the end in view ; since thus we advance from that which experience immediately lays to our hand, from the knowledge of the soul, to the knowledge of the world, and then lastly to the knowledge of God." In following this order, Kant is ' really moving from the abstract to the concrete, and thus building up experience out of its elements : or rather, he is recombining the elements which as conceived in their abstraction are self-contradictory, 1 A. 337 ; B. 394. chap. x. THE Ir)EAS 0F REAS0N . 23 and which, therefore, force us in the end to conceive them as elements in a unity. The syllogism out of which the unity of knowledge is generated is, therefore, the recognition that the unity of the consciousness of self as referred to itself breaks down and, therefore, refers us to its opposite, the consciousness of the world ; and that that in turn, as referred to itself, gives rise to a contradiction which forces us to refer it to the self; and finally, that this double reflexion forces us back upon an idea of the two as both essential elements in the consciousness of God. In reality, however, the so-called synthetic syllogism must Kant ' s two , J ° forms oJ this also proceed from abstract to concrete ; for, if it starts with the SbSPoM idea of God, it must take Him not as the unity in which the abstract opposition of the ego and the world is overcome, but as the mere universal unity of thought which before was characterised as the ego ; next it must pass beyond this simple unity to the world, which, however, cannot be conceived as a res completa except in so far as it rises to consciousness of itself in man, or in so far as its process is conceived as a genesis of such a self-consciousness. We have here, there- fore, really the same process of reason as in the so-called analytic syllogism, a result which is concealed from Kant because he takes God as an external (auss&rwdtlich) Being, and not as the unity to which thought returns through the negation of the independence of the ego and the world. If we are to distinguish the two processes, all the difference will be that in the latter we shall be showing that the unity, to which, according to the former, all things return, cannot be conceived except as differentiating itself. That God cannot be a substance but only a living subject, is shown only when we have reproduced the finite world and the finite spirit out of the unity to which, ac- cording to the first process, we were obliged to carry them back. This line of reflexion, however, takes us much beyond Kant, and it is only by way of illustrating Kant's double syllogism of Beason, that if is necessary to refer to it here. CHAPTER XI. RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS PARALOGISMS. Theideaofthe fllHE previous chapter has already shown the position which the Idea of the soul or thinking subject has in relation to the other Ideas ; but we must now follow Kant in his more definite treatment of it, and in his criticism of the Rational ^ Psychology which sought to make it an object of knowledge. "We must, in other words, inquire what light the transcendental method casts upon the attempts made by metaphysicians to determine the nature of the thinking subject as a thing in itself. ^rfes^liSot Transcendental reflexion led us to recognise that the objec- it. ' tive world is essentially an object for a thinking subject. For we know an objective world, only as we combine the data of sense by means of the categories in relation to the self. In the consciousness of this pure unity for which all objects are, we have taken a step beyond experience, though not into a transcendent region of things in themselves, but only into the transcendental consideration of the ultimate condition that makes experience possible. Hence, we are no longer dealing with an object to which we can apply the principles that enable us to explain and connect objects of experience. For the relation of objects to each other, which is mediated by the self, cannot be taken as analogous to the relation of objects to the self. This becomes still more obvious when we consider ■CHAP. XI. RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 2 5 that what we have in the former case is not properly a relation of objects already given as such, but a relation of the data of sense through which they become* determined as objects. If, therefore, we seek to determine the self which is the subject of knowledge, we must recognise that we are going beyond ex- perience, and dealing with something which, though implied in the objects of experience, cannot be related to them as they are to each other, or determined as an object in the same way in which they are determined — through principles which bring their manifold to a unity. To attempt in that way to determine the self would involve an obvious circle. It would put into the objective world, as one object among others, that in virtue of which, and in relation to which alone there is any knowable object or world of objects at all. It would be to treat that which is the presupposition of the existence of all objects as if it were another object different from them and externally determined by them. Yet how natural is the illusion bv which we put the self The source of J r the paralogism that knows into the world known, and relate it to that world p^oio^y. as one object to another ! The attitude of mind in which we usually live is one in which we abstract from the knower or rather neglect him, in our attention to the known. Hence, when we do turn our attention to the knower, nothing in our ordinary thought of the known occurs to prevent us from putting the knower side by side with other objects. As in the former case we did not reflect upon the fact that we are conscious of objects only in relation to the self, so now our attention is not called to the difference between the conscious- ness of other objects in relation to the self, and the conscious- ness of the self in relation to the self. As we did not formerly think of the relation of the circumference to the centre, so we do not now become aware of the absurdity of putting the centre at a point in its own circumference. But that is exactly the paralogism into which we fall when we bring under the categories the ego, whose function it is to determine other 26 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BO0K l - objects as such through the categories, and which, in truth, can be conscious of itself only as it discharges that function. If the eye, that " most pure spirit of sense," cannot see itself except in so far as it may be said to see itself in all the other things it sees, 1 how can the conscious ego know itself, except as the universal principle of knowledge which is present in all things known ? " Through this ' I ' or ' He ' or 'It', (the thing) which thinks," Kant says, "nothing is set before our consciousness except a transcendental subject = X, which is known only through the thoughts, that are its predicates," (or more properly which it attaches as predicates to other things,) " and of which, if it is separated from other things, we cannot have the smallest conception. In attempting to grasp it, in fact, we turn round it in a continual circle, since we must always make use of it, in order to make any judgment regarding it. Here, therefore, we are brought into an awkward pass, out of which there is no escape; because the consciousness in question is not an idea which marks out for us a particular object, but a form which attaches to all ideas in so far as they are referred to objects, i.e., in so far as anything is thought through them." 2 Advance from Men are always, in a sense, self-conscious. But this self- the first form , , of aeif-oon- consciousness, so long as it is not reflective, may take very sciousness ° * * g" e X^ n e and inadequate forms. At the lowest, men confuse it with a reflexfon. ian consciousness of their own bodies, — a stage of thought which survives in the ordinary metaphors by which the relation of consciousness to its object is expressed. Thus, an object is said to make an " impression " on the mincl just as one material 1 Troilua and Cressida, Act iii. Se. 3 — " Nor doth the eye itself, That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself, Not going from itaelf ; but eye to eye opposed Salutes each other with each other's form ; For speculation turns not to itself, Till it hath travell'd and is mirror'd there Where it may see itself." 2 A. 346; B. 404. CHAP. XI. RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 27 object does upon another ; and even when attention has been drawn to the difference between the relation of sensation to stimulus, and that of an impression on a material substance to the object that produces it, the idea is apt to remain that the sensation is in some sense a copy of the object on the inner tablet of the soul. A further reflexion, which recognises the disparateness of these two relations, is perplexed by the opposite difficulty of getting beyond the sensations of the subject to any objective material world, but still takes the sensations as given states of an object called the soul, which is affected by other, though it may be unknown, things. To this view, Kant does not deny a certain relative validity. What he points out, however, is that affections of sense cannot be recognised as states of the self as an object, apart from a determination of inner sense by the subject-self through the categories; and that this subject-self, for which all objects (including the self as object) are, cannot be got into the position of one object among others. It is the " determinable" self and not the "determining" 1 self which can alone be known as an object, and the former escapes knowledge just because it is the unity in relation to which all objects are known. Further, as it is only in view of its identity with the determining self that the determinable self can properly be called a self at all, so the attempt to determine the ego in itself, must be an attempt to determine the pure subject-ego as such. By this line of reflexion Kant brings us to the idea of the ? s a yj.™ iJ, gy ego as a unity for which everything is, but to which we can give ject as an > . . . . ' . object, and no distinctive character except as that for which everything is. se ? k3 w deter- r jo mine it by But Eational Psychology was an attempt to determine the pure thecate g° ri68 - ego as an object. It did not, therefore, confuse the ego with the body or even with the sensitive subject, but sought to determine it in its pure nature as a thinking subject. Indeed, it was only as it attempted to do this that it could claim to be 1 B. 158. 28 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B0OK r - a pure a priori science. To this pure ego, then, it sought to apply the categories. As the ego is the subject implied in all consciousness, it determined the soul as a substance ; as the ego is the unity in reference to which all objects are combined, it determined the soul as simple : as the ego is conscious of itself as one self through all the changes of its perceptions and thoughts, it determined the soul as a permanent identity; as the ego is that in relation to which alone we are conscious of objects as existing, it determined the soul as " the correlate of all existence, from which all other existence is an inference," 1 but which is itself existent, so to speak, in its own right and independent of anything else. And from this view of the soul as a simple self-identical self-existent substance, it went on to argue to its immateriality, its indestructibleness, and its im- mortality. Now, Kant points out that in all this the pure ego, which, properly speaking, lies behind the categories as their source, is turned into an object iefore them to which they may be applied; and it is forgotten that " in truth the ego cannot be said to know itself through the categories, but rather to know the categories, and by their means all other objects, in the absolute unity of apperception, and so through itself." 2 It is forgotten that " I cannot know that as an object which I must presuppose in order to know any object, and that the deter- mining self (thought) is distinguished from the determinable self (the thinking subject) as knowledge from the object of it." But " the subject of the categories cannot, by thinking them, attain a conception of itself as an object of the categories ; for, in order to think them, it must presuppose its own pure self- consciousness, i.e., it must presuppose the very thing it would explain. And so, in like manner, the subject in which the idea of time has its original ground, is thereby prevented from determining its own existence in time." 3 "We can, indeed explain why it should be thought possible so to determine the ego as an object. For reflexion enables us ideally to separate *A. 402. 2 A. 402. s B _ 42 2. CHAP. XI. RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 29 the ego, in reference to which the experience of objects is possible, from actual experience; and because I can make this abstraction, I naturally suppose " that I can be conscious of my existence apart from experience and its empirical conditions. But in this I am confusing the possible abstraction from my em- pirically determined existence, with an imaginary consciousness of a possible separate existence of my thinking itself. I am supposing myself to know the substantial in me as the trans- cendental subject, when all that I have in my thought is the unity of consciousness, which is presupposed in all determina- tion as the mere form of knowledge." l Descartes, in his coqito erqo sum, made this mistake. He Descartes was ° u 7 guilty of a supposed that, because I can by abstraction set the thinking e<5&Son. ego before me apart from all determination of objects through it, I can, therefore, take it as an object existing by itself, which I can go on to determine by the categories. He did not notice that, when I say " I think " in the sense that " I exist think- ing," I really express more than the spontaneity of pure thought; I express, in fact, a determination of the subject as present to itself in perception. If, on the other hand, I concentrate my attention upon the mere logical function of thought — " the pure spontaneity of the combination of the manifold of a merely possible perception," what I have before me, is not myself " either as I am or as I appear to myself, but I am thinking of myself only as I might think of any object from the manner of the perception of which I abstract. If, then, I represent myself in this point of view as a subject of thought, or even as a ground of thinking, 2 this does not mean that I applyto myself the categories of substance and causality; forthese categories are not the bare conceptions of subject and ground, but these functions of thought as already applied to our sensuous perception. Wow, such application of the categories would, 1 B. 427. » This may explain how the categories of substance and cause (or ground) can b».applied by Kant to the thing in itself as well as to the ego in itself. 30 THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON. BOOK I. indeed, be necessary if I wished to know myself as an object through them. But, ex hypothesi, I wish to.be conscious of myself only as a thinking subject. I, therefore, set aside the consideration of how I am given to myself in perception (which may, indeed, present me to myself, though only as phenomenon). And thus, in the consciousness of myself in mere thought, I come back upon the being which for me underlies all being (bin ieh das Wescn selbst), but which is not thereby given in such a way that thought can determine it." 1 Kant'sdiBtinc In a sense we can say that the " I am " of self-conscious- tion of the XSiwT 5 ness underlies, and is presupposed in, all objective existence. IhVknowie^g But the " am " here does not express what it does when we of self as an n , „ . . object. apply the category of existence to an object ; tor m that case we have a definite conception of an object, and what we have to determine is " whether it is posited beyond our thought or no." In other words, when we ask whether an object exists, we are asking whether it is given in perception and determined in re- lation to other objects in the one context of experience in which all that is determined as existing must be placed. But, when we ask whether the pure ego exists, we are asking whether the very possibility of objective existence exists. Hence, it is obvious that, if we define existence as existence for a self, the question of the existence of the self can get a rational meaning only if we take it as equivalent to the question whether I, who am conscious of objects, am also presented to myself as an individual object among other objects that exist for me ; and to this, according to Kant, the answer is that we know our- selves as objects in inner sense. If, on the other hand, we mean to ask the question whether the ego, in reference to which all objects (myself included) are determined as existing, itself exists, we are asking whether the ultimate condition of experience has a reality independent of experience. !STow, of this we can say nothing ; for " the I think is always an em- pirical proposition," i.e., it always involves, in addition to the l B. 429. CHAP. XI. EATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 31 pure activity of thought, a matter which it determines ; and apart from such activity upon a given matter, the " I " is merely the ultimate condition of the possibility of experience, and cannot realise itself in the actual " I think " of self -con- sciousness ; for, as we have frequently had to observe, the analytic unity of self-consciousness always implies the synthetic unity of its determination of objects. When, therefore. Descartes argues, cogito ergo sum, he commits a paralogism : for, by mere thinking alone,. I am not present to myself either as one real object among others, or even as the subject in relation to which all objects exist; but I exist for myself in the former sense only when I determine myself as present to myself as an object in inner sense ; and I exist for myself in the latter sense only in so far as I am conscious of the unity of thought involved in all determination of the matter of sense. Hence, my existence cannot be inferred (as Descartes would have it) from my think- ing, as if existence were involved in the mere spontaneity of thought — in which case, as Kant says, " the property of thought would make all beings that possess it necessary beings," and we should need to lay down the major premise : " All beings that think exist " (in virtue of their thinking) ; whereas it appears that the actuality of thought implies something else than thought, and the " I think " can be realised only when there J is something to think other than thought itself. In the " I think," accordingly, we have an empirical proposition, which is not derived from any universal such as Descartes would need to assume. All that is true is that in the " I " we have the unity in relation to which alone experience can be realised, and that, therefore, we cannot think of it as realised for any one, except under the same general conditions under which it is realised in us. From this point of view, then, we can at once reject all the Ti^ubjective Paralogisms of Eational Psychology. For we can see at once £;?*££$£ that the determining ego cannot be taken as an object like other objects brought under the categories. If we speak of 32 THE CRITIQUE OF PUKE REASON. it as the subject of thought, we cannot mean thereby to determine it as a substance ; for a substance can be determined as such only in relation to it. The self, no doubt, is conscious of its persistent identity in determining objects ; but if we were applying to it the category of substance, we should need to treat thought as the accident of an underlying substance, where- as for aught we lenow that which underlies thought may change, and self-consciousness may be passed on from one substance to another, as motion is, without losing its unity. For it is not of such underlying substance that our self-consciousness speaks; but only of the identity which shows itself in our consciousness of objects, and persists as long as that consciousness persists, but of which, apart from that consciousness, we can say nothing. As a matter of fact, the quantitative intensity of that consciousness seems to increase and decrease, and why should it not perish altogether ? Of this we can say nothing ; all that we can say is that in all thought the ego continues to present itself as subject. But this is a merely analytical or identical proposition, and from it we can draw no inference as to the objective permanence of the thinking subject as such. SeiTstatfct * n ^e secon d place, when it is said that the ego is individual, inasmuch as it is the unity to which all the difference of perception is referred in the determination of objects, this does not authorise us to determine it as a qualitatively simple substance. To do this would be to pass from the simplicity of thought to the simplicity of the substance in which thought is realised ; and, moreover, it would be to determine that substance by a predicate which cannot be given in experience ; for in experience objects can be qualitatively determined only by a synthesis in conformity with the conception of degree or intensive quantity. To say that there is no multiplicity or difference of parts in the ego as thinking, is merely to " characterise the ego transcenden tally" as the unity pre- supposed in experience. But to say that the ego in itself is simple, apart from its activity as manifested in the thinking of CHAP. XI. BATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 33 objects, is to determine it, as an object of which we predi- cate a quality, without reference to the conditions under which alone objects can be qualitatively determined. The hollowness of this process is at once obvious when the Dogmatist goes on to base on it an argument for the immortality of the soul. For all we can say is that, as conscious, we are for ourselves simple ; but this, though it excludes a division of consciousness into parts, analogous to the division of matter, does not exclude a gradual extinction of it by lessening of its intensity. In the third place, we are consciously identical with our- Nor as an indi- vidual unit. selves so long as we are conscious of ourselves at all, in spite of all the changes of objects presented to us. But this is merely an analytic proposition expressing the necessary identity with itself of the subject, to which all successive phenomena are referred in order to their combination in one experience ; and such a proposition, tells us nothing of the determination of the self as an object in which this consciousness realises itself. The self-maintaining identity of the self for which all objects exist, is not the permanent identity of any object for consciousness, not even of the self as an object. Lastly, we distinguish ourselves as thinking beings from Nor as actually ■" ° to t> existent in other objects outside of us, even from our own bodies. And ^£"3^"^ this distinction has caused the Eational Psychologists to argue pS' 7 that the existence of these objects is not involved in our consciousness of self, and that, therefore, we can have no certainty of their existence, such as we have of our own exist- ence. But to this it is to be answered that we do not know the existence of anything through the bare spontaneity of thought, but only in so far as there is a matter of sense which it can determine as objective. And we know the existence of ourselves as objects only in opposition, yet in relation to other i.e., external objects. Whether we could have any conscious- ness of ourselves, apart from the consciousness of external things, is a problem on which the Refutation of Idealism has VOL. II. C 34 THE CRITIQUE OE PURE REASON. B00K *• cast some light. But of this, enough has been already said ; and here it is sufficient to remark that the fact that we dis- tinguish ourselves from other things, does not prove anything as to the possibility of our separate existence, nor even of a consciousness of ourselves which should not involve any con- sciousness of them. notivTctiTC Rational Psychology thus breaks down in its attempt to aoi t Dot° biec ' t determine the self as an object by means of the pure a priori the r idea n ° unity of Apperception. It does so because the pure " I think," although it expresses the principle by which, and in relation to which, all objects are determined as such, yet, when taken as the expression of that principle, has no value or meaning apart from such determination. On the other hand, if we take the " I think" as expressing the determination of the self as an object, it is no longer the pure thought of the ego that is in question, but the manifold of inner sense as determined by it. And it may be added that, just because of the introduction of this manifold, the determination of the objective ego can never be adequate to the pure unity of thought. Thus, if we leave out the data of sense, and look to pure thought alone, we have no object at all ; and if we bring in the data of sense, we have no object corresponding to the Idea. In the one case, we have an abstract undifferentiated unity of thought which, as so isolated, does not determine itself as an object at all ; in the other case, we have a manifold of sense which may be deter- mined as an object in relation to this unity, but cannot be com- pletely brought back to it so as to extinguish the traces of its external origin ; for " the understanding in us men is no faculty of perception, nor, when this is given in sense, can it take it up into itself, in such a way as to combine, as it were, the manifold of its own perception." 1 notTbe e Xn Xt is the former of these abstractions to which Kant mainly S™*' directs his attention here. As was indicated in the last chapter, complete determination of an object may be regarded l B. 153. chap. xi. RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 35 as a syllogism, in which the judgment which determines it is carried back to its ultimate conditions. Now, in this point of view, the unity of self-consciousness in pure thought, the " I am I," seems the very ideal of perfect determination, for in it we have the necessary difference of subject and object dissolved in perfect unity ; and the " I " so determined seems to be com- plete in itself — a res wnvpleta in Spinoza's sense, which needs nothing extraneous on which it may be based or through which it may be determined. But, Kant finds that — so far at least as the theoretical reason is concerned — this pure self-deter- mination of the ego is not what it pretends to be, nor what the Kational Psychologists take it to be. It is only by reflexion upon, and abstraction from, the determination of external objects, that we arrive at the judgment by which the object of inner sense is determined ; and it is only by abstraction even from that object that we reach the " I am," or " I am I " of pure thought. The analytic judgment of self-consciousness in which the " I " determines itself, presupposes the synthetic judgment by which the manifold of sense is determined ; and all that the analytic judgment does is to carry us back to the abstract unity presup- posed in such synthetic judgment. But to regard the ego in this sense as a subject purely determined by itself, is to elevate an abstraction into the place of a res completa, and to " take the possible abstraction from my empirically determined existence, for the consciousness of a possible separate existence of my thinking self." 1 To elevate this abstraction into the consciousness of a real independent existence of the self would require, as Kant thinks, an intuitive understanding — an under- standing which does not need to wait for perceptions to deter- mine, but which, by its pure activity, produces its own perceptions. Or, fading that, there would be required some principle which should make it imperative for me to regard my own existence in this abstraction, and which should in this way give me practical assurance of the real independence of the * 1 B. 427. 36 THE CBITIQTJE OF PURE REASON. BOOK I. thinking self. This last possibility, however, we have to leave out of account in dealing with the theoretical reason. Thoughitsup- There is, however, one aspect in which Kant admits that plies a regula- . 1 ■ Psychology! this " possible abstraction " has a value for theoretical reason. It is the source of an Idea, or regulative principle, which we can set before us in our empiric determination of the ego, though we know that we can never realise it. As objec- tive principles of the determination of the self, the principles of Eational Psychology have no theoretical value; hut they supply a directive ideal for Empirical Psychology. For the Idea of a " simple independent intelligence," which is " unchangeable in its self-identity as a person, but stands in community with other things without it," furnishes us " with principles of systematic unity for the explanation of the phenomena of the soul." In conformity with that Idea, therefore, I endeavour to represent all the determinations of the soul as in one single subject ; I try as far as possible to deduce all its process from a single fundamental faculty ; I regard all its changes as belong- ing to the states of one and the same permanent being ; and I keep all its acts entirely distinguished from phenomena in space. This simplicity of the substance of the soul, this self- identity, etc., " are, however, to be taken merely as the schematic projection of the Idea as a regulative principle, and not pre- supposed as the real ground for the properties of the soul. For these properties may rest on quite other grounds altogether unknown to us ; and, at any rate, the assumed predicates of the soul — even if they should be supposed to be its real properties — constitute an idea which could not possibly be presented in the concrete. From such a psychological Idea, however, nothing but good can come, if we only take care not to let it pass for more than a mere idea, i.e., a principle which holds good merely in relation to the systematic use of reason in determin- But pure self- ing the phenomena of the soul." x consciousness TmTaeHf ^n **" s v i ew oi Kant it is not necessary to • make any it were purely . analytic. * A. 682; B. 710. chap. xi. RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 37 detailed criticism, after what has been said in the last four chapters. It is true that pure self-consciousness is logically posterior to the consciousness of objects, though we have always to remember that the developed consciousness of objects implies it. It is true also that, as divorced from the consciousness of objects, it loses its meaning. But to take it as simply the consciousness of a unity which manifests itself in the deter- mination of a given manifold, is a mistake. It manifests itself also in that which Kant calls the analytic judgment of self-consciousness, but which, as has already been shown, is as truly a synthetic movement of thought as that by which objects are determined. No doubt, in this opposition, the deter- mination of the self is not merely in negative relation to the determination of the object. The conscious self implies the object to which it opposes itself; but this is not to be interpreted as if it meant that the ego is merely the abstraction of the unity for which objects exist. Eather, what it means is that neither the object nor the self for which it is can be characterised truly, so long as they are simply opposed ; and that, therefore, we must go on to qualify each by its necessary relation to the other. The defect of Kant's view lies in his misconceiving this progressive movement towards a more comprehensive unity as if it were a regressive movement upon the simple unity which is prior to all difference ; or rather, as if it were that alone. For it may be admitted that the progress is at the same time a regress, in so far as it is in the last synthesis, by which the difference of consciousness of objects and self-consciousness is transcended, that the first unity presupposed in that difference is clearly brought into view. And, in truth, Kant is not faithful to the purely regressive method when he supposes that an Idea or Ideal of knowledge beyond actual knowledge arises out of the pure analytic unity of self-consciousness. Such an idea could not arise out of the mere abstraction of the unity present in the consciousness of objects ; for, out of such abstraction, no idea could possibly arise which should go beyond the conscious- 38 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BOOK I. ness from which it was abstracted. It is only in so far as the unity of subject and object in self-consciousness is an idea which involves a synthesis not present in the consciousness of objects, i.e., is a consciousness which includes and goes beyond that consciousness ; that it can furnish an idea in relation to which that consciousness may be seen to be defective, or, in Kant's language, phenomenal.. Kant, therefore, is inconsistent when he reduces the self to the unity implied in the conscious- ness of objects and at the same time makes it the source of an idea, which is more than our reflexion upon that unity. Or, he forgets that this reflexion, if in one point of view it is merely a revelation of the unity that underlay the consciousness of objects, in another point of view is the creation of a new object, the appearance of which altogether changes the consciousness of objects upon which it supervenes. 39 CHAPTEE XII. THE ANTITHETIC OF PUKE REASON, AND THE CRITICISM OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. TDATIONAL Cosmology deals with the idea of the world ^^S^ as a totality of phenomena in one time and space. In hypothetical 16 this world, as transcendental Logic has shown, every phenome- non is determined in relation to other phenomena. It is determined in time, by relation to preceding and coexisting phenomena ; in space, by relation to coexisting phenomena ; and except through such relations it could not be determined as an object at all. Yet such determination of phenomenon by phenomenon is never complete and final ; for the determining phenomenon requires to be determined by another phenomenon, and that by another, and so on ad infinitum. If, then, reason demands a complete and final determination of objects in the phenomenal world, it demands something which, in this region of knowledge at least, can never be attained. For here every answer gives birth to a new question, and no conclusive answer can ever be given. Now, that reason does make such a demand, has already been shown. The hypothetical syllogism of formal Logic puts us on the track of an idea of reason which should ex- press the completion of the empirical regress, and so enable us to comprehend the world of phenomena as a whole, bounded and limited only by itself. Tu.««gH» Now, the peculiarity of the problems of reason which are duemm a a . 40 THE CRITIQUE OF PUKE REASON. £° 0K l - connected with this idea is, that they immediately take the form of dilemmas. They offer us a choice of alternatives, in one or other of which, according to the law of excluded middle, truth must lie. The ' unconditioned totality of pheno- menal synthesis ' must consist either in a finite or infinite series, in a series which has, or one which has not, a be- ginning. In the former case, we can reach totality only by discovering the unconditioned condition which forms the first member of the series ; in the latter case, we can reach totality only by summing up the series of conditions, which, as infinite, is unconditioned. Dilemma m to £ e t us then, taking those in each class of categories that the fimtude or ' > & ° worioYntpl^e give rise to a series, consider what are the different forms of dilemma that arise when we follow the regressive movement of reason from the conditioned to the unconditioned. In the first place, phenomena are extensive magnitudes, whether we regard them as in space or as in time. Now, phenomena as in time constitute a series ; for a time is determined as such only by relation to a preceding time ; and (as time is not perceived by itself) a phenomenon in time is determined as such only by relation to a preceding phenomenon. But totality in the syn- thesis of phenomena in time cannot be attained, except by tracing them back to a first phenomenon, which is determined in time in relation to no previous phenomenon ; or, if this is impossible, by summing up the infinite series of times and phenomena in them. And the same, mutatis mutandis, holds good of objects in space ; for though space itself is not serial, the synthesis, by which we determine phenomena in space, is serial. We can determine one space only by relation to another space, and, that again by relation to another beyond it ; and so also (as space is not perceived by itself), we can deter- mine a phenomenon as in space only by reference to another, and so on ad infinitum. For totality of synthesis, therefore we must be able either to reach a last phenomenon in space, or else to sum up the infinite series of spaces and phenomena in them. ■CHAP, xii. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 41 In the second place, matter, or the object of external nercen- Dilemma as to •> r ^f the simplicity tion has intensive quantity ; in other words, it is never simple S „"$ |! xity or indivisible ; for every space is made up of spaces, and every spatial phenomenon, therefore, must be regarded as made up of parts, which are the conditions of its existence as a whole. Hence, we cannot complete our knowledge of any external object unless we divide it into its ultimate parts, and enumerate them all. But to do this would imply that we are able, either to reach simple and indivisible parts, or to sum up an infinite series of parts within parts. In the third place, under the head of delation, all nheno- Dilemma as to * the series of mena, as objects in time, are determined as effects of causes, causes - which, in their turn, are effects of other causes ; and the totality of synthesis, according to the category of causality, cannot be attained unless we are able either to reach a cause which is not an effect, a causa sui, or to sum up an infinite series of causes. Lastly, under the head of Modality, we have seen that all Dilemma as to the necessity phenomena, as objects, are in themselves contingent, or only J tauig° geucy hypothetically necessary, i.e., necessary on the presupposition of the existence of something else : we cannot, therefore, reach the unconditioned totality of synthesis, unless we are able either to discover an existence which contains the conditions of its pos- sibility in itself, i.e., an absolutely necessary Being, or to sum up an infinite series of phenomena, which are contingent in themselves, but necessary in relation to each other. 1 In all these cases we start with given phenomena, and seek J f ' R™o™ mas for the complete conditions of their possibility ; and in all, reason may be satisfied, either with an absolute beginning, or a completed infinite series. " In the latter case, the series is without limit a parte priori (without beginning), i.e., it is in- finite, yet given as a whole, though the regress in it is never completed, and can only be called potentially infinite. In the former case, there is a first in the series ; and, if we consider the 1 A. 415 ; B. 442. 42 THE CRITIQUE OE PURE REASON. BOOK. I. time that has passed, that first is a world-beginning ; if we con- sider space, it is a world-limit ; if we consider the parts of a limited given whole, it is that which is simple ; if we look to causes, it is the absolute self-activity (freedom) ; if we consider the existence of changeable things, it is the absolute necessity of nature" 1 Now these problems are not arbitrary ; they are forced upon us by the nature of reason itself. If there is an illusion in the dilemmas upon which they drive us, it is at least a natural illusion. We cannot avoid asking the questions, for on our asking them depends all the movement of our reason ; and when we ask them, we seem inevitably to be forced to accept one or other of the alternative answers. mlSSS Yet even prior to any minute examination of the reasoning dealing with" by which they are supported, we may see that both the alterna- tbem. , . tive solutions of the problems of reason must be illusory. For the questions asked by reason must be answered, if answered at all, by the understanding, which alone enables us to determine any object as such ; and yet no synthesis of the manifold by the principles of the understanding can possibly be adequate to the absolute unity and totality of reason. There is a hopeless see-saw between the two faculties; for if we adopt such a conception of the Unconditioned as alone is adequate to the idea of reason, we find it is too great for the synthesis of the understanding ; and if we adopt such a conception of it as can be definitely apprehended by under- standing, we find that it is too small for reason. The under- standing cannot determine an object absolutely but only by relation to another object ; hence it is impossible for it to rest in the conception of an absolute beginning ; yet it is equally unable to embrace in its synthesis a series which has no beginning. The consequence, therefore, is that, in all meta- physical conflicts, the victory remains with the attacking party; and reason fluctuates between two alternatives so 1 A. 418 ; B. 446. CHAP. xil. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 43 related, that the negation of the one seems necessarily to involve the assertion of the other, while yet either, taken by itself, involves an absurdity. The strength of Scepticism has always lain in the exhibition of this apparent self-contradiction of reason, according to which everything, which can be asserted, can, with equal reason, be denied ; its weakness has lain in its incapacity for explaining the meaning of this self-contradiction. Yet if it be not explained, Scepticism destroys itself; for, like every other rational system or doctrine, Scepticism pre- supposes the general competence of that intelligence, whose deliverances in certain specific instance it refutes. If reason were utterly incompetent, it could not determine even its own incompetence. Criticism, on the other hand, while it shows the origin and necessity of the problems of Metaphysics, seeks to vindicate the trustworthiness of reason and at the same time to limit it ; or, in other words, to prove the subjective, at the same time that it denies the objective, validity of the Ideas of reason. In order to do so much as this, however, it must Thettt>reo „ problems of solve three problems. In the first place, it must discover the the malatie - nature and extent of the antinomies of reason, and must show that they are dogmatically insoluble ; or, in other words, that, whichever of the alternative solutions we adopt, we are led into absurdity and contradiction. In the second place, it must account for these antinomies, from the nature and relations of our faculties. And, lastly, it must show what is the use of the ideas of reason, supposing it to be proved that they do not enable us to determine any object that is beyond the limits of experience. For we cannot vindicate the intelligence or avoid the absurdity of absolute scepticism, if we find nothing but illusion in those ideas to which we are driven by the necessity of reason itself. No satisfactory result, therefore, will be achieved till we discover the positive meaning and value of these ideas — if not as adding to the amount of human knowledge, then at least as necessary to give aim and direction to itg progress and systematic unity to its results. 1 1 A. 421; B. 449. 44 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book i. SttoomSs the ^ e ** rst °^ ^ese P r °blems has already been partially solved, sSiTCd* be For we have shown that antinomies arise in connexion with the extension, or elevation to the unconditioned, of those categories which produce a series ; and we have indicated in general what are the problems of rational Cosmology that spring out of this process. All that remains under this head is, to show in detail the nature of the arguments by which the thesis and antithesis of each of these antinomies are supported, antinomy T ne fi rsf; Antinomy relates to the limitation of the world in time and space. The thesis is, that " the world had a beginning in time, and is also limited in space." For this it may be argued, in regard to time, that, if there were no beginning of the world, then, at any given point of tirne^ we must say that an eternity has passed, i.e., that an infinite series, which, ex vi termini, cannot be completed, has actually been completed. Again, if the world has no limits in space, it must be an infinite given whole. But a quantum can only be given by the successive synthesis of its parts ; and if the whole is infinite, as in the case supposed, the synthesis cannot be com- pleted except in an infinite time, i.e., it can never be completed. Hence the denial of either member of the thesis involves an absurdity. For the antithesis, that ' the world had no beginning in time, and is unlimited in space,' it may be argued that, if the world had a beginning, there must have been a time when it was not. But nothing can begin to be in empty time ; for - " no moment of empty time has in it a distinctive condition, by reason of which a thing should be rather than not be." In other words, a relation of an event to empty time, by which its date should be determined, is impossible ; for the time of one event can only be determined in relation to the time of another that precedes it. In like manner, to say that the world is limited in space, is to say that there is empty space beyond it by which its limit is determined. But a spatial relation, which is not a relation of objects in space, hut a CHAP. xn. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 45 relation of objects to space, is impossible. Space, in fact, ] is nothing but ' the possibility of external phenomena.' ' Em- I pirical perception is not compounded of phenomena and space " as separate elements ; for space is a mere form of the relations of possible objects, and not itself an object to which other objects are related. Hence the denial of either member of 'the antithesis involves an absurdity. Here, then, is an absolute Antinomy of reason, demonstrated apagogically on both sides. On the one side it is argued, that if the world is determined as having no limits in time or space, it must be so determined by an endless synthesis, which yet is completed ; and, on the other side, that if the world is determined as having limits, then empty space and empty time must be regarded as actual existences,_which limit other objects, and not as mere forms of the perception of objects. In other words, phenomenal objects in time and space are always related to a ' beyond,' which itself must con- sist of phenomenal objects ; yet an endless series of pheno- menal objects is impossible. Reduced to its essentials, there- fore, the reasoning is, that we necessarily determine the world in space and time as limited in extension, yet with equal necessity we remove the limit, and relate it to something beyond, which, in its turn, must be determined as limited, and related to something beyond, and so on, ad infinitum. The second Antinomy relates to the divisibility of matter. antinoSy d For the thesis, that ' every composite substance in the world consists of simple parts, and that there exists nothing which is not either itself simple, or composed of simple parts,' it may be argued, that, if there be no simple parts, then you cannot annihilate all composition even in thought. But composition is, by the very idea of it, an accidental relation — a relation which you can annihilate without annihilating the substances compounded. Infinite dividedness, therefore, or composition which is not of simple parts, cannot be admitted by any one who holds that there is a substantial reality in things beneath 46 THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON. B00K r - their accidents. Therefore, the, denial of the thesis involves an absurdity} For the antithesis, ' that no composite thing consists of simple parts, and that there does not exist in the world any simple substance/ it may he argued, that simple parts could not exist in space, for every space is made up, not of simple parts, but of spaces. As, therefore, we cannot get rid of com- position in space, so we cannot get rid of it in any external object. Nay, we cannot get rid of it in any object at all, either external or internal ; for such an object would have to be pre- sented to us in a perception that does not contain a manifold ; and this is impossible. The supposition that the Ego is such an object has been sufficiently refuted in the preceding chapter. Hence the denial of the awtitliesis involves an absurdity. Here, then, is a second Antinomy of reason proved apagogi- cally. The sum of the argument for the thesis is, that an infinitely composite substance is a contradiction ; for it would be a substance entirely made up of external and accidental re- lations. And the sum of the argument for the antithesis is, that no object of experience, as such, can be simple. It is noticeable that the argument for the thesis is not, in this case, derived from the impossibility of completing an infinite series by division (as in the first Antinomy it was derived from the impossibility of completing an infinite series by composition), but from the metaphysical conception of the individual sub- stance or monad, which Kant had inherited from the school of Leibniz. This inconsistency is another proof how deeply the mind of Kant had been impressed with the Individualism of his predecessors. If Kant, in dealing with the second Antinomy, had gone on the same principle as in dealing with the first Antinomy, the essentials of the reasoning would have been, 1 Kant's statement of this argument is very obscure. It is unravelled by Hegel ( We.rU, III. 208). Hegel remarks that the word ■ composite ' is not in its proper place here ; for it is merely tautology to say that the composite, sis such, is made up of simple parts. What Kant means is rather the ' con- tinuous.' chap. xii. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 47 that we necessarily determine the object in space as limited in division, and therefore as simple, yet with equal necessity we remove this limit, and regard it again as complex, and so on ad infinitum. The third Antinomy relates to the possibility of a first, or The third free, causality, The thesis is, that '* causality according to the laws of nature is not the sole causality from which the phe- nomena of the world as a whole are deducible, but that it is necessary for their explanation also to assume a causality by freedom." For this assertion, it may be argued, that, accord- ing to the laws of nature, we must seek for the cause of a change in some change that has gone before it ; for if a cause were not a change, but something permanent, then the effect likewise would be always in existence, or would not be a change. According to the same principle, we must seek the cause of the causal change in another change, and so on ad infinitum. If, therefore, all happens according to the laws of ■ nature, a cause of phenomena is always a subaltern, and never a first cause : or there is never a sufficient cause for the events that happen. And this contradicts the law of causality itself. There must, therefore, be a cause not according to the laws of nature, but according to freedom, if the law of causality is absolute : or, the denial of the thesis involves an absurdity. For the antithesis, that " there is no such thing as freedom, but that everything happens purely according to the laws of nature," it is argued that, if a free causality exists, it must be conceived, not only as beginning the series of causes and effects, but also as determining itself to begin it, i.e., " it must make an absolute beginning, and nothing must precede it or determine its action according to permanent laws. But every beginning to act presupposes a state of the not yet acting cause, and a dynamic first beginning of action presupposes a state which has no connexion of causality with the previous state of the same cause, i.e., follows in no way from it." But this is incon- sistent with the law of causality; it would, in fact, be the 48 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book i. 1 negation of the very idea of nature ; for " nature and transcen- dental freedom are related to each other as law and lawlessness." The denial of the antithesis, therefore, involves an absurdity. The sum of the argument for the thesis, then, is, that there is a spontaneity or free causality, because without it the law of causality comes into contradiction with itself, since, in that case, no sufficient cause can ever be given for anything ; and the sum of the argument for the antithesis is, that there is no free causality, because, if it existed, it would be uncaused, and so would contradict the law of causality. Thus the principle of causality at once posits an absolute beginning, and yet negatives an absolute beginning, and the alternate position and negation leads to an infinite series. ^ttoom" 3 ^ e f<> ur tfo -Antinomy relates to the possibility of a necessary Beino;. For the thesis, which declares that " there is a neces- sary being belonging to the world, either as its part or its cause," it is argued, that the world of experience, being a world in time, contains a series of changes, each of which is hyp<> thetically necessary, or, in other words, made necessary by a condition that precedes it. Whatever is thus conditioned, however, presupposes a complete series of conditions up to that which is unconditioned or absolutely necessary. There is, therefore, an absolutely necessary being implied in all change. And this necessary being belongs to the world of experience, and is not outside of it. For the beginning of a series of changes in time cannot be determined, except in relation to something that has preceded it in time, or has existed in the world of experience at a time when it did not exist. To go out of the world of experience would involve a ixerafiacns eiV a\\o yevos, and would lead to a different kind of necessity from that which is wanted. For our argument is from the , contingent to the necessary. Now, the contingent, in the sense in which that word is applied to objects of experience, means that which has a cause in something other than itself, some- thing which existed previously. But the contingent in the CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 49 pure conception of it (which, of course, abstracts from the conditions of experience) is that of which the opposite is not self-contradictory. And we can never say that what is con- tingent in the one sense is contingent in the other. Hence, when we argue from the contingent of experience to the necessary, we must argue to a being who is necessary in an empirical sense, a necessary being in the world, and not out of it. The denial of the thesis, therefore, involves an absurdity. For the antithesis, that " there is no necessary being either in the world or out of it," it is argued that, in the first place, such a necessary being cannot be in the world. For if so, then there must be an unconditionally necessary, i.e., an uncaused, beginning of the series of cosmical changes ; or, if not, then the infini te serie s of changes, each of which is contingent, must, as ajwhole, be ^absolutely necessary. But the former supposition is inconsistent with the dynamic law of the determination of all phenomena in time, and the lattgr is absurd in_itself; for a multitude of things taken together cannot be necessary, if no one of them possesses necessary existence in itself. In the second place, the necessary being cannot be out of the world ; for, as the first member of the series of causes of phenomena, the causality of the necessary being must lie in time. The denial of the antithesis, therefore, involves an absurdity. The parallelism between thesis and antithesis would have been more complete, if Kant had not introduced under the ■former the proof that the necessary being must be in the world. Overlooking this irregularity, the sum of the argument for the thesis is, that there must be a necessary being either in or out of the world, because the contingent presupposes the necessary ; and the sum of the argument for the antithesis is, that there can be a necessary being neither in nor out of the world : not in the world, because no being in the world can be absolutely necessary ; and not out of the world, because no necessary being out of the world could be causally related to the con- tingent in 'the world. In short, we necessarily explain the VOL. II. D 50 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B00K J - contingent by the necessary, but every necessity we can reach is only hypothetical, i.e., contingent. ae e 8 es 1 form d These, then, are the four antinomies of rational cosmology. phiiosopl™, ' They are no more and no fewer, because the number of the and the .,.,.. . , T , ■ collected anti- categories which give rise to a series are just so many, it is theses an opj posite system. no ti C eable, however, that the solutions given of these different problems are not unconnected, but that all the theses naturally gather themselves into one system of philosophy, and all the antitheses into another and opposite system. The same tone of mind, the same general interests, speculative and practical, which lead us to accept the thesis or the antithesis respectively in one case, lead us to accept it in all the other cases. In this way there arises, on the one side, a. system of ' Dogmatism of pure reason,' and, on the other side, a system of Empiricism, which often slides into a dogmatic Materialism. And, if for the moment we abstract from the question of the truth of these rival systems, it is easy to see that, for the maintenance of both, there are powerful motives, springing out of the most pressing needs and tendencies of our moral and intellectual i nature. To believe that the world is not eternal and infinite, but that it had a beginning and has a limit to its extension in space ; that everything is not divisible and transitory, but that there exists an indissoluble unity of substance, if nowhere else, at least in the self-conscious intelligence ; that a spiritual being is a free causality, and not like other things bound in the chains of nature and fate ; and that the order of nature is not the ultimate fact to which our thoughts are limited, but that beyond the contingent world there is a necessary Being, who is its first cause — all this gives support to our moral and religious life, as well as satisfaction to our highest intellectual cravings. If our view were limited to the phenomena of sensible experi- ence, we could not believe in a God, or a higher destiny for ourselves : if we conceived the law of nature to be the ultimate truth of things, we could not hold to the absoluteness of the imperative of duty ; our deepest moral experiences of repentance CHAP. xil. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 51 and change of character would have to be regarded as illusory, and, at the same time, the architectonic impulse of reason, which seeks to refer all science to one principle, would necessarily remain unsatisfied. On the other hand, Empiricism, when it bids us seek empirical conditions for every conditioned event or existence, when it refuses to admit the conceptions of an indivisible existence, a free causality, and a necessary Being, has this great recommendation, that it " keeps the understanding to its own sphere, the sphere of possible experience, by the discovery of whose laws alone it can extend without limit its certain and definite knowledge." So long as Empiricism takes its prin- ciples in this sense, as warnings not to quit the region within which definite knowledge is possible, it is strong and, indeed, unassailable. Its danger lies in this, that it is apt to become dogmatic in its turn, and to assert that no other region exists. And, when it does so, it not only sets itself in opposition to the moral and religious consciousness of men, but also lays itself open to the same objections which it brings against its adver- sary. For, as we have seen, the assertions, that the world is without beginning or limit, and that there is no simple sub- stance, no free causality, and no necessary being, are not less groundless and self-contradictory than the counter-assertions of the dogmatism of pure reason. 1 We seem then to stand in this peculiar position that there ^°™£& are certain questions, which we are driven by our very nature S™?abie. to ask, and to answer in one of two ways. But if we answer them in one way, we come into collision with the principles which underlie our moral and religious life, and even with that highest ideal of knowledge which springs out of the very nature of our intelligence ; and if we answer them in the other way, we confuse our understanding by mixing dreams with realities, things which we cannot, with things which we can, verify ; and we are diverted from investigations that can be pursued indefinitely with ever-increasing profit, to a fruitless * J A. 462 seq. ; B. 490 seg. 52 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BOOK I. effort after that which always eludes us. Since, then, interests which we cannot surrender are ranged on each side of this necessary but insoluble problem, it behoves us to consider, whether we cannot throw light upon it by a discovery of the very source of the problem in the nature of our intellectual faculties. Now, in the first place, it may safely be asserted a priori that it is not impossible in this case to discover the ramse of the difficulty. For this is one of those departments of knowledge in which we must be able to answer every question we are able to ask. The answer must come from the same sources out of which the question itself arose. In the ex- planation of the phenomena of nature, this is not the case ; there our knowledge is often insufficient to solve the problems suggested by the phenomena we have observed. But in Ethics no problem can be insoluble ; we must be able to discern what is right and wrong, for right and wrong involve responsibility, and there can be no responsibility except where there is knowledge. And so also in transcendental philosophy, " the same conception, which makes it possible to ask the question, must enable us to answer it," seeing that the object is presented only through that very conception. 1 The idea which reason gives us of the object is in fact our only reason for saying that the object exists, and therefore all possible questions as to the nature of the object are merely questions as to the contents of the idea. Hence there is no presumption in our pretending to solve the problem, nor can we escape from the obligation of solving it by alleging the limits of our intelligence. tetoundSf To the questions of Eational Psychology we gave no answer, the nature of « , -i rm i i -. , om-faouity for no answer was the answer. The problem was to determine the transcendental subject as an object or thing in itself, and all that could be said by way of solution was that the tran- scendental subject cannot be determined as an object at all. 1 A. m ; B. 505. of Ideas.' CHAf. xil. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 53 But the case is different with the questions of Rational Cos- mology ; for herejvejiave to do with ideas, of which both the object and the empirical synthesis required for its conception are given ; and the questions which the reason suggests relate only to the continuation and completion of this synthesis so as to embrace an absolute totality. In other words, the ideas in question_dq not relate to a thing in itself, which, as such, can- not be known at all, but to the objects of experience, which can be and are known. Only we must observe that the question is not, what can be given in concreto in experience, but only what lies in the idea itself ; for the empirical synthesis can only approximate to the idea (but never enable us to " envisage " it in an object). "All the questions of rational Cosmology, in short, must be capable of being answered out of the idea alone ; for that idea is a mere product of reason, which consequently cannot disclaim the obligation to answer questions about it, or throw the difficulty over upon the unknown object." 1 In other words, understanding presents us with an object in rela- tion to other objects, through the synthesis of the empirically given manifold, and reason suggests the idea of a world, an absolute totality of objects, determined by such synthesis. And as this idea relates to experience alone, and yet no object ade- quate to it can be given in experience, reason must determine out of itself alone its objective meaning and value. We cannot, therefore, take refuge in assertions of our ignorance, as if the idea had an object independent of itself. The object can be presented to us, if at all, only through the idea ; and if it be found that the idea is inadequate to determine the object, then' it is also inadequate to tell us that there is any object at all. Thus the question will be solved critically, by the dis- . covery that the idea has only a subjective value, if it cannot be solved dogmatically, by the determination of the object in question. But in any case, critically or dogmatically, reason must answer all its own questions. A. 479 ; B. 507. 54 THE CRITIQUE OF PUKE REASON. B00K '• impossibility N ow th e consideration of the Antinomies has shown or a dogmatic AnuiZfiit* impossibility of a dogmatic answer : it has shown us in a] cases that, if we suppose the question settled in one waj empirical regress necessary to realise the idea of the uj ditioned is too large to be accomplished by the understai ; in its empirical synthesis ; and that if we determine the other way, the empirical regress accomplished bj understanding is too small for the idea of reason. In words, when we determined the question one way, we obliged to think of an infinite series as completely given, ; ' a finite infinite ; and when we determined it the other wa were obliged to think of a finite beyond which nothing eou given, i.e., of an infinite finite. If, then, experience, which can give reality to any conception, altogether fails to n this idea, it follows that it is nothing but an idea, i.e., a the without an object ; and we must seek for its meaning value somewhere else than in such an object. 1 Possibility of On the other hand, Transcendental Idealism offers us a a optical solu- tion of them. c i ear critical solution of the difficulty, enabling us to detect the illusion, which has led to the objective interpretation of the cosmological ideas, and at the same time to see their real subjective value. For it directs our attention to the fact, that the objects which we know in experience, are merely pheno- menal, i.e., that they have no existence in themselves, apart from our empirical knowledge of them. If this be true, it is obviously absurd to speak of such objects as having attributes, which, by their very nature, cannot be experienced. Space and time are mere forms of our perception, and we can say nothing whatever as to the presence or absence, in objects in space and time, of qualities that could not possibly be per- ceived. The questions of rational Cosmology cannot be answered, because they cannot rationally be asked. Thus, e.g., it is only in a confusion between phenomena and thino-s in themselves, that any one can ever raise, or discuss, the problem, 1 A. 490 ; B. 51S. chap. xii. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 55 whether the world is finite or infinite in extension. Properly speaking, it is neither the one nor the other ; for the world, as an object of experience, can never be determined ' either way. We speak, indeed, of a phenomenon as having attributes of its own : but this does not mean that it has any predicates in itself apart from our perceptions of it ; it means merely, that we (and all beings like us) under certain conditions have certain experiences. " That there may be inhabitants in the moon, though no man has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted, but this means only that in the possible progress of experience we might come upon them : for everything is real that stands in one context with a perception, according to the laws by which in experience we proceed from one percep- tion to another." But to say that a thing is real in the sense that it might be perceived, and to say that it exists apart from all perception, are quite different things. " To call a pheno- menon a real thing before it is perceived, either means that, in the progress of experience, we must come upon such a percep- tion, or it means nothing at all." It may indeed be said that our sensibility is a receptivity, and that, when it gives us ideas, we must explain those ideas by a non-sensuous or intelligible cause that affects us ; but of this cause we know nothing. We cannot perceive it as an object, and when we call it the tran- scendental object, this is merely " that we may have something that corresponds (as an activity) to the sensibility as a recep- tivity." To this transcendental object we may, if we will, ascribe all the content of our possible perceptions, and we may speak of it as given in itself before all experience. "Thus, we may say that the real things of past time are given in the transcendental object of experience ; but for us they are objects and realities of past time only in so far as we represent to our- selves, that a regressive series of perceptions would lead to them as conditions of the perceptions of the present moment." And in like manner, when we speak of things existing, which we*have not perceived, we can only mean that they are con- 56 THE CRITIQUE OF PUKE REASON. B00K L tained in a part of experience to which we may advance from the point we have already reached. " It is all one to say that, in empirical progress through space, I would come upon stars which are a hundred times farther off than the farthest I see, and to say that such stars may exist in the spaces of the universe, though no man has perceived or ever will perceive them." * Both the rival Now, as this is the case, and as the objects of experience systems of SoioCTiSstoH ex ^ st on ty ^ n our ex P e rience of them, it is easy to see that phenomena 01 both the rival systems of rational Cosmology rest upon an themselves, illusion. For they both proceed upon the principle that, the conditioned being given, the whole series of conditions up to the unconditioned is given ; and therefore they seek by means of the conditioned, to determine what the uncondi- tioned is. Now this would be a correct procedure, if the things of experience had a nature, which was independent of our experience of them ; for, in that case, we, who appre- hend the conditioned as such, must necessarily apprehend that by which it is conditioned. But a phenomenon is nothing, apart from the perception of it. When we apprehend it as conditioned, this only means that, as an empirical object, it is connected, according to necessary laws of the understand- ing, with other perceptions. Nor can we know with what other perceptions it is connected, except in so far as these perceptions are actually given in sense. When, therefore, we have determined an empirical object as conditioned, (and of necessity we must thus determine it), all that we know by this means is a phenomenon, and the law of its connexion with other phenomena. But while we are thus enabled to seek out these other phenomena, and have, moreover, in the Analogies of Experience a criterion, by which we may recognise them when we find them, we cannot determine a priori what they are. On the other hand, we do know a priori, that in this process of connecting phenomenon with phenomenon, we never 1 A. 491 seg. ; B. 520 seq. CHAP. xil. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 57 can come to an ultimate object, an object which has no further relation or condition. Consequently, so long as we speak of phenomena, we cannot say that the conditioned being given, the unconditioned is given with it ; but only that the condi- tioned being given, the unconditioned is set before us as a,problem to he solved. The illusion of rational Cosmology is that it takes the problem for its own solution. It is true that the mere con- ceptions of the conditioned and the unconditioned are necessarily related to each other, and we cannot have the one without sugges- tion of the other ; but this does not by any means imply that, when we know the conditioned, we immediately know the whole series of its conditions, and so the unconditioned. For here the conditioned, as an object of knowledge, is not a mere conception, but an experience ; i.e., a perception determined by a conception. If then we argue from the conditioned, which is given empirically, to the unconditioned, which is not so given, we are committing a sophisma figv.rae dictionis ; we are taking the conditioned in two senses. In the major, when we say : ' The conditioned implies the unconditioned,' we mean the mere conception of the conditioned; but in the minor, when we say : ' This phenomenon is conditioned,' we mean the conception as applied to an empirically given matter. The merely formal or logical principle, that the premises are presupposed in the conclusion, in which abstraction is made of all time-conditions, is thus changed into the material principle that one phenomenon in time being given, the totality of the regressive synthesis of phenomena is given along with it. 1 We see, then, that the real solution of the Antinomies 2 < SSn n *? ar of rational Cosmology is, that the quarrel is about nothing ; proWem! for it is about the objects of experience, viewed as if they were altogether independent of experience. In spite of the apparent contradiction of the thesis and antithesis, they may be, and indeed are, both untrue ; for the condition is absent, under which alone either predicate can be applied to the » 1 A. 497 ; B. 525. 58 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B00K '• subject. If it be said that either a body smells well, or it does not smell well, it may be answered that there is a third possibility, viz., that it does not smell at all. So here ; when it is said that the world is either finitely or infinitely ex- tended in space, it may be answered that it is neither the one nor the other ; for both alternatives presuppose that the phe- nomenal world exists as a thing in itself, independent of our perception. But the phenomenal world is nothing in itself; it is neither finitely nor infinitely extended, for it exists only in an experience which never is completed. At any point the regress is finite, but at no point is it terminated. 1 KiSiltguiJiZ' We have now answered two of the questions which we pnncip es. p r0 posed to ourselves ; we have discussed the nature and extent of the Antinomies of Reason, and we have traced them back to their origin in the nature of our faculties. It remains for us to consider the third question, — what is the function of the transcendental Ideas out of which the Antinomies spring, or what particular purpose do they fulfil in the organisation of knowledge, — seeing that they do not enable us to determine the nature either of phenomena, or of things in themselves. And to this, after what has been said, the answer is not difficult. " The principle of reason, properly speaking, is merely a rule which commands a continual regress in the series of the conditions of given phenomena, and never allows that regress to stop at any point, as if it had there reached the unconditioned." It is no constitutive but only a regulative principle. It does not enable us to anticipate what will be discovered in experience, but merely directs us continually to widen and extend our experience to the utmost. It does not tell us " what the object is, but simply how the empirical regress is to be carried out so as to arrive at the complete conception of the object." critical soiu. We now proceed in the light of what has been said to solve tion 01 the Antinomies. 1 This however does not, as we shall immediately see, exclude a somewhat different view in regard to the dynamical antinomies. CHAP, xn, RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 59 the Antinomies of Reason. As regards the first two Antinomies, which relate to ideas of a Mathematical Transcendent, we need only repeat that both alternatives are false. The world has not a limit in time or space, nor is it given as unlimited ; but the empirical regress finds at no point an absolute terminus. In other words, space and time, and the world in space and time, are to be regarded not as infinitely or finitely extended, but as in- finitely (or, as Kant puts it, indefinitely 1 ) extensible. Again, space and matter in it are not to be regarded as actually divided into a finite or infinite number of parts, but as infinitely divisible. As regards the last two Antinomies, which deal with a Dynamical Transcendent, we may also say that both alternatives are false, if they be taken as relating to the world of experience. For it is certain that a free cause and a necessary • being cannot be given in experience, and it is equally certain that an infinite series of causes or hypothetical necessities cannot be so given. In this sense, therefore, the solution of these Antinomies must be the same as that of the others ; the series of conditions is infinitely extensible, but not infinitely extended. But there is a peculiarity of the dynamical The Dynamical x " * Antinomies principles which distinguishes them, in this reference, Ma^tum " from the mathematical principles. 2 The peculiarity is, that they express a synthesis of elements, which are not necessarily homogeneous. The mathematical synthesis necessarily proceeds 1 In the eighth section of the chapter on the Antinomy of Reason, Kant con- siders the use of the terms ad infinitum and ad indefinitum. The former, he says, may always be used in case of progress, as in producing a straight line ; because in progress it is not required that the members should be given, but only capable of being given. In the case of regress he makes a distinction ; we may say that a piece of matter is divisible ad infinitum, for here the whole to be divided is given ; but of the regress to a beginning of the world in time, or a limit of it in space, we should say that it is ad indefinitum, for though another member of the series is always possible, and, therefore, we are entitled to seek for it, we cannot say that we must be able to find it. This distinction does not seem to have any rational basis, for, on Kant's theory of experience, the parts of a definite space are not actually in it as parts prior to division, any more than all previous times are actually in the present. And ih^poUntial existence is the same in both cases. 2 »A peculiarity discussed above, p. 453 seq., 516 seg. 60 THE CRITIQUE OF PUBE REASON. BOOK I. from parts in space to parts in space, from events in time to events in time. Hence, when, by the aid of such synthesis, we seek to pass from the conditioned to the unconditioned, we must take the unconditioned as homogeneous with the conditioned. We must explain a quantitative finite by a quantitative infinite. And thus we are entangled in an in- soluble contradiction ; for we are driven to put under the conditions of experience that which cannot be made an object of experience. In this case it is evident that every possible answer to the questions of the reason must be equally false. But in the case of the dynamical principles, we may escape from such a dilemma, because the terms connected by these principles may be heterogeneous. The elements related as cause and effect, necessary and contingent, need not, so far as they are determined by these categories, have any similarity. Hence, when we pass by the aid of these categories from the conditioned to the unconditioned, we do not necessarily regard the former as in any way like the latter. While, therefore, in the former case, we had to look for the unconditioned in the sphere and under the conditions of experience, and were, there- fore, necessarily forced to contradict ourselves ; here we have an alternative, for we may look for the unconditioned either within or without the world of experience. And thus it becomes possible to suppose that the thesis and antithesis are both true in different senses : the one as referring to the relations of phenomena within the world of experience, and the other as referring to the relation of the phenomenal to the noumenal or intelligible world. Here, therefore, we may regard both thesis and antithesis as true. The antithesis, that there is no free cause, and no necessary Being, is true of the phenomenal world, in the sense that the empirical regress can never bring us to a cause which is not an effect, or a necessity which is more than hypothetical. And yet the thesis, that there is a free causality and a necessary Being, may also be true, in the sense that the phenomenal world is a result of the activity of one or CHAP. Xir. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 61 more free causalities in the intelligible world, and that beneath the play of contingency in the former, there is an absolutely necessary Being in the latter. It is to be observed, however, that we do not here attempt to prove the existence of a necessary Being or of a free causality, but merely to leave room for them in case they should be otherwise proved. If it can be demon- strated or made probable on other, as, for example, on moral grounds, that there is an intelligible world, a world of absolute freedom or of absolute necessity, we have shown that no objection to its existence can be based on the principles of causality and necessity. For these principles, in the sense in which they are inconsistent with such forms of the unconditioned, apply only to the world of experience. They are principles, whereby phenomena are related to each other, but they cannot be used in the same sense to determine the relation of the phenomenal to the intelligible world. And it may quite well be the case, that the phenomena of the sensible world, which, as phenomena, form part of the context of experience, and have to be explained in one way in their relation to each other, may have to be explained in a quite different way, when we consider their relation to the intelligible world. The principle of causality may, therefore, be used in two senses ; in one sense, as applied to phenomena, and as determining the relations of these phenomena in time ; and in another sense, as applied to the connexion of phenomena with things in them- selves, which are not in time at all. For the positive proof of such a connexion we must, however, refer to another place. Here it is sufficient to have pointed out the pos- sibility of it, or, in other words, the possibility that pheno- mena, and especially the phenomena produced by the action of moral beings, have an intelligible, as well as an empirical, character. The general result of this chapter on the Cosmological Ideas gj™™^ is -.—that, as ideas of the totality of the world of phenomena, g^ ° f al Cosmology. 1 A. 432 serj.; B. 558 seq. 62 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. TO0K *• they have no objective value, because the phenomenal world exists only in a sensible experience in which totality can never be given or realised ; that both the opposite systems of philoso- phy, which attempt to construe this totality, end in contradiction, because they both regard objects, which have only an empirical reality, as things in themselves ; that, in the case of the Mathe- matical Ideas, there is no escape from contradiction except in this insight into the falsity of both alternatives ; while, in the case of the dynamical Ideas, it is possible to reach a somewhat more satisfactory result, by referring the predicates of the Thesis to the object, as noumenon, and those of the Antithesis to the same object, as phenomenon ; and, lastly, that in relation to our knowledge of the world of experience, all four Ideas have merely a regulative, and not a constitutive, value ; that is, they enable us to set up certain subjective rules, by which the greatest possible extension may be given to our empirical knowledge, but they do not supply objective principles, by which the nature, either of the objects of experience, or of things in themselves, may be determined. o^Rationa™ ^- n dealing with the Paralogisms of Rational Psychology Kant's Psychology. ma [ n e ff or t was to show that, if we detach the consciousness of self from its relation to the consciousness of objects, or, in other words, try to determine the self otherwise than through the activity by which it determines the matter of sense in re- lation to objects, the. self reduces itself to an abstract unity of which nothing can be said. Hence, even the analytic judgment of self-consciousness is impossible, except as it expresses the consciousness of the unity of the subject with itself in all determination of objects. The attempt to determine the self in itself and without reference to any object, empties it of all significance and withdraws the ground for the reduplication of the ego in the apparently tautological judgment " I am I." And, apart from this reduplication, the " I " means no more than " He " or " It." It follows, then, that Kant's question, CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 63 how by a synthetic judgment we are to get out of ourselves to objects, or how we are to get beyond the analytic judgment of self-consciousness, might on his own showing, be met by another apparently absurd, but really equally reasonable, question, how we are to get into ourselves, or, in other words, how that analytic judgment itself is possible. 1 But Kant himself has shown that the two processes are "correlative." Self-eon- seiousness is essentially a return upon self, which implies a going out of self to an object; yet these must not be. regarded as two separate stages of experience, of which one is over before the other begins, for the object is fully determined only in the return from it. The defect of Kant's view lay only in his conceiving the activity of the ego by which it determines objects as a reaction upon a manifold given from without, and hence, as a consequence, in his representing the return itself as a negative return, which gives rise to a merely analytic judg- ment of self-consciousuess. In reality, as has been shown, the judgment of self-consciousness is not analytic, and not merely exclusive of the object. For if in it the self is at first opposed to the object, yet as this negative relation is still a relation, and even a necessary relation, the truer view is that self-con- sciousness includes the consciousness of objects while it goes beyond it. In the chapter on the Antinomies, Kant is dealing with a it is the x opposite problem which is the counterpart of that just mentioned. For, ^^' b p £^ while in Eational Psychology the attempt was made to com- cosmoTogy. plete the circle, or, as we may express it, the syllogism of self-consciousness, and to determine the self as a res completa, a self-determined and self-contained whole, without taking account of its relation to the objective world ; in Eational Cos- mology, on the other hand, the converse attempt is made to complete the circle or syllogism of the objective conscious- 1 It will be remembered that the synthetic judgment has two aspects : the transition from the subjective to the objective, and the enrichment of our consciousness of objects with new determinations. Cf. above p. 267. 64 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book I. ness and to determine the objective world as a res completa, without taking any account of its relation to the self. Hence, also, the obstacles which defeat these two different attempts to extend knowledge beyond experience, are of an opposite charac- ter. In the former case, the bare unity of the mind is found to want that difference, in virtue of which alone it could furnish a complete object for thought, or realise the idea of knowledge as a syllogism. In the latter case, thought is sup- posed to be brought into contact with a difference in the given matter of sense, which it is able to combine synthetically by means of the conception of an object, but which it can never completely overcome, or subordinate to its own unity. In the former case, the syllogism of knowledge fails for want of material, thus lapsing into an analytic judgment or tautology; nay, even the tautology is found to be too " synthetic " for it, when separated from all given matter. In the latter case, the matter is there, but it resists the form so much that thought can never return from it upon its own unity. Hence, the attempt to determine the object in conformity with the Idea gives rise to an endless series of prosyllogisins, which, so to speak, can never be completed in one perfect syllogism of reason. The straight line of proof upon proof extends itself indefinitely, so that the ends can never be brought together in a circle. Hence, the idea of reason appears only as the demand for a completeness of knowledge which, owing to the nature of the subject-matter, can never be realised. fa e S?> orreots The two doctrines, that thought in itself is analytic and thrtpuw^ even tautological, and that thought, as applied to the matter thought is $?% that 5 " of sense trough its forms, gives rise to contradictions which thoughts cannot be solved, are necessarily connected with each other. i°y syntiil™c? " For, if Kant had treated thought as synthetic in itself (i.e., if its unity had been taken by him as self-determining or self- differentiating), he would not have regarded it as incapable of overcoming any division between itself and its object. But tautology on the one side answers to irreconcilable contradic- CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 65 tion on the other. It is impossible to criticise Kant in this aspect without reference to Hegel, whose doctrine of the unity of opposites was, and was intended to be, a solution of the exact difficulty which here presents itself. Perhaps Hegel's somewhat epigrammatic way of expressing his principles, which has given rise to so much misunderstanding, is due to his effort at once to contrast, and to connect, it with the doctrine of Kant. Briefly stated, the doctrine of Hegel, as opposed to that of Kant, consists, on the one hand, in the denial that thought in itself is ever merely analytical or tautological ; and, on the other hand, in the denial that thought, as applied to the matter of sense, is ever merely synthetical, 1 i.e., that in this application it is so drawn out of its unity that it cannot return to it. In the former point of view, Hegel is continually repeating that contradiction is so far from being confined to the four Antin- omies of Rational Cosmology that it is found in every object or idea that can be thought. For in every object or idea there is difference as well as unity, and when this difference is made explicit, it necessarily gives rise' to an antinomy, which we must solve either by excluding one of the elements, or by finding some deeper conception which will maintain both the opposed elements in their unity. However simple or complex the object may be — be it mind or matter, be it an atom or a world, be it the conception of cause or substance, or even of bare unity or being — Hegel points out that each such object, each such conception, has at least two sides to it, and implies something else than itself. Taken in its utmost simplicity, it conceals a difference which further consideration enables us to recognise. The object of thought is always the one in the many, being in unity with, or in relation to, not-being. And wherever there is a difference, there is an implicit contradiction, which must be made explicit ere it can be overcome. Thought, then, is essentially synthetic ; and that means that it is anti- thetic. The apparent simplicity of its first form, therefore, » 1 I.e., externally synthetical. VOL. II. E 66 THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON. B00K L masks an unsolved riddle, which must be stated as a riddle ere it can be solved. The ordinary consciousness, indeed, seems to be in harmony with itself; for each thing is taken by it as a unit without difference, each idea as a simple identity on which difference is reflected only from the outside : and thus each of its assertions seems to be made without reference to any quali- fying negation. Eeally at every step it is walking over ignes suppositos eineri doloso, over the ashes of controversies which have died out for the moment, but are always ready to be lighted up again. A little reflexion is all that is necessary to make us realise that our simplest ideas are double-edged tools, which cut into the hand that uses them as much as into the object to which they are applied. Even the very " I am I," which, in one point of view, is the simplest of all tautologies, is found to hold in solution the deepest of all contradictions, the contradiction which it is hardest of all to reconcile. And Kant himself, indeed, practically confesses as much when he tells us at one time that the judgment of self-consciousness is purely analytic, and at another time that in it thought is brought into a more " awkward pass " ( Unbequemlichkeit) than in relation to any other object, by reason of the fact that the self there appears both as object and as subject. For what is this but to acknowledge that the purest unity of thought with itself involves at the same time the hardest of all the opposi- tions which thought has to overcome ? Mntradiction. I Q this sense, then, we may say with Hegel that all things sense ignores are full of contradiction ; all perception and all conception in- volve difference, and every difference is an implicit contradic- tion, which in the progress of thought sooner or later must become an explicit contradiction. But this explicit contradiction must, on penalty of universal scepticism, be solved or reconciled by the discovery of a more comprehensive principle ; for if thought cannot make itself self-consistent, it must ultimately fall into despair of itself and of truth. In our ordinary consciousness of the world, indeed, this necessity is hidden; many differences of it. CHAP. xn. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 67 thought sleep together in unbroken harmony without ever coming into active collision. Common sense cuts many a knot without even being conscious of it. In morality, e.g., it sees no difficulty in admitting different commands: e.g. ' Thou shalt not kill,' and 'Thou shalt not steal,' as equally absolute; and it avoids any practical collision between the two simply by applying one principle at one time, and another at another. Thus, while it solves the problem of ethics, it often conceals from itself even the fact that there was a problem to be solved ; like the judge, who professes to be a mere interpreter of the law, while he is really adding to it. Were it not, indeed, for this healthful unconsciousness with which, at first, we take different aspects of things into our minds without being aware of the contradic- tions or difficulties involved in them, the first steps of know- ledge would be embarrassed by an anticipation of its ultimate problems. But, on the other hand, it is certain that the problems are there, that with time and reflexion the contradic- tions must ripen, and that in one way or other they must be solved. And the whole history of intellectual progress is just the history of the development of a consciousness of difference into a consciousness of contradiction, and again of the consciousness of contradiction into a consciousness of the higher principle in the light of which the contradiction dis- appears. If this be true, it follows, that Antinomy is not merely the First stage of thought, before accidental product of a false negative dialectic, as has been sene- refle , xi °o -^ o > o^ w awakes the con rally supposed ; nor is it, as is supposed by Kant, an essential coXaSkfn. phenomenon of the intelligence merely in its application to one set of problems. On the contrary, it is the necessary law of thought in itself, from which it cannot in any region escape. The first stage of intelligence, the stage of common sense, is one in which there is an undeveloped consciousness of the unity of thought with itself through all the diversity of its application, and an equally undeveloped consciousness of the discojdance and opposition of the different aspects of things 68 THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON. BOOK I. which are gathered together in knowledge. The contradiction of objects with each other and with the thought that appre- hends them, is not yet perceived, and hence no reconciliation is wanted. The identity is felt through the diversity, the diversity through the identity, and no more is required. At times, indeed, one aspect of things is more prominent than another. Eeligious emotion lifts man above the divided and fragmentary existence in which, in his secular life, he usually dwells, and makes vividly present to him a unity, which in general is but shadowy and uncertain. But he passes through the one state of consciousness after the other, without bringing them into contact or considering whether they are consistent or inconsistent. 1 For many, indeed, there never is any conscious discord, and hence there never is any effort after inward har- mony. But even where the intellectual impulse is feeble, the moral difficulties, of life are constantly tending to awake in us a sense of the differences and oppositions that exist in thought and things. And as the mind cannot abjure its faith in itself, it is forced by the necessity of its own development upon a choice between different elements of its life, which seem at first to contradict and exclude each other. Kant regards Kant, then, in so far as he supposes the law of thought in contradiction ° due not to d the itself to be a law of identity, is really taking up the position of the thougntfbut ordinaryeonsciousness forwhich identityand difference, unity and of the matter . . . - . to which it is multiplicity, amrniation and negation, appear as quite independent ideas, and by which each object is regarded as a simple identity, or at least a unity of elements or qualities that stand side by side in it without affecting each other. In other words, he attributes to thought, as its absolute nature and law, that simplicity which it has only for the unsophisticated, unreflective consciousness. J Cf. Spinoza, Eth. II. 10, Schol. "Thus, while men are contemplating finite things they think of nothing less than of the divine nature ; and again, when they tarn to consider the divine nature, they think of nothing less than of the fictions, on which they have formerly built up the knowledge of finite things. . . , Hence it is not wonderful that they are always contradicting themselves," chap. xil. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 6 9 Hence, he is obliged to regard the synthetic or antithetic aspect of thought as due to the intrusion upon it of a foreign matter. This view is especially prominent in the chapter on what Kant calls the Amphiboly of the Conceptions of Reflexion, where we find him maintaining that the system of Leibniz would be true, if the objects of our experience were things in themselves, as objects of pure understanding. If this were the case, then he thinks that, as Leibniz maintained, real opposition, i.e., opposition between realities, would have been impossible. For in pure thought opposition is conceivable only between a thing and its negation, the negation being merely the absence of the thing in question. Bub, Kant argues, this does not hold good in regard to the phenomenal objects of our experience'; for these, as objects of perception in space and time, can be conceived as opposing and counteracting each other. So also he argues that, if the objects of our experience were things in themselves, objects of pure thought, the Leibnizian principle of the " Iden- tity of Indiscernibles " would hold good in regard to them. But the spatial conditions of phenomena as objects of percep- tion, make it possible to distinguish, as in different places in space, objects which for pure thought would have been indis- tinguishable. On the same principle Kant admits that Leibniz had good ground to attribute " perception " to all monads, seeing that, as distinct substances, they must have an inner nature independent of their relation to each other ; for pure thought is obliged to determine every object which it asserts to be real as having an existence in itself. And this, again, makes necessary the Leibnizian theory of pre-established har- mony to explain the apparent real connexion of things, which, as percipient, 1 have merely an ideal relation to each other. Finally, the Leibnizian view of space and time, as formal rela- tions of things, which presuppose the existence of things as the matter determined by these forms, would hold good if the objects of our experience were objects of pure thought : but, as * l Every monad being a vis repraesentativa Universi. 70 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASOX. BOOK I. they are phenomena, the relations of form and matter are re- versed ; for space and time, though mere forms of relation, are presupposed in all particular objects which are perceived under these forms. Hence, from all this we arrive at the general result that, if by pure thought alone we could determine objects, and if, as would then be the case, the objects of our experience were things in themselves, the Leibnizian system would be true. Eeality would be absolutely held apart from negation, unity from difference ; the inner being of things would be independent of their relations, and their matter would be prior to their form. It is, therefore, only because the objects of our knowledge are given to us through sense, and therefore under its forms, that negation, difference, external relation, and form are made co-ordinate with, or even prior to, affirmation, unity, internal being, and matter. In other words, in each of these cases, thought is regarded as asserting itself in relation to something which is externally given, and in which it cannot find itself. Hence, the objects, which it thus determines by reaction against what is externally given, cannot have the charac- ter which they would have had if they had been determined purely by thought itself. Tor thought in itself is analytic, and it is only the intrusion of something foreign upon thought which brings difference, negation, relation, in short, antithesis into it ; though in relation to each antithesis it is supposed to be able partially to reassert its unity and to determine the manifold as an object in relation to itself. Sntodiction e But, just because of the pure identity of thought in itself, i y introduced' the Antithetic, which thus is borne in upon it through nercen- into thought ... G r r cannot be ti ori) i s incapable of any final solution or reconciliation. And here we come upon the second point in which Hegel sets himself in opposition to Kant. For, while Hegel finds differ- ence and contradiction everywhere, not merely in thought as applied to perception, but even in pure thought itself, he nowhere finds a final and unconquerable difference, or a con- tradiction which is incapable of reconciliation. This is the CHAP. XII. BATTONAL COSMOLOGY. 71 side of Hegel's doctrine which is oftenest neglected or mis- understood ; but it is that which really gives importance in his own eyes to this doctrine of contradiction, For it is just because he discerns difference and contradiction everywhere that he finds nowhere an absolute contradiction. And especially, it is because he finds such difference and contradiction even in pure thought, that he believes thought to be capable of coping with all the oppositions which its meets with in its determina- tion of perception, and indeed regards all these oppositions as steps on the way to its full development, its complete self- consciousness, and its final reconciliation with itself. Kant, on the other hand, starting with the analytic view of thought, finds no possibility of reconciling the unity of thought with the difference of perception, which by its forms of space and time seems to be marked out as the direct opposite of self-conscious- ness with its transparent unity. Thought, as it admits no antithetic or self-differentiating movement, is thus set over against sense with its pure forms of difference, space, and time. At its highest, therefore, it is only the source of a demand for the realisation of unity in our knowledge of the world given under these forms, a demand which by the nature of the case must remain unsatisfied. The Mathematical Antinomies are the expression of this JJ"^^ contradiction. These antinomies arise out of the conception f Antinomies - the world in time and space as an object ; and they are due to the contradictory nature of the elements involved in the ideas of time and space themselves. Thus space is necessarily con- ceived as a unity — as in continuity with itself ; yet, on the other hand, it involves externality, and must therefore be con- ceived as manifold or discrete. In other words, a space, when we conceive it as a unit, has no other attribute except that of being external to another space; it is essentially a relation. One space would be an absurdity, for it would be a relation without terms. Yet, on the other hand, all space must be con- ceived as one : for two separate spaces, not included in one Kant's solu- tion of them. 72 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book i. universal space, would be terms without a relation. Space, in short, as the abstraction of externality, cannot be a unity; while yet, when conceived as an object in relation to the unity of apperception, it must be a unity. And the two moments of continuity and discretion, which are equally necessary, seem to contradict or exclude each other. Kant's solution of this difficulty is, that objects in space are merely objects of experience, and that, therefore, we cannot speak either of them, or even of space, as actually having in them any qualities, which are not given in experience. Now, space and the world in space, as they are given in experience, are only finitely extended, and finitely divided ; yet, at the same time, by reason of the necessity of reason, which forces us to determine all things in relation to the unconditioned, they are conceived both as infinitely extensible, and infinitely divisible. But, while there would be a contradiction between infinite and finite extent, or infinite and finite dividedness, there is no con- tradiction between finite extent and infinite extensibleness, or between finite division and infinite divisibility. thteStion- Now, with a slight alteration, we may admit this solution to spac?' eMa as valid. Space in itself, and the external world in itself, is only the abstraction of an element in experience ; and contradic- tions must arise whenever we treat abstractions, or, in other words, elements of reality, as res covipletae or whole realities. Now, when we think of a spatial world as unrelated to thought, we are obliged to conceive it as complete and whole in itself, and therefore as infinite in extension and division. But the truth of the matter is that this abstraction is false, and that the world in space, as that which is essentially self-external, finds its necessary counterpart in the unity of mind, as that which is essentially in itself} The antinomy of space proves that space is necessarily related to something else than itself, and cannot be made intelligible except in this relation. To put the same thing in another way : — The world, in our first im- 1 Cf . above, p. 406 seq. CHAP. xii. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 73 perfect conception of it, is merely a collection of individual things and beings ; and each of these, as individual, is a whole in itself; yet each again is externally related to all the others, and so constitutes one whole with them. Space is itself but the utmost abstraction of this way of viewing things, in which . their individuality and their community or relativity are put side by side, without any mediation or connexion. Both ele- ments of the idea are essential, yet the one seems to contradict the other. The reconciliation of the seeming contradiction, however, is to be found not in the idea of space itself, but in the further development of the opposite and necessarily related conceptions of individuality, and community, which here appear in their simplest, therefore apparently irreconcilable, forms. It is, indeed, true, as Kant says, that, at first, we necessarily think things as in space ; but, though we begin with space, we do not end there: and the solution of the difficulties that belong to this first ' form of perception ' is to be found by a deeper comprehension of the elements that are contained in it, and their relations to each other ; for it is quite false to suppose, with Kant, that we must take space merely as a form of per- ception, and that it cannot be resolved into its elements, and brought into a higher unity of thought. It is a perception only so long as we are content to perceive and imagine, without thinking or knowing it. The same remarks, mutatis mutandis, apply to the antinomy ( £}^l fereaaee of Time. Has the world in time, or time itself, a beginning, or has it not ? Kant answers as before, that the empirical regress is always finite in extent, yet indefinitely extensible, and that any question as to time or things in time, apart from this regress, is meaningless. Time is only a form of perception, or of phenomena as given in perception, and, in terms of it, we cannot answer any question about things in themselves, simply because the question itself is irrational. This answer might be taken in a higher sense than Kant intended, as meaning thajj things, regarded simply as in time, are not seen in their 74 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B00K *■ truth. Space is the abstraction of self-externality, and, there- fore, gives rise to a contradiction between the independence of things in it, and their essential relativity, or continuity ; and time only contains the same elements, viewed as passing into each other. ' Time,' says Hegel, ' is the first negation of space': 1 by which is meant that, while the externality of. things is not denied when we conceive them as in time, their indifference or permanence in this externality is denied. Finite things are first represented as indifferent to each other, and so as in space ; but they are not so indifferent. Their existence is but the process, whereby, as separate or limited substances, they cease to be, or pass out of themselves ; and time is but the abstraction of this process. Hence arise the Antinomies of Time, that already drew the attention of the Zeno, who may be called the founder of Dialectic. ' The flying arrow rests': it at once is, and is not, in the place through which it passes. The moments of time are external to each other, yet they exist only as they pass into each other ; and thus time contains the two moments of continuous self-identity, and absolute change. More- over, these moments appear in abstract, and therefore apparently irreconcilable, opposition to each other; and, as is always the result in such cases, they give rise to an infinite series. Hence, we no sooner consider a time as one, than we are obliged to relate it to a time before or after it, and again we are obliged to regard these two times as one, and so on ad infinitum. No solution of this antinomy can be found in terms of time itself, or without reducing time to a moment in a higher conception, in which the elements of self -identity and relativity find a better reconciliation than they do in time. of h m£danT y 1 have said that wh - en we conceive the world as existing jtescarte". in space and time, and when we try to determine such a world as either limited or unlimited in itself, we are treating an ab- straction as a res completa. This means that in such abstraction we forget that, as in space and time, the world exists only for 1 Encyclopadit, §§ 257-8. CHAP. xii. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 75 a conscious self. Descartes already took a step towards this view when he pointed out the direct contrast between the ex- tended and the thinking substance, each of which, taken in itself, has just the characteristics which are excluded from the other. Matter is defined as that which is infinitely extended and infinitely divided, essentially inert and dependent on external force for its movement; while consciousness is an unextended and indivisible unity, absolutely active, and in- capable of being determined from without. Having thus set the two in abstract opposition, he then seeks for a Deus ex machina to unite them. But a deeper reflexion would have shown him that the two worlds thus set apart are opposite counterparts of each other, and that, as so determined, they can exist only for a subject which relates to each other the terms which it distinguishes. In truth, we have in the opposition, as it is expressed by Descartes, only a provisional determination of the mind and the object in relation to each other — a first expression of the unity of the consciousness of objects with self-consciousness. But, as Descartes himself shows us, the consciousness which makes this determination of subject and object in relation to each other, is not necessarily aware of the relation it thus establishes between the opposed terms. It may, therefore, be unable to bring in their unity, except by a tour de force. Kant, however, looking at the diffi- culty from the transcendental point of view, calls our attention to the abstraction implied in conceiving the self and its object in space as two independent "things in themselves"; and he shows that, on the one hand, the self, apart from its relation to the object, shrinks into an abstract unit which cannot be conscious of itself, and that, on the other hand, matter, if taken as that which is infinitely extended and divided, involves a manifest contradiction — the contradiction of an infinitely large or small quantum, i.e., a quantum which is the very negative of the idea of quantity, as that which can be increased or diminished ad infinitum. What we have, therefore, in each of the two 76 THE CRITIQUE 0E PURE REASON. BOOK I. terms is only a half thought, which contradicts itself whenever we examine it closely, or develop the consequences of our abstraction. We can, however, restore its meaning, though with some modification, by recognising the element which it neglects. For, whenever we discover the correlativity of the determination of mind and matter, as Descartes conceived them, we see that his conception of both is im- perfect. When we recognise that self-consciousness, as the return of thought upon itself, is possible only for a mind which determines the object as an external object in space, and thus characterises it as its own opposite, we are imme- diately led to form a new conception of each of these terms. We no longer conceive object and subject as existing apart from each other — the former as that which is essentially out of itself, constituted by partes extra partes, and purely passive, and the latter as that which is essentially in itself, and purely active (confined to an analytic judgment which is no judgment at all). On the contrary, we are now made to think of the self-determination of the self as involving a going out of itself to determine that which is other than itself; as involving, in Kant's words, a synthetic judgment, or, to speak more definitely, an antithetic movement of thought, which does not stop short of the determination of the object as in space and therefore in direct contrast with the unity of the self, and which, indeed, must go the length of this absolute antithesis ere it can return upon the unity of self in the so-called analytic judgment of self-consciousness. On the other hand, the object in space cannot, from this point of view, be any longer characterised as purely inert and extended, as subsisting by itself in pure self- externality. On the contrary, in our determination of the world of objects, we must recognise a principle of unity ; a principle which manifests itself even in the movement of material bodies in reference to each other, as held together in spite of their diversity by a universal law of gravitation ; but which is more clearly revealed in the way in which the material CHAP. xil. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 77 world becomes subordinated to the life of organised beings ; and which finds its complete expression only in the relation of the process of nature to the self-consciousness which is developed in man. The necessity of getting beyond the abstract antagonism of Its one-sided . ° solution in mmd and matter, as expressed in the philosophy of Descartes, £$££* and was already recognised by his immediate successors, though they took the one-sided method of simply denying or throwing into the back-ground one of the opposites. Spinoza, indeed, seemed to lay emphasis rather upon the unity of mind and matter, which he regards as only the parallel attributes of one substance. But he shows an inclination to interpret this parallel- ism in a sense which gives the preponderance to mind, when in one of his letters he opposes the Cartesian view of the absolute passivity of matter. Leibniz, following out the same line of thought, maintains that all real substances are active and self- determined ; and thus he is ultimately led to deny that there are any but percipient substances, i.e., substances which are either minds or analogous to minds : Locke adopts the opposite course of assimilating mind to matter, and he often shows a tendency to explain the movement of thought in knowledge, like the motions of matter, by an external determination — a tendency which is shown still more clearly in some of his followers, and especially in the French Materialists. The former course necessarily ended in an Atomism of mind 2^ n a ee — the so-called Monadism — which had to be supplemented by teTso'utfon 6 " the fiction of a pre-established harmony ; while the latter ended in an Atomism of matter, which had to seek for a principle of movement outside of itself. The conception of the universal attraction of matter, which was established by Newton, was at war with this atomic Materialism almost from its first appear- ance ; though Newton refused to commit himself to any real actio in clistans, and spoke of the attractive force as merely a name for the unknown cause of certain phenomena which could no| directly be explained by the immediate action of material 78 THE CEITIQTJE OF PURE REASON. book I. bodies upon each other. So powerful was the prejudice which maintained the idea of the inertia of matter, except as exter- nally determined by a power which is not in matter itself, that it for long maintained (and still maintains itself) in Newton's school, and has led to a number of subsidiary theories (such as that of Le Sage) having for their object to explain the New- tonian law of attraction without any actio in distans. On the other hand, Kant, who tried to mediate between the Lockian and Leibnizian schools in his view of mind, regarding know- ledge as the result of the determination of passively received data of sense by the activity of thought, maintained also, in his Metaphysical Budivients of Physics, that matter is incon- ceivable except as the subject of an attractive force (which he conceives as an actio in distans) as well as of a repulsive force (which presupposes contact). He thus brings matter and mind, which with Descartes were abstract opposites, into close analogy with each other ; while, at the same time, by regarding matter as a phenomenon, and by treating it as the phenomenon in opposition, yet in relation, to which mind comes to a conscious- ness of itself, he makes a step towards the recognition of the spiritual, as not merely negatively related to the material world, but at once implying and transcending it. criticism of it. We may now see that Kant's solution of the Antinomies which arise in relation to objects determined as in space and time, a solution which consists simply in pointing out that these objects are phenomena, may be understood as expressing a truth. For the determination of things as in space and time is not a final determination of them, and the attempt to treat it as such must end in contradiction. This it must do, because, as Kant argues, things can be determined as in space and time only by relation to each other, and not directly by relation to space and time. In other words, time and space do not deter- mine things in relation to each other ; but things, through their relation to each other, determine their respective places and times. But this implies that, when we treat things as simply CHAP. xil. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. ^9 having spatial or temporal relations to each other, we are treating them abstractly. Thus we may, if we please, leave out of account all other relations of objects, except that they coexist in different places, or occupy different parts of space, • and that they exist in the same or different times ; but this neglect of other determinations, whether it be the result of the deliberate abstraction of science or of the unreflecting atti- tude of the ordinary consciousness, necessarily hides from us the real nature of the object. And a thought that does not determine objects as they really are, is always at variance with itself. The Antinomies which arise when we attempt to give a final and complete determination of the world of objects, — while yet treating them merely as objects in space and time, and leaving out of account their necessary relations to each other and to the self, — merely show that an abstraction, when treated as the whole truth, necessarily comes into collision with itself. So long as we remain within the sphere of such an abstraction, we cannot solve the difficulties that arise out of it. We can solve them only when we take into account all the elements which are essential to the complete determination of things. In this sense, then, we may adopt the language of Kant and sense in 17 r ° ° which Kant s say that the reason for the appearance of the Antinomy lies in ^"sfaotwy. the fact that we have been treating phenomena as if they were things in themselves, i.e., we have been treating objects ab- stractly without regard to certain of the determinations which, from the transcendental point of view, are seen to be necessary to them. Now, what are the special determinations which are left out of account when we determine objects as mere quanta, existing or coming into existence under conditions of space and time ? The first answer is that objects so treated, as standing merely in relations of externality to each other in space and of coexistence or succession in time, are represented as indifferent to each other. They are connected, as Kant points out, only as, homogeneous units which " do not require each other"; i.e., 80 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B00K *• their relation is one of pure externality, which seems to involve no necessity of relation. That they are found together or after each other, seems to be an accident which does not affect their nature, and without which they might be just what they are. They are parts of the experience of the same self, but this seems to be all their connexion, second stage When we reflect, however, on what is meant by this fact of reflexion, Seethe the that they are elements in one experience, or the experience Experience as of one self, we are carried beyond this first determination of principles of , investigation, them. We are taught by Kant to see that they can be con- nected in one experience only through the Analogies of Ex- perience, which determine each element as existing in neces- sary relation to all the others. If we follow the guidance of these Analogies, we have to represent the world as a system of permanent substances, which are in thorough reciprocity with each other, and have their successive phases determined in re- lation to each other by necessary laws of causation. For Kant, moreover, this new determination underlies the determination of objects as existent in space and as having their coexistent and successive phenomena determined in time in relation to each other. For, according to the transcendental Deduction, the former determination is presupposed in the latter, and may be seen to be so presupposed by any one who considers the conditions under which objects can be known as such in our experience. Our first determination of things, as simply co- existent and successive in space and time, is thus to be corrected by the recognition of a second determination of them as standing in necessary relations to each other in one world, i.e., in a world knowable as one by a conscious subject. Thus the world, formerly conceived as a mere aggregate of unrelated or contingently related objects, is now seen to be a connected system in which each element implies all the others ; and this change of view is seen at the same time to be not a mere sub- stitution of one idea for another, but a necessary development of our intelligence, which inevitably gains a better understand- CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 81 ing of its objects as it progresses to a deeper consciousness of itself. But if, in thus passing from a consciousness of the world as T . he n?ojssit y A ° of a third stage a contingent aggregate of isolated phenomena, related only as a^f^t in space and time, to a consciousness of it as a system ofaESs. objects connected according to universal laws of coexistence and succession, we have reached a truer and more consistent view of thing's, can it yet be said that we have thus reached a view that is in all points satisfactory ? Is this the last word of science, or is it simply a stage on the way to a still higher synthesis ? Does it set things before us in their complete determination, or does it after all set them before us in a point of view which is still abstract, and which, therefore, in the end breaks down in contradiction ? The answer manifestly is that we are still in the region of abstraction, in so far as we simply regard the connexion of objects with each other without con- sidering what is involved in the fact that they are objects for a self. But, so long as we take the world as a series of related objects, each of which therefore finds its explanation in the others, we can never reach any self-sustaining point to which the series may be attached. We still stand between the opposite alternatives of an infinite series and an unconditioned member of the series, just because we have left out of view the principle in relation to which the series has its meaning. In Kantian language, we maybe said to be confusing phenomena with things in themselves, because we are treating these phe- nomena as if they had an existence unrelated to the self. It would not be difficult to show that from this cause Kant's double solution of antinomies arise in connexion with all the reflective cate- these antinomies. ' gories. Kant, however, confines his view to the conceptions of causality and hypothetical necessity, which in their applica- tion to experience give rise to a regressive series, and so place us between the same alternatives of an unconditioned begin- ning and an infinite series of conditions, which gave rise to .the mathematical antinomies. In attempting to solve VOL. H. F 82 THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON. BOOK l. these dynamical antinomies, however, Kant mentions an important difference between them and the mathematical antinomies. In seeking the unconditioned for a quantitative conditioned, we had to confine ourselves to the region of quan- tity. Hence, there was an absolute contradiction between the thing sought and the subject-matter in which it was sought. A quantitative unconditioned is an obvious absurdity, it is a quantum which is not a quantum, and, therefore, both thesis and antithesis had to be pronounced false. But in seeking the unconditioned for the conditioned according to the dynamical principles, we are not confined to an unconditioned which is homogeneous with the conditioned. Thus, the category of causality is the conception of a relation according to which the position of one thing is the ground of the position of another thing different from it. 1 We may, therefore, use it not only to connect a con- ditioned phenomenon with the phenomenon which conditions it, but also to connect phenomena with noumena. And, however little we may be able to determine positively what this uncon- ditioned is, there will at least be no contradiction involved in the bare conception of it. Hence, in this case the thesis and the antithesis may be taken as both true, the one expressing the endless reference of' every phenomenon to a phenomenon before it as its cause, while the latter expresses the one conclu- sive reference of all phenomena to the noumenon. ttSpeo5L> In this remark K ant calls attention to a peculiarity which djnai^ti belongs to the reflective categories, namely, that they not only antinomies. „ . ■ carry us from phenomenon to phenomenon withm the sphere of experience, but suggest a transition from that sphere to another and higher sphere. In other words, the contradiction 1 It may, of course, be said that here we have to interpret the category of causality simply as the relation of reason and consequent, and that that is a merely formal or analytic relation. But Kant here conceives it as a relation of different elements, in spite of it being a relation of pure thought. We have to remember, in explanation of this, what has been already said of his view of pure thought as determining objects (cf. above, Vol. I. 445). At the same time, we must regard this as one of the points in which Kant becomes incon- sistent with himself in his view of pure thought as merely analytic. CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 83 of treating the phenomenal (or, as I would rather say, the abstract) as a res completa, which was latent in the mathemati- cal principles, becomes explicit in the dynamical principles. In the former case, this shows itself in the fact that quantity refers to quantity ad infinitum, and a whole of quantity cannot be attained. The reason why it cannot be attained is that to attain it would be to determine the finite as infinite, or, in other words, to characterise that which is only as it is related to another, as if it were complete in itself. But this reason is not explicit ; so long as things are regarded simply as quanta, their essential relativity is not yet taken into ac- count. But it is different when we determine things under the reflective categories, or, to confine ourselves to Kant's own instance, under the category of causality. For, to say that a thing is an effect, is to say that it exists only in reference to something else than itself; that it has not existence, so to speak, in its own right, but only as determined to exist by something else. Under this category, therefore, the negative aspect of phenomena, as finite things which have their exist- ence in relation to things other than themselves, is made prominent. While, therefore, the principle of causality makes us bind phenomena together as each referring beyond itself to the others, it also suggests the necessity of uniting the whole series of them to something not in the series, something that does not again refer us beyond itself to another, but is completely determined in itself. Thus the idea of what is only as it is determined by another, immediately suggests the idea of that which is determined by itself. The very category, therefore, which leads us to bind the successive phenomena of the world together as parts in one series — so that each successive state of it, undetermined in itself, finds its explanation in that whieh went before — awakens in us also a consciousness of the imper- fection of such explanation, and makes us attach the whole series to a principle which is not a link in it. For the cause of a t thing is that which fully explains it, and the only complete 84 THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON. BOOK I. explanation, beyond which no further explanation is required, must be found in that which is causa sui. Causality is thus a category which when universalised contains a contradiction : for it forces us to refer each phenomenon to another as its sufficient reason, and this again to another, and thereby pre- cludes our ever finding a sufficient reason for anything. Hence, the ultimate truth of causality is that by its inner contradiction it carries us beyond itself to a higher category. And as this contradiction lies in the fact that the effect is set up as a separate existence while yet it is referred to something else than itself, it cannot find a solution except in that which is at once cause and effect, that which in its effect or manifes- tation yet remains one with itself. SSLacai This " immanent dialectic " of the category of causality the category may be further illustrated, if we consider the actual use of causality ideaof^Ma °^ ^ * n ex P er i ence - I n carrying back one phenomenon to another as effect to cause, we are not satisfied (as Kant himself had remarked in regard to the explanation of thought by motion) if we entirely "lose the guiding thread of the causes in the effects," 1 i.e., we are not satisfied unless we can see in the latter the continuation of the former. We seek the effect in the cause, and are not content till we have found it there in its completeness. It is not enough for us to say motion is the cause of heat, until we can show that heat 2 is motion, and until we ■ can resolve the difference of the two kinds of motion — the motion which is heat and the motion which is not heat — into a difference of circumstances in the two cases. In this sense the cause, as the sum of all the conditions of a phenomenon, is the effect, or, as Lewes puts it, the effect is' the procession of the cause. But the moment we discern the identity, which maintains itself through the difference, we are again forced j A. 387. 2 Not, of course, the sensation of heat as such, which cannot be explained apart from the living organism. CHAP. xii. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 85 to ask, what is the reason or cause of the difference. Hav- ing shown that heat is an insensible motion, which is pro- duced by the impact of different material substances upon each other and which continues the motion by which they were brought together, we have to ask what brings them together, i.e., we again are driven to seek for an identity which maintains itself in this difference. Thus we are forced to refer back the cause to previous causes, because none of the elements of the cause explains why they are brought together in the effect. Obviously, however, such a search for cause upon cause cannot terminate, unless we can reach an identity which is self-differentiating, which is the source of the difference of elements brought together in the effect, and which remains one with itself through the whole pro- cess of differentiation and integration. Our search for causes is thus in its ultimate meaning a search for a self-determin- ing principle, which does not pass away to make room for its effect, but which manifests and maintains itself in the whole process of change. For, while in referring an effect to a cause we discover an identity that continues to sub- sist through change, we do not thereby explain the change itself. This we can explain only when we have shown that there is an identity which the change itself manifests and When, therefore, Kant suggests that both sides of the Kant's "view of Antinomy can be taken as expressing truth, only that the one will then express the relation of phenomena to each other, while the other will express the relation of pheno- mena to the noumenon, we are prepared to accept his state- ment, but only after its meaning has been slightly modified. Causality is a category which points beyond itself, or implies a relation beyond that which it expresses. The reference of each phenomenon to another, which we make in accord- ance with the principle of causality, enables us to bind all pBenomena together as parts of one experience ; but the unity 86 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B00K T - of phenomenal experience is not a self-sustaining whole, and the same principle which made us give such unity to the world of experience makes us also look beyond it for its cause. The negative aspect of each object in the phenomenal world, as changing and existing only while it changes, is equally the negative aspect of the whole series of phenomenal ob- jects, which forces us to look beyond them for a positive principle which, as self-sustaining, caii serve as an ultimate support for them. As it is a general law implied in the very possibility of experience that all that happens has a cause, it follows that the causality of the cause, which it- self is an event or something that has come into existence (and did not exist always), " must itself have a cause. By this reflexion the whole field of experience, however far it may extend, is turned into a collective whole of the mere natural world. But as in this way no absolute totality of conditions in causal relation can be attained, reason creates for itself the idea of a spontaneity which can begin to act of itself without any other cause needing to be presupposed as determining it to action." 1 But how, we may ask, can the chain of phenomena hang upon a cause which is not in that chain or connected with it as one link of it is with the others ? This difficulty Kant escapes by main- taining that, though the transition from the phenomenal to the noumenal is, in a sense, mediated by the category of causality, yet it is a transition which takes us beyond the region in which this or any other category can be applied so as to produce knowledge. We are thus led to think a relation, which cannot possibly 'be an object of knowledge, a relation not of phenomena to. each other in space and time, but of phenomena in space and time to that which is neither in the one nor in the other. But as such a relation cannot possibly be schematised, the category, as thus used, reduces itself to the bare form of thought (the 1 A. 533 ; B. 561. CHAP. xii. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 87 bare conception of reason and consequent), which is not sufficient for knowledge. Hence, after we have made the transition, we find that we are left in the dark as to the noumenon to which transition is made. We have character- ised the phenomena negatively, hut that does not enable us to characterise the noumenon positively; for the conception of the noumenon is merely the conception of a limit to em- pirical knowledge, but not of a reality present to us in any other way. Now, the defect of this view of Kant, and the measure criticism of that view. of truth which it contains in spite of that defect, will become manifest, if we invert his method of abstrac- tion. For then it will be seen that the transition from phenomena to noumena, which is supposed to be made necessary by the category of causality (when that category is universalised or carried up to the unconditioned), is really a transition from that category to one that expresses a higher or more comprehensive truth. In other words, the category of causality is one in which we can find a satis- factory explanation of phenomena only so long as we take these phenomena as completely determined by their relations to each other, without reference to the self for which they are, a self which is not itself one of the phenomena so determined. When we take into account this relation, how- ever, we have not, as Kant supposes, simply a negative qualification of the objects so determined as mere pheno- mena. We learn, it is true, that our former view of these objects was imperfect, so that the objects, as so determined, were not res completae, but abstractions. But we learn at the same time what is the element required to lift us above such abstraction and to determine the objects as they really are. We learn, in other words, that the conception of ob- jects as standing to each other in such relations as the relation of causality, requires to be modified by taking in- to account their character as elements in a world which is, 88 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book i. so to speak, bounded by self-consciousness. Thus, the rela- tions of objects as external to each other and externally determining each other, and of events as happening after each other and successively conditioning each other in time, which are expressed in the Analogies of Experience, are relations which do not exhaust the facts ; for, as related to the self, these objects and events have a unity and com- munity in spite of their difference and externality, of which no account is taken in such determination of them. tett™ Now, when we think of the world in this new point of view, account the we find the conception of it, as a congeries of things externally unityofthings th tht ht e f determined and externally determining each other, changing which they U p on us i n many important ways. In the first place, that difference in objects as perceived under the form of space, by reason of which they could, in the first instance, be only exter- nally referred to each other,- gains a new meaning when we see that it is only in relation to such difference that the conscious- ness of the unity of the self is possible. When the consciousness of things as thus external to each other, is seen to be necessary to the consciousness of the self for which they are, the result is not merely (as Kant supposes) to make us reflect that in spite of their externality they are necessarily related to each other. It further suggested to us that the externality itself is not absolute. Thus, it is not sufficient that we should learn from Kant that existence in space is not an externality to consciousness, but an externality for consciousness. We have to recognise further that the externality of things to each other is a form which is necessary to the manifestation of their unity with each other. For, as it is only in over- coming the utmost difference that the deepest inward unity can reveal itself, so that difference may be regarded as itself a part of the manifestation of the unity. The fact that we come to ourselves through the consciousness of an external world, makes us regard the consciousness of the externality of things as itself an element in the process of self-consciousness. Mind CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 89 is thus not only the opposite counterpart of matter, but it in- cludes the process of matter as part of its own process. Hence, •we do not reach a final determination of the object when we regard the parts of the material or external world as, in spite of their externality, necessarily related to each other; it is necessary for us also to recognise that the nature of these ex- ternal objects lies just in their relations to each other ; and this implies that, as external to each other, they are only different phases of one principle. Thus their unity underlies their externality, manifests itself in it as a principle of neces- sary connexion between them, and so finally overcomes it or subordinates it to itself. And the same principle may be applied to our consciousness of phenomena as successive in time. Their unity with each other, as combined in one con- sciousness in spite of their difference and the difference of times in which they present themselves, may at first seem to be sufficiently expressed when we treat them as necessarily connected according to the law of causality. But, in so far as their process, i.e., the process of objects as changing in time, is part of the process of self-consciousness, we must regard the change as not merely subordinate to a law according to which the successive phenomena are necessarily connected with each other, but as itself the manifestation of a principle which shows its unity with itself just in the process of change. What, then, is the effect of this alteration of our point of »^^ e - view ? We may describe it generally by saying that, in rela- ™h y o7her. tion to objects in space, it involves the substitution of the idea of organic connexion of objects as the different correlated expressions of one principle, for the idea of necessary deter- mination of one object by another ; and that, in relation to objects as in time, it involves the substitution of the idea of organic development of one life through different phases, for the idea of a causal series of necessarily connected phenomena. We thus learn not merely to refer the chain of causality to a causa sui as its highest link, but to reinterpret the necessity of 90 THE C'EITIQTJE OF PURE REASON. book I. nature as itself an element in the process of freedom, an ele- ment which, for certain purposes of science, it may be con- venient to isolate, but which cannot legitimately be regarded as a res completa. In this way the Kantian conception of natnre as that which exists for spirit will lead us directly to the Hegelian view that it exists only as the manifestation of spirit. This idea has What light does such a view cast upon the Dynamical to be applied to x IZlfgwic* Antinomies and upon Kant's solution of them? Kant is wereglvd 6 ^ satisfied, as we have already seen, with saying that the causal in relation to *' " . the organic. j aw mav |j e true, in one sense, if phenomena are relative to each other, and, in another sense, if phenomena are relative to noumena. Instead of this, we now say that the causal law holds good as a law of necessity for phenomena, so long as we contemplate them in relation to each other as elements in a natural system, but that it falls to the ground whenever we regard that natural system as an element in a spiritual system which includes and transcends it. The first step in the correc- tion of the view of the world as a mechanical or necessary system may, indeed, be made without bringing in the idea of a spiritual system, by simply considering the process of the in- organic as an element in the process of the organic world. For the inorganic world, when we rise above the abstraction in which physical science considers it, must be regarded as the environment or medium in which the process of life realises itself. So considered, the serial process of the former becomes subordinated to what we may call the cyclical process of the latter. For life cannot properly be regarded merely as a succes- sion of changes in which one phenomenon yields to another, which is its necessary consequent and equivalent ; it is a process in which the identity of an individual maintains itself in change, and maintains itself just by means of the external medium or environment which makes the change necessary. The Darwinian theory has directed our attention almost wholly to the continuous process of adaptation to the environment by which animal and vegetable life is maintained and developed: CHAP. xil. KATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 91 it has laid less emphasis on the other and higher aspect of the facts, according to which the process is one of ^//-adaptation, which has self-maintenance and self-development for its end. 1 But, jnst in this latter aspect lies that which is the distinctive characteristic of organic, as opposed to inorganic change. The external environment cannot, from this point of view, be con- ceived merely as a limit or external determinant of the living being, but must rather be regarded as a factor in the process of its life. And we may add that, in so regarding the in- organic, we cast a higher light upon its nature than when we take it as what it is in the abstraction of physical science, which looks merely to the relation of inorganic parts or ele- ments to each other. It was essential to the progress of physical science that final causes should be excluded ; and this meant primarily the exclusion of any reference of the inorganic to the organic, as an end to itself which subordinates other things to itself as its means. Nay, the same abstraction is necessary in regard to the organic being itself, which science often treats as the resultant of the action and reaction of in- organic parts, not as if this were the whole truth, but in order by this abstraction to take the first step in the difficult task of explaining the complex reality. But this necessary simplifica- tion of the problem in both cases is to be regarded as merely provisional ; and to regard it as the whole truth is, as we might express it in the language of Kant, to mistake phenomena for things in themselves, i.e., to take an element or factor of the real for the real itself. In the language of another philosophy, we have to recognise that " the truth " of the inorganic is the organic ; or, in other words, that we do not see the ultimate meaning of the inorganic, unless we regard it as a factor in the process of life. But this first correction of the abstraction of the physical The final application or view of the universe is not a complete solution of the anti- l ^^° m relation to the ._ _ intelligence. 1 Jhis, no doubt, is partially, though only partially, corrected in Mr, Spencer's restatement of it. 92 THE CRITIQUE OP PUKE REASON. B00K T - nomies which arise out of that view. If we universalised it, we should arrive at the conception of the world as an organic system, the principle of which was some anima mundi. Such a view would to a certain extent free us from the difficulties of the conception of an endless external determination of one object by another in space and time ; for it would set before us the idea of a self-limited or self-determined unity, which manifests itself in the outward process in which one thing seems to he merely determined by another. Such a unity, however, does not exist for itself but only for us, i.e., it is not one with the thought for which it is. Hence we can call it a self only by a kind of metaphor ; and it is only subject to this qualification that we can say that it is identical with itself through the changes of its existence, or that its environment is not an external limit to it but an element in its own life, because it makes that environment into a means for the main- tenance of itself and its kind. It is only a self-conscious being, which " is for itself in all that is for it." It alone separates the principle of the unity of its life, i.e., the self, from its own individual being and from the particular circumstances which condition it ; and therefore it is it alone that can find in both the manifestation of that principle. In self-consciousness, therefore, we find the only principle in relation to which, or as part of the life of which, the whole objective world can be regarded as organically connected. For, in relation to it, all the separate objects of the external world, which, from the mechanical point of view, seem to be confined to a reciprocal and external determination of each other, can, and indeed must, be regarded as the correlated manifestations of one self-determining principle ; and in relation to it, the serial succession of changing phenomena, which appear as causes and effects of each other, can, and must be regarded as phases in the development of one life. Thus, the externality of the outer world as existing in space, and the continuous change of its states in time are, so to speak, brought back to an CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 93 absolute unity and identity in the life of a self. The endless- ness of space and time is reduced into an element in the cyclical movement of a self-centred existence. Yet, we are not to understand this as meaning that time and space are, as Kant says, merely ideal ; but only that they have no reality except as elements in the process of the life of a conscious being, which cannot return to itself except as it opposes itself to an objective world in space and time, and which, therefore, must presuppose such a world as the correlate of the self. Now it is just this idea, — the idea that the world that exists for us is essentially related to the unity of self of which we become conscious only in opposition to the world, — that lifts us above the difficulties and antinomies which meet us whenever we take the world we know as a world of things in themselves, i.e., as a world which has a complete or independent existence apart from the self. Here we reach the highest point to which Hegel was led by changes in the Kantian the two corrections which, as we have seen, he made in the |*? or y , y. ,lioh ' ' this apphca- thought of Kant. Eecognising the correlativity of the opposite SSiS" 1 ' 5 qualification of the self and the world as in space and time, Hegel rejected Kant's doctrine that there is an essential contra- diction between the analytic judgment of self-consciousness and the synthetic judgment of knowledge, and recognised that the consciousness of self and of the object are correlative elements in the unity of a thought which is both analytic and synthetic at once. Expressing this idea formally, we may say that truth is to Hegel a syllogism in which these two judgments form the premises. Thus, what are to Kant irreconcilable extremes, are to him abstract elements which cannot be abso- lutely separated without confusion and contradiction. It is for him an ultimate law of intelligence that it can realise itself, or, what is the same thing, can realise its unity with itself, only in opposition to that which seems at first to be altogether independent of it, and which has characteristics just the oppo- site of its own. It is as against such an object that it comes to itself ; and it is just because it finds itself in the presence 94 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book i. of such a seemingly strange object that its activity is awakened to discover the content of that which thus seems to be exter- nally presented to it. When, however, we become conscious of the law which thus manifests itself in our experience, we are necessarily led to certain results which were hidden from Kant. In the first place, we are obliged to regard Kant's absolute distinction of perception and conception as resting upon the supposed contradiction between the unity of thought, which is purely analytic, and the matter of sense as apprehended under the forms of time and space, which are essentially forms of difference. In the second place, when we thus reduce the difference of thought and the matter which it determines to a merely relative distinction, or distinction of correlative opposites, we are inevitably carried on to a conception of the world as in unity with the intelligence, or as an organised system in which the intelligence is manifested. Lastly, this way of reflexion leads us to transform Kant's view of the relation of the phenomenon to the noumenon, and to regard the former as simply a factor of the latter, though usually it is treated as if it were in itself a complete reality, both by the ordinary unreflecting consciousness and by the one-sided reflexion of science. Stofthe The contrast of these two points of view may be made more intelligible and . - . . the empirical manifest, it we consider in the light of it Kant's solution of the characters. antinomy between freedom and the necessity of nature. In Kant's view, the category of causality, as schematised, can only connect phenomena with phenomena, but, divested of its schema, the bare category may be used as a bridge between the phenomenal and the noumenal. In this sense, the idea of a self-determining cause may be admitted, at least problematic- ally, without in any way interfering with the necessary causal connexion of natural phenomena. Nay, Kant thinks that in this way room may be found not only for one self-determining principle, on which the whole chain of natural causality depends, but also for a self-determining power in beings who, CHAP. xil. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 95 as empirically known, are merely finite substances determined to action from without according to necessary laws. Thus men may be considered as having at once an intelligible and an empirical character. In the former character, all their feelings, desires, and actions, are to be regarded only as links in the necessary chain of natural phenomena ; while, in the latter character, all these phenomena of their existence are the results of that inner principle of freedom which belongs to them as noumena. To this view the first objection is that, when Kant makes the ^T^fT* category of causality express the dependence of the phenomenal dpies? on the noumenal, he is allowing the pure conception, divested of its schema, to have a significance which elsewhere he refuses to it. For, apart from the schema, the category was supposed to mean nothing but the analytic unity of thought with itself, (here the analytic unity of the consequent with a reason which already contains it,) and it was only through the reflexion of the category upon time that it acquired the synthetic power of combining different phenomena which were not analytically connected. Here, however, the category by itself is allowed to express a synthesis not only of two different phenomena but of the two disparate worlds of noumena and phenomena. This is one of the indications that Kant, almost in spite of himself, represents the category as already different from the pure unity of analytic thought, and occupying a sort of intermediate position between it and the schema. In other words, the category already has something of a synthetic nature, though its syn- thesis is not supposed to have a necessary reference to a manifold given under conditions of time and space. 1 When we set aside this formal objection, however, we find should be regarded aa it difficult to regard the transition from phenomena to nou- ^™ n ^ e mena, and from necessity to freedom, as anything but an»S™ expression, — distorted by Kant's method of abstraction, but I0 " •Or, indeed, to any given manifold ; for the idea of a connexion between the phenoWnal and the noumenal excludes any such reference. 9 6 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B00K x - still an expression — of the truth that the externality of succes- sive phenomena, viewed as causes and effects of each other, disappears when brought in relation to the self for which they • are thus connected. What, from the abstract point of view in which "phenomena are regarded as separate though necessarily connected objects, appears as the determination of one phe- nomenon or object by another, is recognised as a mere aspect of what is really a process of self-determination, so soon as we take account of the unity in reference to which and within which alone the change can take place. If, however, we thus interpret Kant's language, we cannot think of the phenomenal world as something outside of the nournenal and determined by it, but must, on the contrary, regard the nournenal as the com- plete reality which is inadequately conceived as the phenomenal. Because he makes the nournenal more abstract than the phe- nomenal, Kant has been obliged to cut off the connexion between them and to reduce their relation to an external determination of the one by the other. But in this way he comes into collision with himself: for to conceive the pheno- menal as externally determined by the nournenal, as one pheno- menon is by another, is to forget that the former is the reality of which the latter is the appearance for us. thfphmome- ^he absolute division which Kant makes between noumena the IouIa°s an and phenomena, and especially between man in his nournenal object. reality and man in his phenomenal appearance, is closely con- nected with another defect of his system to which attention has already been drawn. Inner experience, as we have seen, occupies a dubious place in Kant's theory. In the first edition of the Critique,, it was simply regarded as part of the same connected consciousness into which outer experience also enters. In the second edition, it is seen to be posterior to outer experience and not capable of the same scientific treat- ment. But it is never distinctly recognised by Kant that inner experience includes outer experience and goes beyond it ; or, to put it otherwise, that outer experience is simply inner CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 97 experience regarded as apart from any reference to a thinking or even a feeling subject. Hence, he speaks of the defectively scientific character of Psychology, not seeing that the impossi- bility of satisfactorily determining mind as an object, in the same way that material objects are so determined, arises from the impossibility of making in its case the abstraction which we readily make in regard to material objects. Mind, as an object, will not submit to be treated as connected with other objects by the law of external necessity; because to treat it so, is to leave out of account that which is essentially distinctive of mind, that by reason of which it is more than a material object. But Kant, taking mind with all its phenomena as an object like other objects of experience, though one which we cannot perfectly determine, holds that its ideas, feelings, desires, etc., are to be regarded simply as states of an empirical sub- stance, which are nothing more than links in the chain of the necessity of nature ; and he allows us to regard man as free only when we take him as the subject for which he and all other objects are. But can ideas, desires, and feelings, be treated simply as states of an object of experience ? Can we talk of " states of consciousness " as if they were qualities or states of a material object ? Are not such " states " necessarily represented as forms of self-consciousness, which cannot be referred to any object except that which is also a subject ? In this sense, we may allow that Kant was expressing an im- portant truth when he spoke of the ego as standing in its own way when it tried to represent itself as an object. For it is impossible, in truth, to take a conscious self as one of the objects of experience, objects which are conceived as externally determining and determined by each other, without leaving out all its distinctive characters as a conscious being. Even an animal cannot be fully or adequately determined from such a point of view, much less an intelligence. We need higher categories to do justice to life and mind; and if experience means the determination of objects by the principle of VOL. II. G 98 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BOOK I. external necessity, we cannot have experience of such ob- jects. Now, it is because Kant did not observe this, because he still tried to take the self, with all its ideas, desires, and feelings, as an object of experience, (though he was obliged to confess that it could not adequately be determined as such,) that he was obliged, on the other hand, to make such an absolute division between the self as a self-determining subject in its noumenal reality, and the self as a known object or phenomenon. In truth, the self, in Kant's sense, never is presented to us as a phenomenon, aud none of what are called its states can be taken simply as links in the chain of the necessity of nature. Tor, as forms of self-consciousness, such states are already conceived as expressions of a principle, the unity and identity of which manifests itself in all their difference, in such a way that they cannot be conceived as externally determining each other, or as externally determined by anything else. To treat mind and its states as externally determining each other, or as subject to an external determination by other things, is simply to pretend to talk of mind and really to talk of matter. tms difficulty Now, as has been already stated, even matter cannot be fully applies even " " menai'view'of ano - adequately treated under the abstraction which leaves out SS? 10 of account its relation to the subject ; for ultimately matter is merely an element in the spiritual unity of the world. But still, it is possible to make the abstraction in question with a good result; and, indeed, it is necessary to make it, if we would not have the first steps of science embarrassed by consideration of its ultimate problems. For, as we have seen, in speaking of inorganic matter we are speaking of the abstract opposite of mind ; and we must, in the first instance, deal with it as such, under the appropriate categories, i.e., we must deal with it as a system of necessity. Ultimately, indeed, when we view such a system in the light of its neces- sary relation to the self that knows it, we learn that it is only an abstraction — one element in reality torn away from its CHAP. XII. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 99 necessary complement. But, as the mind must go out of itself in the consciousness of the external world, ere it can return to itself in self-consciousness, the ultimate interpretation of the world as spiritual is impossible, unless we are willing first to take it as it immediately presents itself, i.e., as a merely natural world. Or, perhaps, it would be more exactly to the point to say, that though poetic imagination may at once, in the way of immediate intuition, see the spiritual in the natural, such insight can become knowledge only through the slow process of science, which deals with nature in its abstrac- tion as nature, and reaches the use of the higher categories only when the explanation that can be given through the lower is exhausted. It is for this reason that the mathematical explanation of the world was prior to the dynamical explana- tion of it ; and if the dynamical explanation of it as a system of necessity has not yielded to a further explanation of it as part of a system of freedom, it is partly because the former explanation is still incomplete. While, however, this is true, we must observe that the Though more definitely to possibility of employing such an abstract method is limited by ^lSewo™"" the nature of the object, as well as by the needs of the subject lean mm ' of knowledge. In dealing with the inorganic world, we can make abstraction of any law but the law of necessity ; indeed, for a reason already stated, we must in the first instance do so. It is even possible, with a good result, to make the same abstraction in dealing with the physical existence of organic beings ; indeed, the science of Physiology is founded on such abstraction. 1 But what are we to make of Psychology on such a method, when the simplest determination of the life of a conscious subject as such is an idea, i.e., involves a reference to the unity of a self which can never be determined except as it determines itself ? If in this case the abstraction is capable of x It has, however, been shown above, Vol. I. 646, that the need for a correc- tion of the results of this method by higher categories, is more immediately felt hereihan in the physical sciences. 100 THE CRITIQUE OE PURE REASON. BOOK r - being made, and if we can thus have what may be called a natural science of mind, it is at least obvious that such a science involves a more immediate distortion of the facts than was implied in the other cases. If it be true in any sense that in man nature comes to itself, or comes to self-consciousness, how can we pursue the science of man without reference to this return, or regard the self-consciousness which is its result merely as a phenomenon connected with other phenomena according to the analogies of experience. In this case, the confusion of a convenient scientific abstraction, with a know- ledge of the object in its complete reality, will be much more dangerous ; nay, without great caution, it may turn the science of mind into a systematic perversion of the facts of mind by the omission of its most distinctive characteristic. A psycho- logy treated without reference to the unity of the self, would be the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted ; nor is it much better if that unity is merely named, and not used to explain any thing. Such a psychology may do some valuable service, not only in collecting and arranging the data for the science, but also in showing lines of connexion and relationship between them. But, as it must leave the central problem of mind untouched, it cannot give a final explanation of any of its phenomena. For it is impossible to find our way through that which is just the sphere of freedom by the aid of the categories of necessity. It was Kant's merit that his criticism rested from the first upon the principle, that it is impossible to apply to the subject the categories by which objects are determined as such ; and that in dealing with the third antinomy, he at least reserves a place beyond the region of necessity for the freedom of man as such a subject. And that freedom he was afterwards to prove on the evidence of the moral consciousness. It is also his merit that in the second edition of the Critique, he made some steps toward a view of inner experience, as not merely the consciousness of the self as an object among other objects, but as an outer experience freed CHAP. Xli. RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 101 from its abstraction, i.e., regarded as the experience of a self. He thus, at least, prepared the way for a better solution of the difficulty than he has given in the abrupt opposition of man as a phenomenal object under the law of necessity, to man as a noumenal subject under the law of freedom. It is true that, in his Critique of Practical Reason, we find little or no trace of this solution of the difficulty. Indeed throughout all Kant's ethical works his primary object seems to be rather to separate the spheres of nature and freedom ; and the idea of a reconciliation between them, though not entirely absent, is kept in the background. In the Critique of Judgment, however, that idea again becomes prominent, and under certain reservations, the objective teleology of organic life and the subjective teleology of the feeling of beauty, are used to fill up the chasm between nature and spirit, between necessity and freedom. 102 CHAPTER XIII. THE IDEAL OF PUKE KEASON, AND THE CRITICISM OF RATIONAL THEOLOGY. Bational Theology to those of Rational Psychology and Cos- mology. tl^obiem of T-TAVING considered the subjective unity of the self and Uah nal the objective unity of the world as noumena or ob- jects of reason, Kant now proceeds to consider an idea which implies the synthesis of these two terms : the Idea of God. Now, in his criticism of Rational Psychology, he had taken his stand on the formal unity of thought with itself, and had maintained that this unity cannot differentiate itself, and, therefore, cannot become object to itself: it necessarily remains in its simplicity as the pure subject presupposed in knowledge, and to treat it as an object is to deprive it of its essential characteristics. Again, in his criticism of Rational Cosmology, he had taken his stand on the essential difference of perception, and had argued that, though in experience that difference is necessarily brought under the unity of thought, yet its determination by that unity can never be completed ; for a complete return of the difference of sense into the unity of thought would be a determination of the world as a whole, and the world in space and time can never be known as a whole. Now, we might expect that, having thus shown the impossibility of conceiving either the subject in itself or the object in itself as a res completa, Kant would proceed to seek for CHAP. Xlil. RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 103 the absolute reality in the unity of subject and object. But it is not so. The two poles of Kant's speculation are the essentially disparate character of the faculties of sense and thought when we regard them in themselves, and their necessary combination with a view to experience. Hence, while , he condemns the idea of the bare subject as empty, and the idea of the world as a whole as self-contradictory, he is equally obliged to reject the idea of the unity of the objective world with the subject that knows it, as an im- possible attempt to unite two terms which can never be finally reconciled. In other words, he is obliged to treat the idea of an intuitive understanding as a ' mere idea,' the object of which can never be an object of knowledge. The result of this way of thinking is shown in the criticism of Eational Theology. The subject naturally divides itself into two parts. In the Two main problems of first place, Kant considers the origin of the Ideal of pure j^™*' reason, or, in other words, of the Idea of God. In the second place, he examines the well-known arguments by which Rational Theology has attempted to prove the exist- ence of a Being corresponding to that Idea. 1. How do we acquire the Idea of God? The logical The transcen- ^ dental princi- law of excluded middle enables us to say that every pre-gj^ffigSl dicate must be either affirmed or denied of every subject. We can always lay down with certainty that "A is or is not B," whatever A or B may mean. But such a dichot- omy has nothing to do with the question of the reality or unreality of the thing, the conception of which is the subject of predication. The proposition "A is B" may be true or false; it tells us nothing in either case as to the existence or non-existence of A, but only what is contained in the conception of it. But beyond this merely formal principle, which shows us only how things are possible as objects of thought, i.e., what are the conditions of their determination as such objects, there is a -'transcend- 104 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book i. ental principle of the complete determination" of them as objects of knowledge. In other words, we claim a right to speak not only of conceptions hut of things, and to say of every thing, not merely that only one of two contradictory predicates can be included in its conception, but that the thing itself must be determined, positively or negatively, in relation to every possible predicate. Now "this asser- tion involves more than the principle of contradiction ; for it contemplates not merely the relation of two contradic- tory predicates of a thing, but also the relation of the thing to the whole compass of possibility, as the sum-total of all the predicates of things." But this means that every thing that exists is completely determined, and therefore that "in order to know anything completely, I must know all that is possible, and determine the object by this knowledge, either affirmatively or negatively." Hence, we cannot think of anything as existing without putting it in relation to a whole that includes not only all that is actually given, but all that can be given. In short, we have an idea of the complete determination of objects as such, and in all our partial determination of them in experience, we are guided and stimulated by the belief that each object is completely and, indeed, individually determined; and this seems to carry with it the consequence, that every simple predicate of reality must be capable of being either affirmed or denied of every object, its origin due Now, we may best discover the value of this principle partly to a log- ' •> r r ah^Menden- if w e ask what is its origin. It obviously contains two prmcip e. (jjg^jjgyjgj^jg e i erne nts : the idea of a totality in relation to which all objects must be determined, and the idea that that totality may be defined as the sum of positive predi- cates, and that therefore the only distinction between things lies in the greater or smaller number of these predicates that are negated in them. The former of these ideas is a direct consequence of the transcendental deduction, which shows CHAP. xiii. RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 105 that all objects, as they must be brought in relation to one self, must form part of one context of experience, and be determined in relation to all other parts of it. The latter idea follows from the law of thought, according to which positive and negative determination absolutely exclude each other, when we consider the law of thought as a law of the determination of things in themselves. To begin with the latter of these points. It is Kant's con- stant presupposition that it is by pure thought that things in themselves must be determined, if they can be determined or known to us at all. And it follows from his view of the law of thought that, in this application, all positive predicates must be taken as expressing existence, and all negative predicates as expressing non-existence. In other words, there can be no unity of affirmation and negation in the determination of things in themselves by thought, whatever may be the case with phenomena as known through perception. Tor, in the former case, the logical law that affirmation and negation exclude each other, gets a transcendental meaning, or is taken as a principle for the determination of objects. " Logical negation," says Kant, " which is expressed simply by the word ' Not,' is not properly attached to any conception, but only in- dicates the relation of one conception to another in a judgment : it is far, therefore, from being sufficient of itself to express any element in the content of a conception. To attach the predicate Not-mortal to any subject cannot enable us to recognise a mere non-existence as part of the idea of it, but leaves the content of that idea wholly unaffected. But a transcendental negation, on the other hand, signifies absolute not-being, and is the opposite of the transcendental affirmation, which, according to the essential conception of it, expresses a being or reality. Hence, through it alone, and so far as it extends, we have objects determined as things in themselves, while the opposite negation signifies a mere defect or absence of reality ; and if such negation is not qualified byany affirmation,it represents the denial of any being whatever." 106 THE CRITIQUE OF PUKE REASON. BOOK I. The en» realissimum as an individual completely determined a priori, These principles, however, necessarily lead us to the idea of an ens realissimum, which is the sum of all positive reality to the exclusion of all negation. And, as the exclusion of all negation is the exclusion of all opposition and reciprocal limitation, this ens realissimum is necessarily conceived as one individual thing or Being. " The thing in itself is represented as containing all reality in itself, and, therefore, is completely determined. In other words, the conception of the ens real- issimum is the conception of an individual Being ; because it necessarily is determined by one out of every possible pair of contradictory predicates, viz., that one which involves being." Here, therefore, we have the one case in which a general idea enables us completely to determine an individual object. " This is the one proper ideal of which human reason is capable ; for only in this one case have we a conception which is in itself universal, and which, nevertheless, is completely deter- mined in itself, and is therefore recognised as the idea of an individual." But, further, as this idea contains all reality, it contains " the material of ,all possibility." For no one can definitely think a negation, except on the basis of the opposite affirma- tion. The blind cannot know his blindness, if he has never seen the light. The ignorant cannot be conscious of his ignorance, if he has absolutely no idea of knowledge. Hence, all negative conceptions are secondary or deduced conceptions. And the conception of any finite thing or being can be nothing but the conception of the infinite with the negation of some of its predicates. Just, therefore, as in the logical process of dichotomy by contradiction, we can proceed to divide any genus into species determined by the position or negation of any other given conception, so here it seems open to us to assert that everything must be positively or negatively determined in regard to every predicate contained in the conception of the ens realissimum. And, as all possible affirmative predicates are so contained, it seems as if we were thus enabled to determine chap. xm. RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 107 each particular thing, not merely by adding predicate to predi- cate as they are given in experience, but by limiting our a priori idea of the ens realissimum, as the unity of all positive being. In this way the idea of the whole of existence, (omnitudo Its reIa t'°n to 3 x finite things. realitatis,) which is presupposed in the determination of all objects, is naturally and almost inevitably taken as knowledge of a thing in itself, which is the condition of everything else. And " the manifold nature of things is only an infinitely various manner of limiting the conception of the highest reality, which is their common substratum, just as all figures are possible only as modes of limiting infinite space." We cannot, however, say that the ens realissimum is a mere aggregate of all the different individuals, which are determined by limitation of it. On the contrary, they presuppose it, and it must there- fore be taken, like infinite space prior to division by finite figures, as simple and individual. Nor, again, can we suppose that finite things are divisions or parts of the ens realissimum; for that would be to introduce limitation, and so negation or non-existence, into that which is purely affirmative, or posi- tively existent. We must, therefore, suppose that the highest reality is the ground of the possibility of all finite things, and that they are not limits of it, but merely of its complete result or product. And thus the characteristics that belong to the world of sense, and to sense itself as finite, are not parts of the idea of the ens realissimum, though they may be regarded as belonging to the series of its effects. " If thus we hypostatise this "idea of the ens realissimum, and follow it up to its legiti- mate development, we will be able to determine the absolute Being, through the mere conception of the highest reality, as a Being who is individual, simple, all-sufficient, eternal : in short, we can determine him in his unconditioned perfection under every category. Now, this is the idea of God in a transcen- dental sense, and therefore the Ideal of pure reason, as just defined, is the object of a transcendental Theology." 1 1 A. 579 ; B. 608. 108 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. BOOK I. eriSSlmof When, however, we proceed to construct such a Theology, pro(Jllced hus we are forgetting the nature of the idea in question, and the necessary conditions of its use. It is true that in the determina- tion of things, as they are given in experience, we always pre- suppose the idea of their complete determination in relation to the totality of possible experience. But, in the first place, in determining the objects of experience we cannot separate affirmation and negation as we do in pure thought, and, there- fore, the idea of the ens realissimum does not correspond to the idea of a totality of empirical determination ; and, in the second place, we have no right to suppose that the idea of the totality of empirical determination represents any objective reality. The things known in experience have no existence out of the experience in which they are known ; and, from the nature of experience, their determination can never reach totality. A totality of all experience, and a determination of any individual thing in relation to that totality, is impossible ; though it is the ideal of such a totality which stimulates all our successive efforts to combine our experiences. But, when we suppose that this ideal represents an actual object which is capable of being- determined, we are transgressing the limits of its proper use in three ways. In the first place, we are turning an idea, which is the presupposition of experience, but can never be realised in it, into an actual object. In the second place, we are turning the ideal unity of experience into a real unity of things in themselves. And in the third place, we are turning the dis- tributive conception of a totality into the individual conception of one Being, who includes all reality in himself. In short, we first realise what is merely an ideal of experience, then we treat this realised ideal of experience as an idea of the unity of all things in themselves, and, lastly, we regard this unity as separate from, yet presupposed in, all things ; we conceive it as an individual, and, indeed, as a personal God. 1 Genevai^efect From this point of view we are prepared to criticise the of the Being . . of God. 1 A. 582 ; B. 610. CHAP. xnr. RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 109 different supposed proofs of the Being of God. In general we may say that they are all based on the connexion which is supposed to exist between two conceptions, the conception of an ens realissimum, and the conception of a necessary Beino. A necessary Being is the presupposition to which we are led by a natural and inevitable tendency of our reason. Following this natural dialectic, " we begin, not with mere conceptions, but with common experience, laying a basis for thought in actual existence. But this ground sinks beneath us if it does not rest on the immovable rock of absolute necessity. And this necessity itself would require something else to rest on, if there were any empty space beyond or beneath- it, if it did not itself fill all things so as to leave no room for a question as to its cause," i.e., if it were not an infinite reality. 1 Where, then, are we to find the conception of a Being whom we can thus determine as absolutely necessary ? Beason, when it looks about for such a conception, finds none that answers its purpose, none that has not in it something discordant with the idea of absolute necessity, except the idea of the ens realissimum. For, as the ens realissimum contains in it the condition of all that is possible, it requires itself no preceding condition, and is in- capable of any. We cannot, indeed, say that only such a Being is absolutely necessary, for there is no contradiction in supposing a limited being to be necessary ; but we can say that only the ens realissimum, only a Being which contains all reality in itself, can be seen from the very idea of it to be necessary. If, therefore, we were obliged to make up our mind one way or another as to the nature of necessary Being, we should inevitably decide that it is the ens realissimum. But if we are not obliged to make up our mind, (and apart from prac- tical considerations, which we have not here to consider, there seems to be no such obligation,) the fact that necessity might be possibly conjoined with finitude is enough to weaken the force of any argument which identifies the necessary Being with the ens realissimum. 'A. 584; B. 612. 110 THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON. B00K 1 - a4umen e ta. This and otlier logical defects attaching to the arguments for the Being of God will, however, become obvious if we examine them in detail. " There are only three modes of proving the existence of a Deity on grounds of speculative reason. We may start from determinate experience and the peculiar constitu- tion of the world of sense which is known in such experience ; and we may rise from this, according to principles of causality, to a highest Cause," who in his works manifests his char- acter. We may start again from indeterminate experience, from the mere existence of some empirically known object, and conclude therefrom to the existence of a first cause or necessary Being. Or, lastly, we may abstract from all experience, and deduce the existence of God from the a priori idea of him. The first is the Physico-theological, the second the Gosmological, and the third the Ontological argument. This is the natural order in which these arguments appear in the development of reason. But it is better to discuss them in the reverse order, because, as will soon appear, that is the order in which they logically presuppose each other. ui^o'toi 8 °t- The ,/?rs£ argument is that because the idea of God includes The OJ " ° ■ ideaofcom- is, that the ideal, by which the intelligence is stimulated and p^? $j$£~ guided in determining the objects of experience, is confused unity of an positive predi- with an actually experienced object. This object is next cate»;(s) the J r J J idea of an in- treated as a thing in itself, an ens realissimum, which includes gtandm™r el ' all reality ; and, as it is known by pure thought, the principles consciousness. of identity and contradiction are applied to it, and that, not merely in a logical, but in a transcendental sense. Now Kant, as we have seen in a previous chapter, did not object to the Leibnizian view of the determination of things by pure thought, but only denied that such determination could ever produce knowledge. He admits, therefore, that the abso- 118 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book r. lute reality, if determined at all, must be determined only by pure affirmation, without any negation, and that all negative predicates must be regarded as expressing only the absence of the corresponding positive predicates. According to this principle, the infinite is to be represented simply by negating, or removing the limit from all finite existences, or in Cartesian language, by taking the affirmative predicates of the finite sensn eminentiori. Lastly, this omnitudo realitatis is conceived as an individual subject, which is not, however, like the human sub- ject, limited by an object given to it from without, but which creates its own object, or in' whose consciousness of self the existence of the object is at the same time given ; it is, in the language of later philosophy, an absolute subject-object. The idea of God, therefore, arises out of the union or con- fusion of three elements, which are clearly distinguishable from each other : (1) the idea of completed experience ; (2) the idea of the unity of all positive predicates ; and (3) the idea of the absolute subject-object, or perceptive understanding. The first of these, taken by itself, is an ideal, which can never be com- pletely realised, though it is always being partially realised, in experience ; the second, taken by itself, is a subjective and merely logical form of thought, of whose objective reality or even possibility, we can say nothing ; the third is the idea of an intelligence which transcends the dualism between the logical and real which belongs to our intelligence ; but of its existence or its conditions, we know, and can know, nothing. thrsecond" 16 After wha.t has been said elsewhere, we do not need to add iy imMssfwe." much in criticism of the second of these ideas of Kant. 1 If we the first _ 1 becomes iden- deny that there is any purely analytic movement of thought, tified with the J ... third. which contrasts with its synthetic movement in relation to given matter of sense, we must equally reject the Spinozistic conception of a unity of all affirmative predicates. In abstract- See above, Vol. I. 340 seq. Kant, as we have seen, held that affirmation and negation do not exclude but imply each other in the empirical determination of objects under the conception of Degree (Vol. I. 446). chap. xiii. .RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 119 ing from the negative determination of things, we at the same time abstract from their affirmative determination ; and the ultimate result at which, by this negative process, we arrive, is the mere blank notion of Being — i.e., not the absolute fulness of existence, but the absolute void. The scepticism, therefore, which Kant directs against this conception as an object of knowledge, can be turned against it as an object of pure thought. When we have got rid of this logical spectre, and have dis- covered that thought is always synthetic as well as analytic, negative as well as positive, the two remaining ideas, the idea of completed experience, and the idea of the absolute subject- object, begin to approximate to each other. For, if thought is not absolutely opposed to perception, then the forms of time and space and the categories cease to be heterogeneous, and the ground of the absolute opposition between phenomena and noumena is taken away. In other words, we no longer find that insoluble contradiction between the factors of experience, which forced Kant to regard the unity of a perceptive understanding as a ' mere idea.' On the contrary, we now discern that, even in experience, thought transcends the dualism which it creates between subject and object, between itself and things ; though it is true that the complete reconciliation of these opposites can be achieved only in the whole process of the development of science and philosophy. While Kant, therefore, is right in regarding all our experience as springing from an ideal which is implied, but not realised, in it, he is wrong in regarding this first presupposition as a mere idea that cannot be realised. For, what is not and cannot in some way be realised, cannot be even so much as an ideal. To suppose that all experience is an effort after that, which the very nature of experience precludes us from attaining, is a conception which contains an absolute contradic- tion. It is possible, indeed, to suppose that, merely in terms of ordinary experience, the ultimate problem of experience cannot be solved, and that it is necessary for that solution to rise to 120 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book I- Kant balances the first and second of these ideas against each other, so as to exclude the third. Kant s criti- cism of the Ontological argument. higher categories than those of causality and reciprocity ; but it is not possible to think that there is any absolute hindrance to the solution of a problem which is involved in the very idea of knowledge, and of the intelligence itself. We may turn against Kant his own remark, that if the questions of reason could not be answered, they could not be asked. The problem itself is the beginning of the solution. One insoluble contra- diction would logically involve absolute scepticism, for it would throw a doubt on the very principle out of which all knowledge springs ; knowledge, therefore, cannot be vindicated, even as the knowledge of phenomenal appearance, if it is absolutely severed from the knowledge of noumenal reality. Kant conceals the contradiction involved in his view of knowledge by what is really a see-saw. He balances against each other the first and the second of the three conceptions, which have just been mentioned, in such a way as to exclude the third. He admits the conception of a unity of all affirma- tives, so far as to condemn the world of experience as merely phenomenal, because it involves real oppositions. He admits the conception of the unity of all experience through all its differences and oppositions, so far as to condemn the logical idea as merely subjective and ' empty,' because its movement is by mere identity. And, while he thus alternates between the merely logical and the merely empirical, he never rises to a higher idea of unity ; or if he does rise to it, and even goes so far as to name it ' perceptive understanding,' it is only to reject it again, because it does not contain the two previous ideas in their separation and opposition to each other. His criticism of the arguments for the Being of God (which are really different forms of expression for the transition to this higher idea of unity) is therefore little more than a reassertion of the funda- mental dualism which pervades every part of the Critique. To the Ontological argument, which in his view is pre- supposed in all the others, and which asserts an ultimate unity of thought and being, he opposes simply the assertion of their chap. xiii. RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 121 difference. A hundred dollars in thought are not a hundred dollars in the pocket. Being is not a proper predicate of a conception, for it expresses that which is not in conception merely but also in perception, and it is absurd to make into a part of our thought of an object the very predicate, of which the essential meaning is that the object is not merely a thought. In this criticism there is again disclosed what we may ^™ e Y r °e^ s an call the connatural wound of Kant's system. As has al- o? tteresTu ready been shown, there are in the Critique of Pure Reason Deduction, two conflicting views of the relation of thought to exist- ence. From one point of view, the consciousness of exist- ence is supposed to be added by thought to perception ; while, from another point of view, perception is supposed to be referred to objects by thought, which connects the manifold of sense according to the analogies of experience. This subject, however, has already been sufficiently discussed in a previous chapter, in which it was shown that Kant's idea of an object completely determined in thought and yet merely possible, comes into collision with another idea which is essential to his system, — the idea, namely, that it is the connexion of experience which enables us to distinguish reality from illusion, or, we should rather say, to assign to each object the kind of reality that belongs to it. The source of this antinomy has also been explained. The ambiguous mixture of the psychological with the metaphysical in Kant's transcendental method, makes him confuse an account of a supposed genesis of experience out of elements supposed to exist prior to experience, with the analysis which detects in experience elements not previously recognised there : it makes him appear to be moving from the concrete to the abstract, when he is really moving from the abstract to the concrete. The idea that in some way we are conscious of perceptions as states of our being, prior to the act of intelligence in which we determine them bv categories and refer them to 122 THE CKITIQUE OP PUEE BEASON. book i. objects of experience, always with Kant lurks in the back- ground, even after he has shown that, we can be conscious of perceptions as our perceptions only in relation to the objects to which conception refers them. Thus he obscures and even denies the correlativity of perception and conception in the judgment of knowledge, and revives the old prejudice, that existence is just that which is not thought. Yet, it was the most important result of his own work to prove that that prejudice involves an absolute inversion of the truth, and that pure thought or self-consciousness is just the reflexion — the return into itself — of the consciousness of objects as such. the'ideaSfthe When this is seen, the difficulty, which made Kant, in peraptionand spite of his own transcendental deduction, recur to an ulti- mate opposition of thought and being, is finally removed. The old dictum, nihil in intelleetu quod non pritis in sensu, which was supposed to be the strongest possible statement of the principle of Sensationalism, is seen to be the corner- stone of a true Idealism. For all it can mean is, that there is no conception which is not a ' recognition ' of the meaning of perception, — a doctrine which involves, on the other side, that it is only in conception that perception can be said to " come to itself," i.e., to reveal itself as that which it really is. The transcendental method, therefore, leads directly to the discovery of the relativity of the distinction between per- ception and conception, and, hence, to the negation of any absolute opposition between existence and thought. It teaches us to accept without reserve the principle, that there is no existence which is not an existence for thought. In fact, it makes us regard it as the main business of philosophy, to work out the consequences of that principle, and by it to correct the abstract and imperfect views of things, which are Kant's argu- due to a neglect of it. ment is good ° Dogmatic™ ^" s criticism of Kant's argument does not affect it as attacked hy he an argumentum ad hominem against the rational Theology CHAP. xiii. RATIOKAL THEOLOGY. 123 of his immediate predecessors. A philosopher, who takes his start with the conception of God as a given subject and, by the mere analysis of that conception attempts to prove his existence, might as naturally think to pay his debts by including the notion of existence in his thought of a hundred dollars. But it is quite a different thing, if we regard that argument as pointing to the ultimate unity of thought and Being, which is at once the presupposition and the end of all knowledge. Taken in this sense, the argument is but one example of the principle that abstract or imperfect conceptions of reality give rise to contradic- tions, and so force us to put them in relation to the other conceptions which complement and complete them. For pure thought cannot be conceived as dwelling in itself, but only as relating itself to existence, to a world in time and space; and it is only (1) through the opposition between itself and such a world, and (2) through the transcendence of that opposi- tion, that it can come to the full consciousness of itself. In the language of Theology, the Ontological argument expresses the doctrine that God as a spirit is necessarily self-revealing in and to the world. The other arguments properly express the same transi- so also Kant's ° r r J r objections to tion from the other side — that of the world; and to Kant's ^^^ treatment of them, therefore, the same criticism may be STrather' applied. Good , as argumenta ad hominem, his objections do essence. not touch the validity of the process of thought whereby the mind rises from the finite to the infinite. In other words, the Wolffian form of the cosmological and physico- theological arguments disappears before Kant's objection, but not the transition of thought, which is imperfectly expressed in these arguments. It is true, for instance, that the ordinary syllogistic argu- The process of ' J J a o thoug htin ment from the world to God has the fatal defect of putting ^|™ S s 3 ivean(1 more in the conclusion than is contained in the premises. ne g T ati°elswen It is a pyramid of reasoning that rests not on its base, but 124 THE CRITIQUE OF PUKE REASON. B00K *• on its apex; for, while it may be true that the world is, because God is, we cannot say conversely that God is, be- cause the world is. According to the rules of syllogism, even when aided by the principle of causality, we can only argue from the finite to the finite, from one part of the world to another, and not from the finite to the infinite, or from the world to God. This would be a fatal objection to the argu- ment, if the analytic syllogism with its movement by identity, were the only movement of thought; if there were no such thing as a synthesis, by which an imperfect and inadequate idea could lead to one more perfect and adequate; if thought were always related positively, and never also negatively, to its starting point. Kant himself, however, is not altogether without the idea of another kind of argument than the syl- logistic. In a remarkable passage already quoted, he tells us that the intelligence at first takes its stand upon the reality of experience, and that it is because this ground sinks beneath us, i.e., because experience itself qualifies its object as contingent, that we are forced to look deeper for a necessary Being, to communicate to the contingent, a reality which it has not in itself. 1 Now, this account of the men- tal process only needs to be developed and freed from Kantian presuppositions, to become a true account of the immanent logic of Eeligion, the logic that underlies the elevation of human thought from the finite to the infinite. It is a logic not reducible to syllogistic rule, because it is synthetic and not merely analytic, because it involves differ- ence as well as identity, because it has a negative as well as a positive side. Why do we seek in things, in the world, and in ourselves, a truth, a reality, which we do not find in their immediate aspect as phenomena of the sensible world ? It is because the sensible world as such is incon- sistent with itself, and thus points to a higher reality. We 1 See above, p. 109. It might be shown that the Transcendental Deduction itself is an argument of this kind. chap, xiii, RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 125 believe in the infinite, not because of what the finite is, but quite as much because of what the finite is not; and our first idea of the former is, therefore, simply that it is the negation of the latter. All religion springs out of the sense of the nothingness, unreality, transitoriness — in other words, of the essentially negative character of the finite world. Yet, this negative relation of the mind to the finite is at the same time its first positive relation to the infinite. 'We are near waking when we dream that we dream,' and the consciousness of a limit is already at least the germinal consciousness of that which is beyond it. The extreme of despair and doubt can only exist as the obverse of the highest certitude, and is in fact necessary to it. Now, the cosmological argument represents this transition Negative side " ° A of the oosmo- in the simplest aspect ; but if we take it in its positive form l ^^ wt . (" Because the contingent is, therefore the necessary being is "), without also observing that it might with at least equal force be expressed negatively ("Because the contingent is not, there- fore the necessary being is "), it is exposed to all the objections of Kant. To argue positively from the contingency of the world to the existence of a necessary being, which is external to it and related to it only as cause to effect, is to reduce the necessary being to another contingent. For, if the world is determined only as an effect, and is conditioned by its cause, the necessary being is at the same time determined only as a cause, and is conditioned by his effect. The transition from the contingent to the necessary, from the finite to the infinite, however, is one which ' sublates,' or forces us to give a new meaning to, the category by means of which the transition is made. The first becomes last, and the last becomes first ; and the finite, so far as it is regarded as still having some kind of reality, is only a mode of the infinite. This is the conscious logic of systems like that of Spinoza, as it is the unconscious logic of all those religions which have a Pantheistic basis. In such philosophical and religious systems the fundamental 126 THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON. book i. thought is, that ' the world of finite beings is nothing, and that God is all in all': the highest reality is determined solely by abstraction from the finite, and all the difference and change of the phenomenal world is lost or absorbed in the idea of an absolute substance, of whom we can say nothing, except that lie or It is. sid e positiTe -A- 11 ^ m ^ia, m( ieed, lies the imperfection of the argument a contingentia mundi, as well as of the Pantheistic idea of God to which it leads. It reaches the Infinite only by negation of the finite : hence, its infinite has no positive determination except through the finite. Further, if, according to this logic, all finite existence is equally lost in God, yet it is also true that all finite existence equally is referred to God. Hence it is that Pantheism as a religion so easily associates itself with Polytheism, and the adoration of an ineffable Being who cannot be brought under any predicate whatever, passes at a stroke into a wayward idolatry that deifies anything and everything. The Being of whom we only know that He is, is yet " As full, as perfect, in a hair a3 heart.'' The distance of the finite from the infinite annihilates all dis- tinctions, and all things and beings are equally near to the Absolute and equally far from it. Everything, as apart from God, is denied, yet everything, in God, is reaffirmed ; and the pure abstraction of Being sinks, as in the popular religion of India, into an endless confusion of deities without definite character or relations to each other. fromlttTthe Bufc tne lesson to be learnt from this imperfection of the uwoTo^cai cosmological argument and of the religion that corresponds to argument. , . it, is not simply, as Kant argues, that it is invalid, but that we cannot stop short with it. The idea of God as merely the infinite, or merely the necessary Being, is unsatisfactory, even self-contradictory, and that in the same way as the argument which leads us to this idea of him ; but the discernment of its imperfection prepares the way for a better argument and a higher idea. What Kant refutes, therefore, is not the idea of chap. xiii. RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 12 7 God, the idea of a unity to which the finite and contingent are to be referred, but this form of the idea. That the physico-theological argument grows out of the ?? e p 11 ?^™- r •> o o b theological .cosmological is shown by the actual development of Greek thfXnothds d - philosophy. Absolute necessity is one with freedom, for it is as a stop in the advance the necessity of self-determination. The unity of the Eleatics ££™ u j[l 0U8 and the fate of Heraclitus grows into the self-determining reason of Anaxagoras. The idea of final cause which rules the Aristotelian philosophy is also the idea which underlies all monotheistic religions. Under that idea the world is reduced into a mere matter, in which God executes his purposes. As a syllogistic argument, indeed, the argument from design is open to all the objections which Kant, following Hume, brings against it. The externality of the matter on which God acts makes God finite, and the notion of creation introduced by the Jewish religion cuts the knot instead of untying it. Further, as Kant argues, the designs which are executed in the world are finite ; we cannot conclude from them to infinite, but only to very great wisdom and power. Or, to look at the objection from the other side : there is no definite connexion between the particular designs realised in the world and the nature of God. In the Aristotelian philosophy this defect is shown by the irreconcilable opposition between the pure self-consciousness of God and the finite world, which yet is declared to exist only through the divine energy. In monotheistic religions the same defect is shown in the assertion of arbitrary will as the source of all created existence. It is of God's ' mere good pleasure ' that all things are and subsist. The imperfection of the argu- ment from final causes and the imperfection of monotheistic religions are, therefore, one and the same thing ; and it gives rise to objections which are fatal to this particular way of con- ceiving that absolute unity which we call God. As, however, we cannot, without self-contradiction, avoid the assertion of the absolute unity in one form or other, — as that unity, in fact, is» presupposed in all thought and experience, — no objections 128 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book t. can force us to surrender the idea of God itself, though they may force us to give a new form to that idea. As the cosmo- logical argument implicitly contained the physico-theological, so the physico-theological argument contains the ontological. Absolute necessity was seen by Greek philosophy to be equiva- lent to freedom ; absolute freedom again, in its turn, is found to be not mere arbitrary self-determination or will, but self- revealing spirit. Or, what is the same thing, Pantheism and Monotheism are necessary stages, through which human thought passes on its way to Christianity. Transition to To understand this, we have only to consider that the very the ontologi- ^ an'rtSe ment defects which Kant finds in the argument from design, and ideaof a God. consequently in the idea of God as a designer, are remedied when we apply to the divine nature this higher category. God is the unity of intelligence, conceived as necessarily related to, or manifested in, a world in space and time, yet through that world returning upon itself. In other words, the ontological argument — the argument from thought to being — when relieved of its imperfect syllogistic and therefore analytic form, is simply the expression of that highest unity of thought and being, which all knowledge presupposes as its beginning and seeks as its end. Idealism, in the sense that all things and beings con- stitute a system of relations which finds its unity in mind, that every intelligence contains in it the form of the universe, and that, therefore, all knowledge is but the discovery of that which is already our own — the awaking of a self-consciousness, which involves at the same time a consciousness of God — this Idealism is the real meaning of the ontological argument, and the only meaning in which it is defensible. It is, in fact — to repeat what has already been said — simply that idea which Kant con- stantly rejects, but to which he ever returns, the idea of a perceptive understanding. Result of the The above paragraphs very shortly summarise an argument above argu- " ° «on toYant which it would require a complete treatise on Natural Theology to develop. But enough has been said to exhibit Kant's posi- chap. xm. RATIONAL THEOLOGY. 129 tion in relation to previous as well as to subsequent philosophy. Kant's criticisms of the arguments for the being of God form ^ an era in the history of philosophical Theology, just because they finally explode the method of dogmatism, and enable us to see what is the only point of view from which such a Theology is possible. His aim throughout is to show that the only unity of thought and being which can be known, is the unity of experience, and that this, therefore, is the only realisa- tion of that ideal to which men have generally given the name of God ; or, at least, the only realisation of it cognisable by the speculative reason. After what Kant has said, it is vain to repeat the old arguments in the old form. The only question that can now be put is, whether the unity of experience which he recognises, does not itself implicitly contain that very idea of God as a perceptive understanding, which he rejects ; whether, in fact, the legitimate development of Criticism, involving as it does the final rejection of the ' thing in itself,' does not at once carry us beyond a' merely ' transcendental ' Idealism. "We have not, however, exhausted Kant's contribu- tion to the discussion of this question, till we have considered how, on the basis of man's moral consciousness, he attempts to restore that theological idea, which from a theoretical point of view, he regards as merely problematical. VOL. II. 130 CHAPTER XIV. THE REGULATIVE USE OF THE IDEAS OF REASON. Function of the Ideas of Reason in relation to experience. TN various parts of the Dialectic, and particularly in the discussion of the Antinomies, Kant points out that the Ideas of reason, though they do not give us any knowledge of things in themselves, yet have an important function in relation to experience. But in a special section at the close, he endeavours to put this truth in a clearer light, and to deter- mine more precisely the office of reason in the production and organisation of empirical knowledge. To this section, which sums up briefly the general lesson of the Critique, we must now devote a little attention. Kant begins by saying that " everything that is grounded in the very nature of our mental powers, must have a meaning and purpose which is in harmony with the proper use of these powers." 1 And reason with its ideas cannot be an exception to this rule. Now, reason, as we have seen, never deals directly with objects as they are given in perception ; but only indirectly as they are determined by the understanding. Its only function is to give direction and systematic unity to the work of the understanding. It brings with it ah ideal of Unity in Totality, Totality in Unity, which it seeks to realise in knowledge ; but the only weapons it can use for this purpose are conceptions and perceptions. The great aim of Criticism, 1 A. 642 ; B. 670. CHAP. xiv. REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 131 therefore, is to prevent us from mistaking this idea, which is merely a principle for the organisation of experience, for an " actual object beyond experience. " The transcendental ideas -• have no constitutive, but only a regulative use ; in other words, their use is to direct all the operations of the under- standing to a certain end, to which all the rules of understand- ing concentrate as their point of union. This point is indeed a mere idea, or focus imaginarms, since it lies beyond the sphere of experience, and the conceptions of the understanding do not find their source in it ; yet it serves to give to these conceptions the greatest possible unity combined with the most extended application." 1 This will be seen more clearly if we consider the different forms in which this idea presents itself to us. Now, in the first place, all our empirical investigations are 1^™ A v le stimulated and directed by the search for unity. The logical ? enei 'y- rule, Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter neeessitatem, seems indeed at first to be a mere principle of economy or conciseness; but when we consider things more closely, we find that there is a transcendental principle of reason underlying it. By the very nature of our intelligence, difference and multiplicity are a problem to us ; and all our attempts to explain phenomena have relation to a projected or assumed unity of principle beneath them, however little we may be able to determine the nature of this unity in particular cases. Hence it is that in Psychology we can never satisfy ourselves with the reference of the different activities of thought to so many different faculties, but are ever driven to seek for some fundamental power of which these supposed faculties are but the different forms or manifestations. Hence it is also that in Physics and Chemistry we are ever seeking for some fundamental element or force, which underlies and explains the difference of sub- stances and the variety of their changes. In setting this ideal before us, reason does not beg the question, for it does not * ! A. 644 ; B. 672. turn. 132 THE CRITIQUE OF PUKE REASON. book i. determine what kind or degree of unity is to be found in i experience ; but it certainly commands us to seek for unity, and from the duty which it thus imposes on us, no amount of unsuccessful effort can ever release us. Dependent as our reason is upon experience for all the materials with which it deals, it cannot pretend to arrive at any result by its own pure energy ; yet, on the other hand, it can never admit that in all the apparent diversity of nature, there is any absolute and insoluble difference of principle, however little it may be able to say what is the nature of the one principle after which it seeks. To renounce the search for unity would be for reason to renounce itself. of h sp^5S le But, in the second place, the tendency to generalisation and identity is balanced by another tendency to specification and distinction. This second tendency is necessary in order to check that levity and superficiality of thought which prema- turely snatches at an abstract and empty generic unity, without having regard to the multiplicity of species and individuals included under it. And if the former, which we may term the idealistic tendency, is necessary to prompt men to the explana- tion of Nature, the latter, which may be designated the empirical tendency, is necessary to prevent facts from being explained away, and to bring into prominence the diversity which often underlies the superficial identity of things called by one name. Logicians, accordingly, are wont to lay down the rule, that Entium varietates non temere esse minuendas. But " this logical law also would be without meaning or appli- cation, if it did not rest on a transcendental principle of Specification, a principle which does not indeed involve the assertion of an actual infinity of difference in the objects of our knowledge, . . . but which nevertheless lays upon our understanding the obligation to seek under every species fol- lower species, under every difference for still finer points of dis- tinction." 1 And the deduction or justification of this principle 1 A. 656 ; B. 684. chap. xiy. REGULATIVE USE OE IDEAS OF REASON. 133 is simply this ; that conception can never exhaust perception, though it must continually strive to do so. We can never define the individual, yet the individual is the end, which in all definition we strive to reach. "The knowledge of phenomena in their complete determination (which is possible only through the understanding) demands an endless progress in the specifi- cation of our conception of them ; and in this progress differences always remain behind, from which, in defining the species, and still more the genus, we were obliged to abstract." The indi- vidual object of perception, like the form of perception, has always a ' principle of infinity ' in it ; and just as we can never admit that any division of space is final, i.e., is a division into indivisible units, so we can never admit that by any number of qualitative determinations, the whole content of any individual thing can be exhausted. Lastly, to complete the systematic unity, we must add to The principle J r J •" of Affinity. these two laws the law of Affinity. This law commands us to avoid all violent leaps, alike in specification and generalisation, t and to bind together without any break of continuity the highest unity with the lowest difference. As we can never admit that there is any generic difference which may not be embraced in a higher unity, nor, on the other hand, that there is any infima species which cannot be further divided ; so we cannot admit any immediate transition from the one to the other. It is a logical rule always to look for links of con- nexion or intermediate steps, by which the path of integration or differentiation may be made more smooth and easy. And this logical rule also rests on a transcendental principle, which, though not derived from experience, guides us in the investigation of all empirical objects. As a matter of fact, indeed, we often find breaks in the chain of natural species, which our experience does not enable us to fill up ; but we cannot admit such lacunae as final, and we are forced by the command of reason to seek for an order or continu- ous scale of forms, which shall bind them all together in one Relation of the three principles* 134 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book i. system, and exhibit the place of each in relation to all the rest. "If we place these three principles in the order of their empirical application, we must begin with Multiplicity, proceed next to Affinity, and end with Unity. Eeason presupposes the empirical knowledge of the understanding, which is imme- diately applied to experience, and seeks to give unity to that knowledge by means of ideas which go far beyond experience. Now, the affinity of the manifold, (as that which, in spite of its differences, falls under a principle of unity,) relates not merely to the things of experience, but still more to their qualities and forces. Thus, e.g., by a first approximation of experience, we determine the orbits of the planets as circular ; and when, by subsequent observation, we discern movements inconsistent with a circular orbit, we proceed (according to the principle of Affinity) to invent suppositions which involve the continuous variation of the circular form through an infinite number of degrees to the form that corresponds to each of these orbits. In other words, we presume that the planets will approximate more or less in their orbits to the circle, and thus we come upon the idea of an ellipse. The paths of the comets are still more eccentric, as they do not, so far as our observation goes, return on their own course : but even these we bring within the compass of the same genus, by supposing that their orbit is parabolic; for a parabola is but an ellipse with the major axis lengthened ad infinitum. Thus guided by the prin- ciple of affinity, we keep hold, in our observations, of a generic unity under all differences of orbit ; aDd hence it is, that in the end we are able to trace all the various movements back to one common cause of all the special laws of motion, viz., gravit- ation. And from this point, again, we extend our conquests to all These prind- motions whatever, and endeavour to explain by the same principle aJrectS-enlbie all their variations and apparent deviations from that rule." 1 US tO knOW .nil • 1 O Tr objects.but The three principles of Homogeneity, of Specification, and of ipSncT 1A.662;B.690. chap. xiv. REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 135 Continuity or Affinity, as is now sufficiently evident, have a peculiar position in our intellectual constitution. Their use and value is, that they enable us to organise our experience ; whilst, on the other hand, experience could not exist except in the effort to realise them. Yet, in experience, they cannot be realised. " The empirical use of the reason stands in an asymptotical relation to these ideas, i.e., it can approximate to them, but it can never reach them." Neither in experience nor beyond experience have these ideas an objective or constitu- tive value : — not leyond it, for, when we abstract from experience, we abstract, at the same time, from all the conditions of under- standing and sense, under which alone we can determine an object as such ; and not in it, because an absolute unity, a complete totality of difference, and a perfect continuity of unity and difference, are all equally impossible as objects of experience. It remains, therefore, that these principles must be considered to be purely regulative, and that if we refer them to objects, these objects must be regarded as of a purely ideal character. To put the same thing in another way, it is useful, and, indeed, necessary for the development of experience that we should proceed as if the ideas of reason were ideas of objects. We cannot, indeed, properly speaking, schematise them and subject them to determination by the categories ; for there can be no schema of the unconditioned. Still we can think of a maximum of homogeneity, specification, or affinity ; and this is so far analogous to a schema that we can apply the categories to it. Yet, we must always remember that this process is illegitimate, if regarded as determining objects for these ideas ; and legitimate only in so far as it puts us in the right attitude of mind for determining other objects, viz., the objects of experience. The ideas of reason, therefore, form " merely the problematical foundation of the connexion which the mind introduces among the phenomena of the sensible world," and in their application reason is " occupied, not with * any object, but with itself." 136 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. B00K '• totheareir ■ Now ' the 0D J ects which reason, by means of its ideas, is Sn! supposed to be able to determine, are the soul, the world, and W God; and these it has been our object in the previous chapters of the Dialectic to examine. We have seen the futility of the three supposed sciences of Rational Psychology, Cosmology, and Theology. We have seen that the transcendental ideas do v-not enable us to determine any real object. Yet, this does not hinder us from acknowledging their value as setting before us ideal objects, and so enabling us " to produce systematic unity in the empirical employment of our intelligence." We cannot determine the soul as a pure self-identical unity ; but this does not make it less necessary to " connect all the phenomena, all the actions and feeling presented to us in inner experience, as if the soul were a simple substance, which maintains (through life at least) its personal identity, though its states are con- stantly changing." We cannot determine the world of experience as an infinite whole ; nay, many things make us regard it as really dependent and finite; but this does not make it less necessary, in the explanation of given phenomena of inner or outer experience, to trace them back from condition to con- dition, " as if they belonged to a chain which was itself infinite." We cannot determine God as an absolute in- telligence ; but this does not make it less necessary to " regard the whole connexion of possible experience as if it J formed an absolute, but, at the same time, a purely dependent and conditioned unity, and yet at the same time as if the sum of all phenomena had its highest, all-sufficient ground in a self- subsistent, unconditioned, and creative reason." 1 For it is by setting before itself such an ideal object, and by treating all the phenomena of the world of experience 'as if they drew their origin from such an archetype,' that reason is enabled to give the greatest unity, extent, and system to our empirical knowledge. We must, however, distinguish most carefully between the pro- blematical assumption of the existence of these objects, with a 1 A. 672 ; B. 700. chap. xiv. REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 137 view to the organisation of our experience, and the simple asser- tion of their reality. "I may have sufficient grounds to assume, in a relative point of view (suppositio relativa), what I have no right to assume absolutely (suppositio absoluta)." 1 The con- sciousness of the limits of experience goes along with, and im- plies the consciousness of that which is beyond experience ; and we cannot really apprehend the meaning of the phenomenal without thinking of it as standing in relation to the noumenal. But, when we attempt to determine this relation, we can only represent it by means of analogies which we borrow from the relations of empirical objects to each other. We are obliged to conceive the relation of mind to its states on the analogy of the relation of a substance to its accidents ; we are obliged to con- ceive of the relation of the phenomenal world to the noumenal, on the analogy of the relation of a phenomenal cause to its effect ; and when we attempt to conceive of the whole finite world in relation to the unity which gives it systematic con- nexion, we have no other analogy by which to represent this' relation, than that which is derived from the relation of an intelligent being to the effects which he produces, when he ' subordinates all his actions to one idea or purpose. At the same time, while we must use such analogies, we ought always to be aware that they are nothing more than analogies. " It must, e.g., be perfectly indifferent to us whether it is asserted, that divine wisdom has disposed all things in conformity with its highest aims; or that the idea of supreme wisdom is a regu- lative principle in the investigation of nature, and at the same time, a principle which gives systematic and purposive unity to nature according to general laws, even in those cases in which we are not able to detect any manifestation of that unity. In other words, it must be quite indifferent to us whether we say: God in his wisdom has willed it to be so, or Nature has wisely arranged it." 2 To sum up the whole matter in a word, the ideas of reason are 'heuristic, not ostensive': they enable us to ask a question, i A. 676 ; B. 704. 2 A. 699 ; B. 727. 138 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. book i not to give the answer. To adopt any other view, and to suppose that, by means of the transcendental Ideas, we can have know- ledge of real objects, is to put reason to sleep, or to turn its ignava ratio activity in a wrong direction. The dogmatist, who thinks that jmd perversa ratio. D y p ure a p r i or i speculation, he is able to demonstrate the unity and immateriality of the soul, or the origin of all things in a supreme intelligence, is apt to lose all interest in empirical research into those phenomena of the inner or the outer life, through which alone the soul and God are revealed to our know- ledge. Or, if he interests himself in either, it is not with a view to question experience according to the a priori principles of in- telligence, but rather with a view to distort empirical facts till they correspond with the results of his a priori reasonings. By the external system of Teleology, which he thus imposes upon nature, he prevents himself from discovering the real nature of its unity, and his whole argument is a vicious circle, which as- sumes the very thing it professes to prove. In order to over- throw such artificial theories it is only necessary to point out, that the idea of final causality — the idea of nature as a system ordered by a supreme intelligence — though it inevitably springs out of the relation of mind to its object, and though it points to the true goal of science — the only goal in which thought can find an ultimate satisfaction — is merely an idea. The matter to which this idea has to be applied is so far from having any necessary relation to the idea, that we cannot be sure of its realisation even in a single instance, however manifestly that in- stance may present the features of design. For it is not safe to argue, that because a purpose is realised in certain phenomena, o therefore the phenomena existed in order to realise it. All that we can say is, that from the nature of intelligence, this is the natural aim and end of all its efforts after knowledge. " The greatest systematic unity, and consequently the teleological unity of all things, is the idea upon which is based the most extensive use of human reason." chap. xiy. REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 139 In this last section of the Dialectic, Kant expresses, perhaps T ^n^ofcriti- with more defmiteness and completeness than anywhere else, Son to\he a ' his peculiar view of the position of reason in relation to know- Reason, ledge or experience. Very few, if any, of Kant's successors have preserved that exact balance between trust and distrust of reason, which is characteristic of the Critique, and which con- stitutes its main difficulty. Almost every subsequent writer, who has not gone beyond Kant in the direction of Idealism, has fallen back on a much simpler combination of scepticism and empiricism, and has treated the Ideas of reason as mere Idola, that stand between the mind and truth. But Kant lays equal weight on all these three points ; first, on the necessity of the v Ideas to direct and systematise experience ; secondly, on their uselessness to determine the nature of things in themselves ; and lastly, on the inadequacy of experience for their realisation. Especially in this section, which contains the final result of the Dialectic, Kant is solicitous to maintain himself on the exact razor-edge of critical orthodoxy; and he scarcely ever mentions one of these points without immediately modifying his statement by a reference to the other two. At the point which we have now reached, little more need ^Meis an be said in illustration or criticism of the three principles of ^C of s the other two. Homogeneity, Specification, and Affinity. The first principle, it is obvious, expresses the necessity to experience of the pure £™. see that this ambiguity is simply the culminating instance of bought as iii they appear a fundamental mistake or confusion, which runs through the (i) in the A esthetic ; whole of Kant's work, and which we have described by saying that he seems to himself to be moving from the concrete to the abstract, when he is really moving from the abstract to the concrete. Thus, in the Aesthetic, Kant begins the criticism 1.48 , KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K "' and correction of the ordinary consciousness by pointing out that when we say that objects are given to us in sense, we forget that, as objects in space and time, they cannot be so given. For, even if it be admitted that sense presents us with individual objects, it presents them subject to ,the conditions of space and time, which are general forms of relation between objects and cannot be given in our particular sensations. Now, this is a step towards a true view of knowledge, if we take it as simply calling attention to the fact that the perception of particular objects presupposes certain general principles, which, however, are not necessarily reflected on or consciously recognised by the individual perceiving. So understood, the effect of the Aesthetic is to correct our first abstract way of thinking of objects, as if they were given as individual objects apart from any relation of them to each other, by showing that they are so given only by limitation of the one space and time which is presupposed in all of them. But, Kant's expression of this truth is disturbed by the tacifeTssumption that objects, as given through the affections of the sensibility, can be only isolated individuals, and that, therefore, the forms of time and space, which compel us to apprehend them in relation to each other, stand between us and the reality. In other words, just because in perceiving objects we necessarily bring them into connexion as objects in one space and time, the objects we perceive cannot correspond to the real objects which affect us. In being perceived, they have received an additional qualifica- tion, which we must take from them if we would know what they are in themselves. Thus, instead of arguing that, as the objects which we perceive are necessarily determined as in one space and time, they are not isolated individuals, Kant argues that, because we necessarily perceive objects as in relations of time and space, we do not perceive them as they really are. Hence, in thinking of the real objects, we must necessarily abstract from the forms of space and time. In truth, such reasoning involves a recurrence to that abstract way of thinking chap. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 149 of objects apart from their relations,, which the Aesthetic teaches us to correct, when it shows us that it is only as determined in relation to other objects in space and time that individual objects can be perceived. And what is the reason for this recurrence ? It can only be some supposed necessity of thinking objects as purely individual, or else the idea that through the affections of our sensibility, they are perceived as purely individual. But such a necessity of thought does not exist, or rather we should say the opposite necessity exists ; for we can think indi- vidual objects only as in relation to each other. And in the mere affections of sensibility, objects are not given as individual, nor, indeed, as objects at all. Thus, neither in conception nor in perception can the mere particular be apprehended apart from the universal ; and transcendental reflexion corrects our first view of objects, just because it makes us conscious of this fact, and so calls our attention to an element in our experience, which we are apt at first to overlook. In the Analytic, Kant takes another step in the correction of (f) «* ««» v ' L Analytic; the ordinary view ,of knowledge, when he shows that, even after we have allowed for the form and matter of perception, we have not taken account of all that is -required for the con- sciousness of objects as such. It is not the case that objects are given us in perception as individual objects standing in definite relations to each other in space and time ; for such determination of them implies a recognition of them as quanti- fied and qualified substances, the states of which are determined in their succession and coexistence by universal laws. But such a consciousness is impossible, except through the deter- mination of the manifold, given under forms of space and time, by the mathematical and dynamical categories in relation to the unity of self-consciousness. Thus the objects of our con- sciousness are not given to us as such objects through sense and its forms ; for perceptions cannot refer themselves to objects, but must be so referred by the- understanding, which brings them under " conceptions of objects in general." Now, 150 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. the real force of this argument is that it brings to light an. element in our consciousness of objects on which we did not reflect, so long as we regarded them as immediately given in sense. For thus it shows that we cannot take, these objects as being what they were for us in our first consciousness of them, unless we take into account certain of their characteristics of which at first we were not aware. In other words, we must add new elements to our consciousness of objects, if we would even maintain it ; or, if not, we must take away from that consciousness many of the elements formerly attributed to it. Kant, however, instead of regarding the new determination of objects as a step towards a complete and adequate conscious- ness of them, or, in other words, as a step towards the knowledge of them as things in themselves, regards it rather -as an addition to our determination of objects as phenomena, which involves a corresponding loss' to the determination of them as things in themselves. Accordingly, he now tells us that we must not only divest the' thing in itself of all relations of time or, space, but also of all determination by the categories : we must con~ ceive it neither as qualified nor as quantified, neither as substance nor as cause. 'mauctS. J- n tne Dialectic, finally, Kant calls attention to the fact that, even after we have allowed for the determination of objects by perception and conception, there is still an element left out of account, which, though commonly overlooked, is always present in our consciousness of them. For, in all such determination, they are necessarily conceived as elements in one objective world ; and that again means that they are referred to a " transcendental object," the consciousness of which correlates with the consciousness of one self. Hence, our consciousness of the objects of experience as necessarily connected in time and space, must be regarded as abstract, so long as we do not take into account their unity with each other as elements in one self-consciousness. This reflexion, therefore, must lead to a further addition to, and correction of, our first consciousness CHAP. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 151 of things by reference to the unity which that consciousness presupposes, but on which it does not usually reflect. Accord- ingly, we find Kant maintaining that the complete determination of objects of experience implies their reference to Ideas, which, as we have seen, are simply conceptions of the unity of the objective world with itself and with the intelligence. At the same time, he holds that these Ideas can never be realised in experience. Hence, although our consciousness of objects is incomplete until we have related them to this higher unity, yet we can never bring them under it. And our final correc- tion of the abstractness of the ordinary consciousness of the objects of experience is to recognise that, as such objects, they are not res completae, but phenomena ; though the noumenon to which we refer them is not itself an' object of knowledge, but only an Idea. In this conception of the relation of the phenomenal to the Thenoumenon * as an ideal of noumenal, Kant has made a still more curious compromise knowledge r _ Can it be that between the two methods,— the method that proceeds from ^ d re n f thing abstract to concrete and that which proceeds from concrete to abstract, — than either in the Aesthetic or in the Analytic. In the first place, the conception of the noumenon or thing in itself has received a new qualification. It is no longer the conception of the object as apart from consciousness, the object which re- mains when we abstract from its determination by perception and by conception ; for when we so abstract, nothing remains but the unity of the self in reference to which the object is so determined. Hence, the thing in . itself would disappear altogether, if the thought of it did not revive in a new form in connexion with that unity. But that unity has for its correlate a " transcendental object," which is essentially different from the objects of experience ; and this is an object which we can still oppose as the noumenon or thing in itself to the object of experi- ence as the phenomenon. Thus Kant is led to regard the noume- non, not as an object unrelated to the conscious self, an object which is the " ground " of the affections of its passivity, but as 152 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. an object the idea of which is bound up with the pure unity of the self as contrasted with the synthetic unity of experience. Now, it might seem as if, on Kant's principles, such an object must be admitted to be already presented to us in an experi- ence like ours, all the contents of which must be capable of being united with the " I think." For this would seem to involve that the truth in regard to objects of experience, the noumenon in the phenomenon, will be discovered when- ever we consider these objects in their relation to the unity of the self. Kant, however, though he admits that the idea of the noumenon is bound up with the consciousness of the unity of the self which is presupposed in experience, yet does not recognise that experience can be reinterpreted in relation to that unity. The thing in itself is no longer for him an object, of which, as it is out of consciousness, nothing can be said : rather, it is an ideal projection of the unity of the conscious self, by which it thinks of an object in conformity with itself. Still, as the judgment of self-consciousness is regarded by Kant as in itself an analytic judgment, it is impossible for its unity to furnish a principle by which our empirical consciousness of the world can be reorganised or reinterpreted. Thus, the essential opposition of phenomenon to noumenon remains, though its meaning is altered. At first we were supposed to be unable to reach the noumenon, because we could only perceive or conceive an object which was relative to the self; whereas now it is argued that we cannot reach it, because all objects of experi- ence involve an element which is not relative to the self. It is easy, however, to see that, if the judgment of self-conscious- ness were, as Kant asserts, a mere analytic judgment, it could not possibly be the source of ideas of objects with which the objects of experience could be compared as phenomena with noumena : and, conversely, that, if the consciousness of self is the source of ideas of objects with which the objects of experi- ence are compared as phenomena with noumena, it cannot at the same time be the consciousness of a bare analytic unity, in chap. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 153 thinking which we abstract from all such objects. It is only as self -consciousness involves or includes the consciousness of objects that it can be the source of any ideal of knowledge to which that consciousness does not conform, and if in this way it transcends the empirical consciousness, it must be capable of transforming it. 1 From what has now been said it will be obvious that at why it is not more for Kant each step in Kant's work, there is the possibility of a twofold interpretation of it. "We may take it to be the aim of the critical regress to call attention to the elements presupposed in the determination of objects, though not explicitly present to us in our first consciousness of them ; or, on the other hand, we may take its aim to be simply to determine objects as they really are, by abstracting from those elements in our first consciousness of them which hinder it from corresponding to the reality. On the latter interpretation, the removal of the subjective forms of perception and conception leaves us with the idea of a thing in itself, which can be determined by neither ; and even this thing in itself is only the correlate of the consciousness of self, and we cannot regard it as more than a "problematical conception," which has no reality apart from consciousness. Thus, the thing in itself, as an object apart from consciousness, disappears altogether, and its place is taken by the idea of a problematical object corresponding to the unity of consciousness. On the former interpretation of Kant's critical process, on the other hand, the lesson of the Aesthetic and the Analytic is, that the individual object, which appears to the ordinary consciousness to be given as an isolated unit without any relations, or at least without any necessary relations, to other objects, must be conceived as a substance necessarily determined in all its states by relation to other substances in space and time. And the lesson of the Dialectic is, that this necessarily connected experience is still an inade- quate knowledge of objects, till it has been reinterpreted in the 1 See above, p. 87 seq. -. cf. also Vol. I. p. 649 seq. 154 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K IL light of the relation of all objects to the unity of the self for which they are. Kant goes so far in this direction as to admit the necessity of viewing experience in the light of the Ideas of Keason, but the method of abstraction has such hold upon him, that he regards it as impossible that experience should ever be brought into conformity with these Ideas. He at least At the same time, though Kant thus ends the Critique, of snows that ' ° teyondthT Pure Reason with the assertion of the impossibility of recon- mturefo'r ciling knowledge with thought, or of bringing experience into another kind of reality. conformity with the ideal demand of reason, we must re- member that this negative result is not for him final, but that it leaves room for a further development in the sphere of the Practical Reason. The ideal demand of reason is still regarded as keeping open a space beyond experience for an object or objects, which we cannot, indeed, determine as real, but the thought of which prevents us from assigning an absolute reality to the objects of experience. In thus keeping open a space for the noumenon or thing in itself, reason at least sets up a defence against the intrusion of empirical science into a region for which its methods are unsuited. It shows that the system of nature and necessity is not a closed system, and it also shows at what place in the circle the vacant place lies, through which we may escape into the region beyond it. More than this ; it puts up a ne plus ultra just where natural science would pass beyond the objects of experience to deny God, Freedom and Immortality ; in other words, from the claim of science to explain everything by its principles, it excepts just those objects in which our greatest practical interest lies. Hence, at least this much is gained, that the attack upon man's higher religious and moral consciousness, upon that consciousness of himself, the world, and God, which underlies all his higher experiences, is for ever repelled. , And, if that consciousness has any independent basis of its own, nothing that natural science can possibly discover will ever affect it, much less undermine or overthrow it. Nor does it matter that the moral or religious chap. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 155 consciousness is unable to issue from its own stronghold to make a counter-attack upon its opponent, which remains equally strong in its own domain. Looking at the matter in this way, we are able to see how Advantages of the polemi- Kant should lay such stress on the limitation of experience, g!"^ 01 and should regard the Antithetic of Eeason as the bulwark of man's moral and religious consciousness. That consciousness, in his view, is quite sufficiently strong in itself, if only the enemy cannot follow it into its own ground ; and he has no hesitation in pointing out that the assertion and the denial of the truths of reason are equally incapable of proof in the sphere of science. " By the polemical use of pure reason I understand the defence of its principles against dogmatic nega- tions of them. In such use we do not seek to show that these principles are themselves true, but only that no one can ever assert the opposite with apodictic certainty or even with a greater show of evidence. For, if this can he proved, there will be nothing precarious in our tenure of these principles, however insufficient our title to them, since we know for certain that no one can ever prove its illegality." 1 In short, Kant's doctrine is, that the Antithetic of Eeason is due to the attempt to treat phenomena, as things in themselves, i.e., the attempt to complete the synthesis of phenomena and to deter- mine the phenomenal world as a whole, limited and bounded by itself. All, therefore, that that Antithetic shows, is that 'phenomena, viewed as existing in themselves and so forming a closed circle, are self-contradictory. If, however, we avoid this error, and do not attempt to bring things in themselves into the sphere of phenomena, or stretch the sphere of phenomena so as to include things in themselves, the Antithetic disappears. Thus " if in Theology it could be asserted on grounds of reason that there is a Supreme Being, and at the same time there is not a Supreme Being ; or if, in Psychology, it could be asserted that all beings that think have a unity which is absolutely * 1 A. 739; B. 769. 156 kant's ETHICAL WORKS. book II- permanent, and therefore distinct from every transitory material unity, and at the same time that the soul is not an immaterial unity, and therefore cannot be exempted from the transitoriness of things material ; in such cases a real contra- diction would arise. ... In truth, however, reason has no- thing to say on the negative side which could in the smallest degree authorise a dogmatic statement ; and as to its criticism of the arguments which are urged on the positive side, we can very well admit the validity of such criticism without any sur- render of the doctrines which they were intended to prove ; for those doctrines have on their side an interest of reason to which those who controvert them cannot appeal." " I cannot indeed agree with the opinion, to which some excellent and thoughtful men, (as, e.g., Sulzer,) even while fully conscious of the weakness of all the arguments hitherto relied on, have often given expression, that we may hope some day to discover demonstrative proof of the two cardinal principles of pure reason, that there is a God and a future life ; on the con- trary, I am satisfied that nothing of the kind will ever be attained. For where could reason find a basis for synthetic judgments which do not refer to objects of experience and their inner possibility ? But, on the other hand, it is apodictically certain that no man will ever be able to assert the opposite of these two doctrines, with the smallest degree of evidence, much less to demonstrate it. For, as such proof, if it could be found at all, must be found in pure reason, he who pretends to have discovered it must undertake to show that the existence of a Supreme Being, and also the existence of a thinking subject in us as a pure intelligence, is impossible. But whence could he derive the knowledge which would authorise him to make such synthetic judgments about things beyond all possible experi- ence ? We need not, therefore, disturb ourselves with the idea that any one will ever prove the opposite of those doctrines, or that we have need of regular scholastic proofs for their defence. Thus there is and can be nothing to. prevent us from acceptino- chap. I. THEOEETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 157 principles which, while they are perfectly consistent with the -^ speculative interest of Our reason in its empirical use, are more- over the sole means whereby we can combine that use with the «■ practical interests of the same reason. Tor the opponent (i.e., for him who not only criticises the proofs of those principles, but rejects the principles themselves), we have always ready our non liquet, which must infallibly put him out of court. And we need not mind his retort of the same argument upon ourselves, since we have always in reserve a subjective maxim of reason, to which there is nothing corresponding on his side ; and under its protection we can look upon all his beating of the air with composure and indifference." 1 The natural objection to such a view is, that there is little importance of J ' the negative comfort in a mere negation. If, however, we quite realise Si«g U ° £ / he p. Kant's position, we shall see that for him this negation is of the highest importance both speculatively and practically. Kant's non liquet is not meant merely to stop human reason from attempt- ing to go beyond a limit which, for aught we know, may have nothing real lying beyond it. It is in his view a fixed bar, an absolute interdict, to science, which prohibits it from applying its principles to one great department of human existence, and thus leaves that department to be judged on its own merits and according to such principles as it supplies for itself. It protects the religious and moral life, not indeed from the danger of being considered illusory, but from the danger of being considered illusory on one special ground, viz., that it and its objects cannot be brought within the circle of ordinary experience and ordinary science, or determined by the cate- gories that hold good there. Henceforth, no one is entitled on empirical principles to explain away any consciousness of our- selves which may arise when we regard ourselves, or which implies that we regard ourselves, not as objects among other objects in the world, but as subjects for which all such objects are. No one is entitled a priori to pronounce such conscious- 1 A. 7.41 ; B. 768. 158 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. ness illusory, because it is not explicable by our existence as an object in the natural world; or to insist on any Procrustean process by which it shall be forced to submit to such explana- tion. And as little can the ordinary tests of the reality of experience be applied to any consciousness of the world or of God that may arise in connexion with such consciousness of self. The fundamental principles of morality and religion are not to be taken at once as true ; but, at least, they are inexpung- able by such weapons. They cannot be , assailed from the ground of empirical reality, for they are not based on the consciousness of empirical reality, but on a consciousness which arises only as we recognise the limitations of such reality, and its necessary relation to that which is not identical with it. " Man, who knows all nature besides only through sense, knows himself not only so but also through pure apperception, and in acts and inner determinations which he cannot reckon among the impressions of sense. He is for himself a phe- nomenon ; but he is also, in view of certain faculties, a purely intelligible object, since the action of such faculties in him cannot be attributed to the receptivity of sense. These faculties we call understanding and reason, the latter of which is properly and pre-eminently distinct from all empirically conditioned powers, as it estimates its objects solely according to Ideas and determines the understanding by these Ideas ; while even the understanding itself in experience makes use of con- ceptions of its own, which, though applicable only to the matter of sense, are pure like the Ideas of reason." 1 Neither the We may put Kant's thought in the following way. Man subject, nor . . . . anything in- has the consciousness ot objects and oi himself as an object volved in its ° Sourness of among others, but this is not all ; he has also a consciousness brou°gS;under of himself in opposition to these objects in the analytic judg- the categories. . ,.,.,. ment of self-consciousness, — which implies the synthetic judgment, but is not identical with it. This analytic judg- ment is immediately connected with a demand of reason for 1 A. 546 ; B. 574. CHAP. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 159 a determination of the object, which cannot be realised by the understanding in combining the data of sense. For, it is just because the determination of the object does not conform to the unity of self-consciousness, which yet is implied in it, that an ideal of knowledge becomes opposed to our actual knowledge. Now, it would be absurd to suppose that the subject, whose self- consciousness is the source of an ideal to which the under- standing in its determination of objects can never attain, should be regarded as itself falling under that determination. Experience is relative to it, but it is not limited to experience. Eather, in its consciousness of itself there is implied a reflexion which goes beyond experience, and to which experience cannot be adequate. Hence, any further development or manifestation of our rational life (beyond our theoretical consciousness of the Ideas of reason) in which such a self-consciousness — i.e., the consciousness of the subject-self as its own object — is implied, must be equally beyond determination by the categories, which are applied only to the objects of experience as such. Now, in our practical life we have such a manifestation Hence the practical con- of reason. In the consciousness of ourselves as acting, the sciousness is a u consciousness subject-self is made its own object, and that in a more deteriSnedby explicit and definite way than in the consciousness of the Ideas of reason. Indeed, we can scarcely say that even in the consciousness of the Ideas of reason, the consciousness of the subject-self as an object is directly contained ; though it is true that it is the discord of the objects of experience as such with the unity of the self, which causes us to regard them as phe- nomena and to refer them to noumena. It is, however, only a transcendental reflexion which shows this, and which brings into view the unity of the pure subject implied in all know- ledge, as the source of the ideal which experience does not satisfy. But the practical consciousness, even apart from any such reflexion, is a consciousness of the subject-self, to which all objects are referred, determining itself as an object in rela- tion to other objects. But the causality of the self-conscious 160 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK ir: ego, which is here implied, cannot be regarded as identical in character with the causality of phenomenal objects, which are determined as such objects only for this very self. In this case, it is not merely that I am conscious of my actual know- ledge as falling short of my idea of knowledge, i.e., conscious of the objective world I know as not corresponding to the noumenal world which I think in conformity with the pure unity of self-consciousness. Here, the ideal object I think (i.e., the object which is thought as conforming to the pure unity of self-consciousness) becomes itself the principle to which I seek to bring the known world into conformity ; in other words, it is set before me as an end I seek to realise. Here, therefore, we have the complement and completion of that negative movement of thought in relation to the phenomenal world which begins in the theoretical consciousness. What is implied in the theoretical, becomes explicit in the practical consciousness. In the theoretical consciousness, we are con- tinually striving to determine the given world in conformity with the unity of self-consciousness ; but, just because it is a given world, we are never able to do so, but only to carry on an endless process of combining the data of sense by means of the categories. But in the practical consciousness, that ideal itself is the only thing that can be said to be given ; it is given, more- over, only as it is one with the self to which it is given, or rather it is only that self viewed as an object or end to itself ; and the known world other than this self becomes merely a material, to be altered in conformity with the idea which the self brings with it. The practical consciousness is thus, not the conscious- ness of the self as one object among others, which reacts as it is acted upon by them ; but a consciousness of the subject for which -all objects are, as acting in view of its own idea The conscious- °f i tself > and determining itself as an object and other objects nessof self asa . P ., .,-. . ■ . . 1 " seif-determin- m conformity with that idea. Ing subject is coBsciou S ne a ss y Is xt true ' then ' thafc we have such a consciousness? Kant oMgatL. answers, yes. Such a consciousness of our own activity is chap. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 161 directly involved in our consciousness of ourselves as respon- sible under the moral law. Now, this answer may easily be misunderstood, if we do not carefully notice its exact bear- ing. First, let us take the statement in the sequel of the passage just quoted. " That reason has causality, or at least that we represent it as having such causality, is clear from the imperatives which in all our practical life we set up as rules for our executive powers. The ' ought ' (Sollen) ex- presses a kind of necessity, a kind of connexion of actions with their grounds or reasons, such as is to be found no- where else in the whole natural world. For, of the natural world our understanding can know nothing except what is, what has been, or what will be. We cannot say that in it anything ought to he other than in fact it was, is, or will be. In fact, so long as we are considering merely the course of nature, the " ought " has absolutely no meaning. We can as little inquire what ought to happen in nature, as we can inquire what properties a circle ought to have. In the former case, we are limited to the question what actually happens, just as, in the latter case, we are limited to the question what properties the figure in question actually has." " Now this ' ought,' in fact, expresses a possible action of which the ground is nothing but a conception ; while of an action which is a mere natural event the ground must always be a phenomenon. It is true, indeed, that no action can be required of us as a duty which is not possible under natural conditions ; but these natural conditions do not relate to the determination of the will, but only to the effect or con- sequence thereof in the phenomenal world. Let there be ever so many natural grounds which urge me to an act of will (Wollen), ever so many sensuous stimuli, yet they can- not make an act one that ought to he (Sollen). The will they can produce will have only a conditioned, not an abso- lute necessity, against which reason opposes the ' ought ' as that which prescribes to it measure and end, or even VOL. II. h That con- sciousness being simply 162 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book n. absolutely and authoritatively prohibits it. Be it an object of mere sensuous desire (the pleasant), or be it an object of pure reason (the good), what we have to note is, that reason never yields to that ground which is empirically given, that it never follows the order of things as they present themselves in the phenomenal world, but with per- fect spontaneity creates for itself an order of its own accord- ing to ideas, into which it fits the empiric conditions, and according to which it declares actions to be necessary which have not taken place, and which perhaps will never take place. All these actions, therefore, without any regard to the actual event, it presupposes that reason is capable of realising; for if it did not do so, it would not expect any effect of its ideas in the world of experience." 1 The full meaning of this statement we are not yet pre- thepraoticai' pared to explain ; but one point is sufficiently clear, viz., as ] t ideas of that Kant directly connects the consciousness of our own Reason ** activity or self-determination with that consciousness of Ideas of reason which enables us to limit the empirical world and discover its phenomenal character. And we see why he should do this, whenever we consider the relation of the consciousness of Ideas to the consciousness of self. For the consciousness of self, as I have already said, presupposes, in Kant's view, the synthetic unity of experience, but at the same time is negatively related to that unity ; and in this negative relation, it gives rise to the ideal of knowledge which our actual knowledge cannot satisfy. As such a con- sciousness, it involves that the self is not one object amonc others in the closed system of the phenomenal world ; and therefore, if it be conceived as acting on that world, its determination to act will not be analogous to the determina- tion of one object by another. The principle which deter- mines it can be derived only from itself, i.e., from that ideal consciousness which is realised only in the I I = of 1 A. 547 ; B. 575. The italics in the last sentence but one are mine.^ CHAP. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 163 self-consciousness, and which can never be realised in the empirical consciousness, i.e., the consciousness of the objec- tive world. Now, what Kant says is just the converse of this, viz., that the consciousness of being the origin of our own actions, — of actions by which we determine the world, — comes to us along with, or as involved in, the conscious- ness of an ideal order of that world as determined by, or in accordance with, the consciousness of self. Supposing we acted only as we were acted on, we should be to ourselves like any other object we observe ; or we should not attribute our actions to the self, any more than we attribute the pro- cess of digestion to the self. We might indeed conceive of a necessarily determined action of desire going on within us and observed by us, as an object of inner sense ; but we could yet attribute such action to ourselves only in the sense that we attribute to a roasting-jack the motions which it makes after it has been wound up. It is the presence to us in action of the self as an end, or, to express it more fully, it is the presence to us as an end of an idea of the world as determined by the consciousness of self, which alone can make us attribute our actions to ourselves. 1 "While, therefore, the consciousness of the self as knowing, in rela- . tion yet in opposition to the object known, is immediately connected with the consciousness of an ideal which guides our empirical synthesis, though it can never be realised by it ; the consciousness of the self as acting is immediately connected with the consciousness of that ideal as a motive of action. And as a motive of action the ideal is realisable in the action itself, whether it can be realised in the world to which the action refers or no. On the connexion of the ideas of freedom and self-deter- F ° r tlie idf f l of reason as mination with the moral law, I shall speak more fully in the SeTto be a sequel. Here I wish only to point out where for Kant the becomes an , imperative. J The difficulty that according to this view only good actions seem to be possible will be considered afterwards. 164 KANT'S ETHICAL WOEKS. book n. ethical consciousness begins, and how it is related to the theoretical consciousness. This we can see clearly, only if we keep in view the way in which the consciousness of self is related to the consciousness of objects. The consciousness of objects is due, in Kant's view, to the determination of the forms and matter of sense by the understanding in conformity with the unity of the self, or, what is the same thing, with the possibility of self-consciousness. The consciousness of self arises in relation to the consciousness of objects, which implies their being all connected together in one world of experience ; but it arises in distinction from the consciousness of that world. But, what makes possible the separation of self- consciousness from the consciousness of objects is, that the simple analytic unity of the conscious self as such contrasts with the essential difference of the world in space and time and gives rise to a demand which, in the determination of such a world can never be satisfied, though the demand itself is our stimulus and our guide in extending our knowledge of that - world. In knowledge, therefore, we are always pursuing an ideal which the conditions necessarily prevent us from realising — the ideal, namely, of a unity of experience corresponding to the analytic unity of self-consciousness. The pure unity of the self, which is the presupposition of all consciousness of objects, thus turns, as it becomes conscious of itself, into an ideal which that consciousness cannot realise or find realised in the world, which it is continually seeking in the phenomenal, but can never find there. But perhaps we may say — though Kant does not say it in so many words — that just because reason can- not find its ideal realised in the world, it seeks to realise that ideal for itself. The formal or analytical unity of self-consciousness thus brings with it a motive to action, an ideal of reason by which it determines itself. In its practical use reason does not simply give rise to an idea to which, or by which, we may direct our empirical synthesis : it does not simply make a demand which it waits for experience to fulfil so far as it may. chap. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 165 It makes a demand, in the first instance, only upon itself. Hence, it is in this case free to develop its ideal without let or hindrance, and to represent to itself a world conformable there- to — a world organised in conformity with the unity of self- consciousness. And the question of the ideal being realisable, takes a very different aspect from that which it took in relation to the theoretical use of reason. For here, reason has primarily to do with itself ; and to make the ideal realisable in the most important sense, all that is necessary is that it should be capable of being a motive of action. If we can determine our- selves to act by this ideal we have realised it, whatever may be the hindrances that prevent the effect of our action in the out- ward world. Such hindrances cannot come between us and our own action, however they may come between our action and the full result we seek to realise by it. Hence, the question of the possibility of the realisation of the ideal of reason in the objective world, is only a secondary question in practice, whereas in theory it must be regarded as of primary importance, if we are not to put mere ideal fictions in place of the facts of experience. " The use of pure reason in the practical sphere is alone immanent ; the empiri- cally conditioned use of it ... is transcendent . . . which is just the opposite relation to that which can be predicated of pure reason in its speculative use." 1 In other words, to speculate without regard to given experience, and guided only by Ideas of reason, is to build up a world of dreams ; but to act in view of an end determined by such Ideas, though it is not, never has been, and perhaps never will be realised in experience, is to act in view of the one end which we can certainly realise, and for the attainment of which we are not dependent on anything but ourselves. Here, the truly practical man is the one who holds most firmly to the pure ideal, who lives most simply in view of the end which he necessarily prescribes to himself, and pays least attention to * J R. VIII. 120 ; H. V. 16. 166 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. those who would bid him look to the teaching of experience. " For," as Kant says, " when we are dealing with nature, experience must be our rule, as it is the source of all true knowledge ; but when we are dealing with morality, experience is, sad to say, the mother of illusion, and the thought is utterly to be reprobated that we should gather the. laws for what we ought to do from that which is actually done, or limit the former to the latter." * summary How far is this course of thought justifiable ? We have criticism of ° ** ttiefunctfo^of already indicated where it fails in reference to the ideal of Reasonin knowledge. It is true that the idea of self-consciousness con- Knowledge. . tains in it the ideal of knowledge in virtue of which the con- sciousness of nature, as a closed system of necessarily related objects, is found wanting, and it is true that the defect is shown by the antinomies. The solution of these antinomies, however, is not to be found where Kant finds it, merely in the distinction of phenomena and things in themselves, which arises from the comparison of the unity of self-consciousness with the unity of the world of objects. It is to be found in the perception, on the one hand, of the relation of the world of objects to the unity of the self, and, on the other hand, of the way in which the consciousness of the self includes, while it transcends, the consciousness of the objective world. Kant, however, who takes the consciousness of self as purely analytic, and so negatively related to the consciousness of objects, (which yet he admits that it implies,) necessarily conceived self-con- sciousness as the source of an ideal to which experience- remains asymptotically related; nor did he see that it was simply his own abstract opposition of the self to the object which made the ideal for him unreal. But when the syn- thesis involved in the " I am I " of self-consciousness was thus ignored, there could not but arise an absolute antagonism between consciousness of the self and consciousness of the object, and the solution of such antagonism could not but 1 A. 319 ; B. 375. chap. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 167 appear as a mere ideal. This, however, does not prevent the ideal from acquiring, in the Kantian Theory of Know- ledge, a significance which is quite inconsistent with the description of it as a mere formal unity of thought. Having once confused the judgment of self-consciousness with pure analysis, Kant did not find any difficulty in giving to the ideal derived from self-consciousness the characters of an intuitive understanding, i.e., of an objective consciousness in perfect unity with self-consciousness. Nor did he scruple further to interpret this consciousness as involving an idea of the world as a teleological whole or organic system, whose beginning and end is found in mind ; though he no sooner states this idea than he immediately points out that it is a mere regulative conception, which can never become constitutive. How near he finally brings it to being constitu- tive we cannot see till we have considered bhe Critique of Judgment, which further develops the teleological conception by making reason as practical, i.e., as a self- determining principle, the ultimate unity to which we necessarily refer all the manifoldness of the world. Here, we are concerned only to notice how these various conceptions appear in the sphere of morals. Starting, then, with the idea that the consciousness of self Questions to be answered ii arises in the opposition of the subject to the object, and itself j^tSisS f gives rise to an ideal which is not to be realised in the object, Kant is interested (1) to purify the moral consciousness from all empirical elements which can only determine it so far as it is not determined by itself, and (2) to develop the content of this pure ideal consciousness as affording a principle of com- plete determination for the self, which (3) involves that it should furnish a determination for the empirical consciousness and the empirical world. And the essential difficulty of his whole view of the moral life lies in the reconciliation of the first of these points with the third ; of the negative movement *of thought, by which the pure idea of the moral law is first the moral consciousness. 168 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book n. reached, with the positive way in which its content is developed ; and, finally, with the way in which it is conceived as determining the empirical consciousness and its objects. Various difficulties, particularly as to freedom and the Sumvium Bonum, will arise as we follow this movement through its various stages. And if we hold in principle to the criticisms already made upon Kant's point of view, we shall have to consider how far Kant's ideas can be accepted, and how far they must be remoulded when we reject his dualism, or reduce it to a relative dualism. It is clear that such a fundamental difference must affect our view of moral life at every step. For, at every step, we shall have to substitute the method that proceeds from the abstract to the concrete for that which proceeds from the con- crete to the abstract. At the same time, we have always to remember that this difference is really less important than it seems, owing to the way in which Kant confuses these two methods, and gives to the abstract and formal unity of thought a value to which strictly it is not entitled. One further preliminary remark may be made as to the distinction of knowledge and faith, which Kant introduces in passing from the sphere of speculative to the sphere of practical reason. This distinction is apt to be misunderstood if we do not keep in mind that the most important point with Kant is not the assertion, taken by itself, that we know nothing but phenomena, and that things in themselves are unknowable, but the assertion that the moral consciousness and its objects do not come under the conditions of time and space, or under the law of necessity that holds good for all that is subjected to those conditions. To forget this would be to forget what was Kant's object from the first, even from the period of the Dissertation, when he told Lambert that his aim was to remove sensuous conditions from the objects of reason, in order to know them as they are. 1 It would be to forget that he sought to find the conditions of the knowledge actually 1 Cf. above, Vol. I. 184. chap. I. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON. 169 attained in mathematical and physical science, with a view to determine the limits of the principles on which it was attained. It is true that one effect of this investigation was to reduce our consciousness of all objects that cannot be brought under those principles, to something which Kant will not call know- ledge, because it wants the element of sensuous perception ; but another effect was to show that such knowledge points beyond itself, or leads up to a region beyond itself, which is just the region occupied by the moral and religious conscious- ness. Call the thought that dwells in this region faith or knowledge, the important thing for Kant is that its rights are .secured. On the other hand, that they, are secured only for faith and not for knowledge, is due to the nature of Kant's apparent method of abstraction, which, as we have seen, often conceals a movement of thought of a quite different kind. If, however, we make explicit that real movement from the abstract to the concrete, which in Kant is at least obscured, we shall arrive at the result that what he calls faith is not something less than what he means by knowledge, but something more. For knowledge, in the sense of physical science, is based on an abstraction which we transcend in referring objects to the conscious self; and by integrating the knowledge of objects with this new element we •already win a higher knowledge of them, and not merely, as Kant supposes, a consciousness of the limitation of our previous know- ledge. A further result is to show that the consciousness of self includes in it the consciousness of the object, to which at first in our earliest self-eonsciousness it appears to be opposed; and, therefore, to cast a new light upon the practical conscious- ness, in which the ego appears as determining the object. For a process of reflexion upon the practical consciousness, similar to that which we have applied already to the speculative, will lead us to recognise that our first view of the subject as ex- ternally determining the object is fallacious and that, as in our ■theoretical consciousness we are not simply taking in infor- 170 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II- mation about a world which is alien and external to the self, but really coming to a consciousness of the self in the object, so in our practical consciousness we are not simply forcing the self upon an external and alien world, but determining and developing the self in an element -which is essentially re- lated to it, and which, therefore, cannot resist it, except so far as that self is at war with itself. Thus, in the resistent world we only find our own divided nature, and the struggle with circumstances is one with the struggle with self. The faith here set in opposition to knowledge can, there- fore, only mean the correction of our first dualistic view of the relation of self and not-self. It will not be a mere escape of thought into a more abstract region where it cannot be followed by the understanding with its scales and weights : rather it is the correction and completion of the work of the understanding by the reason. Or, more simply,, the whole view of man's life in which we take him as an indi- vidual reacting externally on other individuals, is necessarily transformed by the consideration that this individual is a self T and therefore not in a purely external relation to anything that affects him. And the result of this transformation, if it is the- vindication of a moral and religious view of life, is not faith in any sense in which faith is less than knowledge ; but in the sense in which it is the culmination of knowledge. To this, however, we must return at a further point of our inquiry, which must first deal with Kant's formulation of the moral law. 171 A CHAPTEE II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. GEEAT deal of criticism has been spent on Kant's view objections t» x Kant's format of the moral law, and especially on its formal or tauto- ^Sity logical character. It has been said that Kant's whole effort is an attempt to extract positive content from the merely negative idea of self-consistency, an attempt which is specially unfor- tunate for Kant as it directly traverses his own great distinction of analytic and synthetic judgments. How, it is asked, should the attempt to get difference out of bare identity, to " fertilise the barren understanding without the aid of experience,'' be more successful in the practical than in the speculative sphere ? Does not Kant come directly under his own censures against the formal philosophy of Wolff, when he makes abstract thought generate its own determinations; and does not the whole process really involve an illicit introduction into the moral law of the very matter of desire, or of the very idea of happiness, which Kant intended and professed to exclude ? Now, that there is considerable ground for such censures it Kant is the " representative is not difficult to show, and any one who wishes to contrive an t4o n main the PJJ . -TPT7-J j? i i i_p tendencies in easy way oi getting rid of Kant, may find much support for ethicaitheory. them in his language. But, after all, such criticisms are external, and do not quite hit the mark, because they do not disentangle the essence of Kant's thought from its form, of refute it on its own ground; which is the only kind 172 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS, book it. of refutation worth giving. We can neither understand the value and depth of Kant's conception of the moral conscious- ness, nor the defective form in which he expressed it, if we do not trace how he was led to put the case as he did. It would, indeed, he scarcely worth while to attempt such an investigation if it concerned Kant alone. But a little consideration enables us to see that we have in Kant's ethical works the final and most explicit expression of a view of the moral life which, in some form or other, has held the balance with Hedonism through the whole history of ethical philosophy. At all times we find the same charges of formalism and emptiness and inhumanity brought against that school of moralists of which the Stoics are the best known representatives ; and we find them met by the same counter- charges against Hedonism, of degrading man's moral life by introducing sensuous motives, and subjecting the pure self- determination of reason to the externally determined move- ment of passion. Nominalism and Kealism fight again here their apparently endless battle ; and the mere particulars, un- related and unorganised, are set against the abstract universal which determines nothing because it does not determine itself ; or attempts are made on each side by compromise to heal the connatural wound of an abstract theory without admitting the claims of the opposite principle. In dealing with Kant, there- fore, we are considering a vital opposition which has affected the whole history of Ethics, and in which, therefore, we may suppose each side to represent a real interest of the moral life. And it may be shown, further, that we are taking up the con- sideration of it at a stage at which the antagonism has reached its ultimate form, and therefore is on the way to be reconciled. For Kant, though he may be classed as belonging to one of the contending parties, though he expresses the negative view of the moral life in its relation to sense and passion in no hesitatin" terms, yet has continually present to him the necessity of a reconciliation, and he has put the case in behalf of his one- CHAP. II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MOKAL LAW. 1*73 sided theory in such a way as to show conclusively at once all its strength and all its weakness. In the Metaphysic of Ethics Kant takes his stand on the ^i^M 6 ^'" ordinary moral consciousness, and tries to find his way by th^oX thing analysis of it to the essential ideas of morals. 1 He points out iytorie P oa?ied good. | that that consciousness really is based on the idea that there is nothing absolutely good except a good will. "We do not call a man good because of the inward or outward advantages with which nature or fortune has enriched him, because of his talents or his wealth, or because of his firmness of resolution, his moderation or his self-command ; for he may possess all these and use them for evil ends. Nor again do we call him good because of his power of realising any particular end, outside of himself, however important that end may be. On the con- trary, we are ready to call him good because of his mere volition, even when, "through the special disfavour of fortune, or the grudging hand with which a step-motherly nature has be- stowed her gifts," his utmost efforts to realise that end are utterly ineffectual. It appears, therefore, that a man is called good merely because of his " good will " (by which, however, Kant warns us, is not meant a mere wish, but the putting forth 1 It will be observed that there is a parallelism between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason, in so far as in the former Kant seeks for the conditions of possible experience, and in the latter for the condi- tions of possible moral experience. But as morality is for Kant not that which is but that which ought to be, he cannot start with the actual achievement of men as moral beings, but only with the principle which is the motive and criterion of such achievement ; not with the fact of man's existence as a moral being, but with the " quasi-factum '' of the moral law. The one-sided subjec- tivity of Kant's conception of morals, therefore, prevents the transcendental deduction from being, as in the other case, an inquiry into the principles that make possible what is given as real, and Kant is reduced to what we might call an inquiry into the possibility of a possibility. And, as he points out, the moral law, instead of being itself deduced as a principle necessary to the possi- bility of an experience actually given, "becomes itself the principle for the deduction of thf»existence of an inscrutable faculty " — that of freedom. 174 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. of all the means in his power). What, however, we must ask, are the contents of this will to which such absolute value is attached ? Kant endeavours to answer this question by analysing the idea of duty, " which involves the idea of a good will under certain limitations," i.e., the limitations under which, as we shall presently find, it must express itself in a being such as man who is moved by sensuous desires. For these limitations do not really hide the nature of the good will, but rather set it off by contrast, and make its peculiar nature more prominent, •the meaning Now, . in attempting to define the idea of duty, and to a" anSySsrf m ark it off even from what seems most like it, we may leave jdm^ 63,0 out of account all actions that are direct breaches of duty. We may also leave out cases where we do a right act which is opposed to one inclination in order to gratify another inclina- tion ; for it is easy in such a case to see that the right act has not been done because it was our duty. Thus_it_js_ the__duty of the shopkeeper . tojdeal fairly with his customers, and not to raise his prices when he has to do with inexperienced buyers. But for him honesty is so obviously the best policy, that we do not need to suppose the presence of high principle or of any special feeling of benevolence towards his customers, when he acts fairly and equally by them. More difficult is it to make a. clear distinction of motives when duty and_ immediate inclina- tion go together. &£_is our duty to preserve our lives. But the anxious care which most people give to their own preserva- tion is not due to any sense of duty, It is only when 'misfortune and hopeless sorrow have taken the taste out of life so that death would be welcome, that there is a moral value in self-preservation. j Again, -'benevolence is a duty. But there are many sympathetic souls who, without vanity or interest, are pleased to spread happiness around them ; and in their case, right and pleasing as such conduct is, we cannot '**■•-, that it has true moral worth, any more than we can attach ' e necess,,,.^ to the desire of honour, which often leads a man/ 18 "^ °^ n ^ s 01l at chap. II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 175 greatly benefit his neighbours. But suppose a man to be altogether without such a sympathetic temperament, or even to be constitutionally cold and indifferent in relation to the sorrows of his neighbours, — perhaps because he has a power of endurance which makes him indifferent to his own, so that he is rather inclined to presuppose and demand similar hardiness on the part of others, — and suppose such a man neverthe- less, out of a sense of duty, to show himself practically bene- volent, we ,should recognise in him a character of sterling worth, a will which not merely acts in accordance with duty, but which makes duty its motive. ,For the love of such an one for his neighbour would be 'practical' and not 'patho- logical ' love, a love that implies a permanent direction of the will, and not a mere bias of inclination. We may then lay down, in the^rs^ place, that an action has The idea of the moral law moral worth onlv in so far as duty is its motive as well as its must furnish •* .„„. ■ — ■ "* — — the sole content. To this we may add, in the second place, that th e ™ °a T a e cti £ on. moral value of theaction lies not in the objective result attained by it, but i n the maxim or subjective p rinni plp. nf will whi ph i±. ^manifests. For, as we have already seen, an act may fail of its aim or object without losing its moral character; and, on the other hand, it may attain any end you please, and yet, if the motive be not duty, it will have no moral value. It follows, then, that duty may be defined as " the necessity of an act as motived solely by reverence for the law." Now, reverence is a feeling which cannot be felt for any object as the effect of , a proposed action. For such an object 1 can have desire, but not reverence. Nor can I have reverence for any desire of my own or of any other person. " Only that which is united with my will as a ground of its self-determination to action, and never as an effect of such action, only that which does not serve my inclination, but outweighs it, or at least excludes it from all influence upon my decision, can be an objeet of rever- ence and therefore an imperative. 1 But this means only the ( i R. VIII. 20 ; H. IV. 248. 1*7 6 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. bare law taken by itself." ^F or, if I exclu de every desire and object of desire, nothing is left to determine the will, but " objec^rvei y^rleTaw, a n d subjectively pun -rw mrmcelaFitSQJL in other words, the maxim or rule laid down for myself to give effect to such a law, even to the thwarting of all my desires." Thus, then, no expected effect can determine the moral worth of an action. For " every such effect, be it a pleasant state attained for oneself, or be it even the -furtherance of the happiness of others, might be brought about by other agencies without needing the will of a rational being to produce it. And, as we have seen, it is the will alone in which the highest or unconditional good must be found. In nothing, therefore, can we recognise that surpassing good to which we apply the name of moral good, except only in the consciousness of the law in itself, (a consciousness which of course is possible only to rational beings) in so far as that consciousness, and not the expected effect, is the principle that determines the will. For that alone is a good which is already present in the person who acts on such a motive, and does not need to be waited for as a result of his action." 1 Thecontentof Here, as Kant contends, we have got down to the adaman- the moral law ° idS 6 o?ia'w he tine basis of the moral consciousness, which we can reach only by abstracting from the effects of action on the one hand and from the desire for such effects on the other, and by concentrating attention on the will as supplying a law, and in that law a principle of determination, for itself. But what law can the will supply when taken in this isolation ? Obviously, Kant answers, there is here left nothing but the bare idea of law. " As I have deprived the will of all motives which might arise for it out of the following of any special law, there remains nothing but the universal accordance of the action with law to serve for a principle to actuate the will, i.e., I am required to act only in such a way that I can will that my maxim (or subjective j>rin- 1 It. VIII. 21 ' H. IV. 249. CHAP. II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 177 ciple of action) should become a universal law." 1 In other words, the fitness of the maxim of an action for a place in a scheme of universal legislation is that which stamps it as a good action. This character in it is what forces me to instant reverence for it, or for the doer of it. -It is true that the common consciousness does not state the matter to itself in this general way. Yet, by a little Socratic interrogation, we may easily show that this is the prin- ciple involved in all moral judgments. In this respect there is a great contrast between the speculative and the practical judgments of men in general. For if, in theo- retical matters, we force the ordinary run of men beyond the range of immediate sense and experience, we find that they are absolutely at sea, the victims of every irrational whim or suggestion. But in practical matters it is differ- ent. There, if we can get them to abstract from their immediate sensuous motives, we find them developing a wonder- ful power of exact judgment. The use of philosophy in this sphere is therefore only to make explicit that "obscurely thought metaphysic which dwells with every man as a part of his rational capacity," 2 but which needs to be brought to clear and full self-consciousness in order to defend itself against the sophistry of passion. The above sketch of the argument of Kant in the first ^ 8 *° tion chapter of the Metaphysic of Ethics shows the method of asanfnd. abstraction, by which he reaches the conception of a deter- mination of the will by itself apart from all motives of passion, as that which alone corresponds to the idea .^of moral self-determination. And we have to remember^liha* will with Kant is simply reason in _ jts__practical aspect. Moral action is reason willing reason, reason acting on a motive derived entirely from itself, as opposed to action on a motive of passion, which as such necessarily comes to it from without. But, if this be true, if every motive of passion » iR. VIII. 22; H. IV. 250. 2 R. IX. 219; H. VII. 178. VOL. II. M 178 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. must be set aside, what is left? Nothing, it would seem, but the pure form of universality with which reason in- vests every matter that is brought into relation to it. Eeason willing reason is reason making its own form its sole interest, irrespective of everything else. tMswtthlta Tnis view is restated in the opening chapters of the by o™ertt oT Critique of Practical Reason. The three " theorems " in rela- same twng for tion to the practical principles of pure reason, with which ■ P ata J " re and tnat fo 00 ^ commences, express the same thoughts, only with the additional qualification that all determination by objects is equivalent to determination by pleasure. The first theo- rem is, that " all practical principles which presuppose an ■object (a matter) of desire as a ground of determination for the will are empirical, and can yield no practical law." For, in order that the idea of an object should be a ground of action, it must please us, i.e., it must affect our sensibility in a particular way. The rational being as such does not, therefore, determine an object as desir- able, and so awake in himself a desire for it, but waits for the object to determine him from without. Now, when such a determination has taken place, and when once it has been experienced that a certain object produces pleasure, this may give rise in the individual to a maxim or rule of action ; but, inasmuch as this maxim is based only on his subjective receptivity of pleasure and pain, it cannot have for him that objective necessity which is involved in the idea of a practical law. From this follows at once the second theorem, that "all material practical principles as such are of one and the same kind, and fall under the universal principle of self-love or our own happiness." For the pleasure in the consciousness of the existence of an object, which is implied in a material practical principle, can be felt only in so far as the object affects us and causes a pleasurable state in us. But happiness is just a ^continuity of such pleasurable state or states through all CHAP. II. THE FORMULATION OP THE MORAL LAW. 179 existence. All material practical principles, therefore, are of one kind. It is true that distinctions are often made be- tween different kinds of desires, according to the different nature of the objects the ideas of which are bound up with pleasure and pain. In particular, the pleasurable states which have their origin in the understanding are often distinguished from the pleasures of sense, as an altogether different species. But for our purpose such a distinction has no relevancy. Pleasure in all its forms is simply a " consciousness of the agreement of the object or act with the subjective conditions of life, in so far as life shows itself in the causality of ideas in reference to the existence of objects, or in determining the powers of the subject to action with a view to the produc- tion of such objects." 1 And "it is one and the same vital force expressing itself in the desires, which is affected by all objects that cause pleasure : these, therefore, as affect- ing it, differ not in kind but only in degree." 2 As it is all one to him, who uses gold to pay his expenses, whether the gold he uses was dug up in the mountains or washed out of the sand, so no man who cares solely for the pleasant- ness of life asks whether the pleasant consciousness is due to objects of sense or objects of understanding, but only how much pleasure they produce and how long it will last. The idea that the more refined enjoyments are, as pleasures, essen- tially different from coarser gratifications, is on a par with the metaphysic of those untrained speculators who think of matter as reduced to the utmost fineness, and suppose that thus they have bridged over the gulf between a thinking and an extended substance. Hence, we cannot but praise Epicurus, who, though he by no means regarded the bodily pleasures as the sole elements of happiness, yet maintained that there is no essential qualitative distinction between the most refined and the coarsest gratifications. HappinesB is Now, every rational finite being must desire to be happy, ™£%$$$ n principle of * x R,. VIII. 112 ; H. V. 9. 2 K. VIII. 131 ; H. V. 23. action. 180 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK H. And, as finite, he cannot find such happiness in himself alone, but must seek it without in the objects which he needs. What are the objects, however, that constitute this matter of desire, he can discover only by experience, as those objects act on his sensibility. It is impossible, there- fore, that the mere desire of happiness can set before him a ground of determination which shall hold good objec- tively in all cases and for all rational beings. It is true, indeed, that the idea of happiness furnishes a kind of unity, under which all the different objects of desire may be brought ; but it is in this point of view a mere "general title for all subjective motives of will," 1 and does not yield any principle of determination which could give us the specific direction we require from a practical principle. Happiness is one thing for one and another thing for another, and it changes for the same subject with the changes of his feelings. Further, even if all finite rational beings thought alike in relation to the objects that give them pleasure and pain, this would be a mere accidental coincidence and could not carry with it the necessity of a law, which must be derived from a priori grounds. Or the necessity that we could find in actions as determined by such a law would be only physical and not practical, i.e., it would mean that the action is determined by desire in the same way as we yawn when we see others yawning. The moral From all this follows, then, the third Theorem, that "if grinciplemust eformai. a rational being is to think of his maxims as universal practical laws, he must think of them as principles which contain the determining ground of the will only as respects its form and not as respects its matter." For, if we think away the desires and their objects, we have nothing left but the mere form of the will, as the will of a rational being in which reason enacts or wills itself as reason. " When we separate from a law all its matter, i.e., every object of J B. Till. 134; H. V. 26. CHAP. ii. THB FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. ] 81 will which can determine it, nothing remains but the mere form of a universal legislation. Hence a rational being can- not think of his subjective principles of action, i.e., his maxims, as at the same time constituting universal laws, unless he assumes that it is the mere form of these maxims, according to which they are fitted to be elements in a univer- sal legislation, that by itself makes them into such practical laws." 1 So far we have followed Kant very closely. But, before Questions su g - gested by the going further, it seems necessary to throw light upon the ^ f a S tian vie . w peculiar form of his exposition : first, in its negative as- prhiC f le - pect, as separating the moral consciousness from the con- sciousness of pleasure and pain, as well as of the objects that produce such states and of the desires which are all supposed immediately to spring from them ; and, secondly, *- in its positive aspect, as identifying the moral conscious- ness with a consciousness of the form of law as a motive of action. In regard to the former, we can appreciate Kant's whole Distinction of ±x the motive mind on the subject only if we remember his view of the 7 Mcb arises « A. 807 ; B. 835. 196 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. not manifestations of it, but only of our natural sensibility; and therefore the determination of them by the principle can only mean the limitation of their gratification to conditions in which they do not conflict with it ; and their gratification under those conditions cannot be the pure realisation of the principle itself. Yet, unless the principle be realised purely and for itself, the moral end will not be attained. We can escape the necessary inference of the impossibility of realising the moral end in relation to such a material, only by observing that, while we can represent the intelligible world, which is the realisation of the moral idea, only under the image of a natural world determined by that idea, this representation contains an element which is fictitious ; for the moral idea arises in connexion with a consciousness of self which is negatively related to the con- sciousness of the natural world, and its realisation cannot be adequately represented under the forms of that consciousness, parallel of the Erom this point of view, we are prepared to disentangle the Critiques of . . pure and truth from the error m Kants ethical conceptions. We shall Practical Eea- x methodof* 3 n °t °hject to Kant's view of the moral consciousness as a con- bothoaseTto 11 sciousness of the intelligible world, which we oppose to the natural world as that which ought to be to that which is, and, again, as a consciousness of an end and a law, which is not the ' end or law of mere natural impulses as such. The permanent value of Kant's Ethics (as of the Stoic Ethics) consists mainly in the firmness with which he grasps the essential antagonism i of spirit and nature in the moral life ; though it may be also true that its weakness consists in its exclusive attention to that antagonism : an antagonism cannot be made absolute without losing its meaning. We have now to consider, there- fore, how it is possible to retain the relative truth of this view, while connecting it with the complementary truth to which Kant has opposed it. As a first step towards this it may he observed that, as we have attempted to show in the last chapter, the defect of Kant's view is simply a continuation of the error of the Critique of Pun Reason, according to which self-conscious- chap, ii, THE FORMULATION OP THE MORAL LAW. 19*7 ness is reached by abstraction from that consciousness of the world of objects which yet is presupposed in it; or of the error which is the counterpart of that, according to which the known object has an element in it which is not related to the thought that determines it. For if, in the Critique of Pure Reason, such a view of self-consciousness leads to the conclusion that in the phenomenal world we cannot find a reality in con- formity with our idea of reality in the Critique of Practical Reason, it must lead to the conclusion that no determination of the world by the activity of the self can make it so conformable. And the same principles, by which in the former case we endeavoured to separate the truth from the error contained in Kant's view of knowledge, must guide us in the latter case in seeking to separate the truth from the error contained in his view of moral action. The Critique of Pure Reason is in its essence a correction Kmtgoesoniy as far in the of our natural view of the object as indifferent to the self that th^praiticai knows it, and it is defective only in that it still maintains theoretical itt • i • -it consciousness. so much oi the natural dualism which it opposed. Kant sought to prove that the object we know is a phenomenon, i.e., an object relative to the self that knows it, and that the same is true of the self as object. But, in each of these cases, the object is " made but not created by the understanding," i.e., it is constructed by the ego out of data of sense according to the categories. Hence, it is impossible to regard the determination of the phenomenal self by other objects as equivalent to a determination of the ego as a subject by these objects, any more than it is possible to regard the reaction of the phenomenal self upon other objects as a self-determination of the ego, the pure subject. But, in our first conception of our own practical life, this is just what we suppose. We take the subject as simply an individual object among other objects, which' is acted upon by them, and which reacts upon them according to certain impulses and desires, in conformity with which it seeks to determine them. N i ' i objectivegood, negatively related to the consciousness oi objects, and so as giving rise to an ideal of reason which that consciousness can- not realise, so, in the Critique of Practical Reason, the moral law, the law of action which the self determines for itself, is conceived as a principle which cannot possibly be connected with the idea of any objective good to be attained. For it is argued that an objective good would involve, in the first place, the conformity of the immediate subjective individuality to a law which is present to us only as we abstract from that individuality ; and, secondly, it would involve the determination by reason of an objective world which never can be completely harmonised with the .idea of reason. It appears, therefore, as if determination by self were only determination by the con- scious subject as opposed to all objects and even to its own sensuous individuality. But thus, the pure law of reason be- comes an abstract universal, i.e., a universal opposed to any and ■every particular which could be brought under it. As, however, it is only as related to the particular that the universal has any meaning, the attempt to find a content for it within itself must end in depriving it of all content. From this point of view, we see that the Kantian Ethics has the congenital fault of all merely negative systems, which forget that a negative implies a positive, and that, if we attempt to treat a negative relation as negative only, we make it cease to be a relation at all, or, indeed, to be anything. 202 KANT'S ETHICAL WOBKS. book II. obu u ?dto are This S ulf of nothingness Kant partially escapes by the way typ« y it a8 of .. Ideas _" As in the o^^ y p^e Pmsow, he makes the analytic Judgment of self-consciousness yield us an idea of the world as a teleologically determined whole, which yet has to remain a mere regulative idea, i.e., an idea which is of use to guide us in scientific investigation yet can never be realised or verified by such investigation ; so in the Critique of Practical Reason, he makes it yield the idea of a kingdom of ends — an organically determined society, in which all rational beings are members and all things are determined as means to the realisa- I tion of the rational life. But this idea also is merely regulative ; for such a social unity is an ideal which can never be realised in the objective world, or, as we should rather put it, can never be known as so realised, however we may determine our will by it. Our determination of the will by it must, therefore, be regarded as morally good, not because it is a means to such realisation, but because of what it is in itself. Our conscious- ness of the moral ideal is a consciousness of the world which we attain by using the natural world as a type of the intelligible world ; but in so using it we must always remember the liberty we are taking ; for, in truth, the intelligible world is present to us only as we abstract from the natural world. The type is the necessary projection of the law of action of a self, derived from its own nature, in virtue of which it is represented as an objective end of action ; but, as such projection can be accom- plished only by using the material supplied by the world of nature, it must not be taken as a true determination of the end or result which such action can achieve. In short, we have no perception which could realise for us such an idea ; and we are obliged to supply its place by the use of perceptions which are necessarily inadequate to it ; a procedure which will not lead to mistake, so long as we remember that the point of agreement between the two worlds, which makes it possible to use the one as type of the other, is that both are systems under universal laws, and that it is this point solely to which we have to attend in OHiP. n. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 203 thinking of the idea of a kingdom of ends as the object or end to be realised by the will. 1 When, therefore, we get rid of all this surplusage, the idea of a kingdom of ends sinks into the abstract idea of a system under universal laws, i.e., into the mere form of a universal legislation, and it is by this form alone that a self can be motived to action when it is motived by itself. When we have sot thus far, we begin to see that the diffi- The necessity ° of the type culties of Kant's ethics arise from the negative movement, in ^f^Sti™ 3 * which the law of the mind is opposed to the law of the mSraMyhas i i • • i pi i • • been exag- members, being carried so far that the positive movement of elated, determination of the latter by the former becomes impossible. The moral life is essentially the reconstitution of the natural life through its negation ; and, therefore, asceticism, or a move- ment in which the ascetic idea is involved, may fairly be said to be the beginning of morality. When, however, this negation is conceived absolutely, the positive reconstitution of the natural life in any form becomes impossible. It may, however, throw light on this impossibility, if we observe that it is not only the positive movement of ethics which is thus made impossible ; the negative movement also is itself deprived of all meaning by being made an absolute negation, which, in breaking all connexion with that which is negated, leaves the principle reached by such negative process quite indeterminate. When we see the emptiness of a negation which is absolute, TMsexaggera- tion may be we begin to understand how it is possible to do justice to the |Je wly e fn by negative aspect of morals without losing the positive. We have morSron- .,,... . -.. . T . sciousness only to consider how it is that negative morality arises, it arises develops. from the fact that the form of self-consciousness is at variance with the matter which in its earliest stage of development it receives into itself, and that the progress of the moral con- sciousness is the transformation of that matter, the negation and the reconstitution of it, Man as a ' natural spirit,' or spirit in a natural form, is in contradiction with himself. The 1 R. VIII. 193 ; H. V. 74. 204 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. waking of self-consciousness is the distinction of himself from his own natural individuality, and carries with it the conscious- ness of a good or end in which not only the desires hut the self shall be satisfied ; or, rather, it brings the satisfaction of desires under the form of a satisfaction of the self. Ascetic systems arise when these two elements are distinguished and opposed to each other. But, when they are so opposed, two things are apt to be forgotten, viz., that it is in relation to, if in distinc- tion from, the determination by desire and its objects, that the very idea of determination by the self ever arises ; and that the self, whose law of determination is thus opposed to determination by the particular desires, has itself no content hut these desires. Kant, however, could suppose that it had : for, as he conceived self-consciousness, though only an analytic unity, in its theoretical aspect, to give rise to Ideas which enable us to direct and limit our knowledge of objects, though not to transform it ; so, in its practical aspect, he could conceive it to give rise to an " Idea of the necessary unity of all possible ends," in view of which we can combine our motives of action in the phenomenal world into a system (which, however, in the phenomenal world The opposition is not capable of realisation). Now, in relation to the theoreti- must foe reutive ed M ca ^ consciousness we were led to point out that, if we assume that self-consciousness is purely analytic, we cannot make it the source of any Ideas of noumena with which phenomenal objects may be contrasted ; and if we hold it to be not merely analytic, but capable of producing such Ideas, we cannot confine it to the production of Ideas, but must regard it as capable of trans- forming our consciousness of phenomenal objects. And a similar line of reasoning may be followed out in relation to the practical consciousness. For, if self-consciousness be taken as purely analytic, the only idea which we can get from it will be the idea of abstract universality, and the only criterion of moral acts will be the self-consistency of their maxims as universalised. On the other hand, if we take self-consciousness as a synthetic principle, a principle which gives rise to an ideal chap. ii. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 205 or law of conduct, then we must conceive it as capable by means of that ideal, not only of lifting us beyond the imme- diate determination of our individuality by desire in relation to the objects of experience, but also of reconstituting desire, and making its satisfaction in empirical objects one with the realisation of the self. Now, our criticism of Kant's view of the theoretical consciousness led us to recognise, not only that the consciousness of objects is determined in conformity with the possibility of self-consciousness, and that self-consciousness is possible only in relation to the consciousness of objects, but, further, that self-consciousness includes, while it transcends, the consciousness of objects, and therefore enables us to give a new interpretation to that consciousness. We were, therefore, obliged to dispute Kant's assertion that the ideal of knowledge to which self-consciousness gives rise, is one which is incapable of being realised. Here, in like manner, we have to correct Kant's view of the practical consciousness, by pointing out that, though the consciousness of self as active is distinguished from, or opposed to, the consciousness of its determination by par- ticular desires, it implies that consciousness. If, therefore, it gives rise to the idea of an end different from the objects of the desires, yet that end cannot be one incommensurable with those objects or altogether inconsistent with their attain- ment. In fact, the end of self-realisation or self-satisfaction can be opposed to the ends of the desires only in so far as desire in man is in contradiction with itself. Now, it is this that Kant neglects. He describes the moral ^^f 01 ' 6 - life as if, in our consciousness of the desires, we had our own S^tTe sensitive being before us as an object unchanged by self-conscious- ascetic systems ness, just as the appetites of an animal are unchanged by our knowledge of them. He speaks, in fact, as if we could be conscious of desires as moving us without our consciousness affecting these desires, and as if, on the other hand, the con- sciousness of the self, as giving rise to a motive which we distinguish from the desires, did not essentially involve a 206 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K "• consciousness of the desires to which we oppose it. Only if this were the case, would it be possible to accept Kant's view of the merely natural character of the desires as in us, and of the moral consciousness as in irreconcilable opposition to them. When, however, we consider that it is in relation to the natural impulses that we become conscious of the self as the source of a motive entirely different in character from these impulses, and that, therefore, the self whose realisation we distinguish from the realisation of the desires, is only, and can be only, the unity to which they implicitly refer, we can see that the ideal, the consciousness of which arises out of this opposition, cannot be absolutely alien to the desires, any more than the knowing self can be alien to the particular objects which exist only for it. In fact, the relation in which these desires are brought to the unity of the conscious self in its being opposed to them, is already the first step in the way of making explicit the ideal involved in them ; and thus the antagonism of desire and duty can only be understood in relation to a unity which is pre- supposed in that antagonism, and which is realising itself through it. It is a consequence of this that the mere abstract opposition of the form and the matter of the will which is involved in asceticism, is meaningless except as a moment of transition. The universal cannot be opposed to all its par- ticulars, except in so far as the consciousness of it already contains in germ the reconstitution of those particulars out of ! itself. Looking at the matter historically, we are able to show that asceticism is never really the principle of an independent moral life. It appears only as a passing phase of a moral experience, in which the individual denies himself as individual that he may reassert himself as member of a family or state. And even where, as in the case of Stoicism, the negative ethics seem to assume a certain independence, and the individual in realising his moral end is conceived as withdrawing into him- self from all social life, we find indications, not obscure, that the negative is destined to merge in a higher positive. The CHAP. it. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 207 philanthropy of the Stoics springs immediately out of their asceticism, and has in it the germ of a new conception of a universal human society. When, therefore, Kant reduces the i moral idea to the mere form of universality, as opposed to the matter, he is really treating one aspect of the moral life as if it were a complete account of it. And his conception is one which is in discordance with the actual ethics of any time. "We are not, however, as we have already seen, confined to Kant supplies us with the this merely historical refutation of Kant's ethical theory ; for lectin his self-consciousness must be conceived as a principle of self- Msaite^atvU . , .. _ . . „ . . 1 formulae for determination, t.e., as in itself synthetic, it it is to have any the moral law. content at all, if it is to give rise to any idea that can deter- mine action ; and when it is so conceived, it carries us beyond the opposition of the formal a priori principle to the empirical matter in which it is realised. In this respect, Kant himself has supplied us with all the ideas needed for his own correction. For, in the three formulae in which he expresses the moral law, he first carries us beyond the idea of self-consistency to the idea of consistency with the self, and from that to the idea of a kingdom of ends, — although, of course, we must always take note of the reservations which accompany these different expressions of the moral principle. The merits and defects of Kant's statement can, however, be appreciated only by a close consideration of its details. Kant starts with the fundamental idea that consciousness m s distinc- tion of acting changes the relation of man to the law of his life. " Everv under law and " acting in view natural object operates according to laws. Only a rational ^^ a being has the faculty of acting according to the conscious- ness ' of laws, i.e., according to principles : in other words, only a rational being has a will. Further, as the deduction of acts from laws is a rational process, will is the same thing with practical reason. Now, such a will or practical reason may be the property of two different kinds of beings. We may have a being in whom reason inevitably determines the will, and in whose case, therefore, .the actions that are recognised as objec- 208 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II tively necessary are also subjectively necessary. In otner words, the will in such a being will be a faculty of desiring that and that only, which reason, without any dependence upon desire, recognises as practically necessary, i.e., as good. On the other hand, we may have a being in whom reason for itself does not adequately determine the will, but the will is deter- mined also by certain subjective conditions (i.e., certain motives) which are not in invariable agreement with its objective con- ditions ; in a word, we may have a will which is not in itself completely accordant with reason : and this, of course, is actually the case with the will of man. In his case, then, the acts which are recognised as objectively necessary are subjectively accidental, and the determination of the will in accordance with objective laws takes the form of obligation (or a feeling that necessity is laid upon him, JVothigung). In other words, the relation of the objective laws to a will which is not out and out good is represented as the determination of the will of a rational being by grounds of reason to which nevertheless he is not by his nature necessarily submissive." 1 Sw?that°are f ^ n ^ s P assa g e Kant seeks to express the idea that a law, Sdbypothrti. which determines a being like man only as he is conscious of tive. ' it, is essentially different in its operation from a law to which a being or thing is subjected without any such conscious- ness. In the former ease, the law may, and indeed must, present itself as an imperative, if there be anything in the individual that resists obedience to it. But it cannot be a law of external necessity, seeing it acts only through the con- sciousness of the being it determines. There is, it is true, a kind of external imperative, to which as rational beings we are capable of subjecting ourselves. When we will any end, we say that, taking that end for granted, we " oucrht " to will the means. But such an imperative is hypothetical, for there is no necessity to will the end. There is, indeed, one end which all sensitive beings as such actually do will by the law iR. VIII. 36; H. IV. 260. chap. ii. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 209 of nature ; for nature makes them desire pleasure and dislike pain, and attracts them to, or repels them from, the objects that produce these feelings-/ This, therefore, is the ground of an imperative to seek the means of happiness, as the greatest sum of pleasures with the smallest mingling of pains. But this also is still a hypothetical imperative, in so far as the means are different from the end and not willed for themselves ; and the end itself, though it always is willed by us as sensitive beings, is not laid upon us by our reason as a necessary law of action. On the other hand, a categorical imperative must spring directly ouJLpf reason, without reference to any object or inclination, and must directly connect the act with the conception of the will of the rational being as such. In other words, the rational being must directly connect the act with the idea of himself as acting, without reference to any inclination to be gratified or any object in which it is to be gratified. 1 Now, supposing that there is such an imperative, what will what must be rr ° r the content of be its content ? Kant answers that a categorical imperative w;^,|° t ™ al can contain only the law and the necessity of the subjective principle or maxim being in accord with it ; and that, as such a law abstracts from all conditions, i.e., from all particular objects or inclinations for objects, no content can be left but " the universality of a law in general, with which the maxim of the act must agree." In other words, the conformity of the maxim of an act to the idea of law will be the sole reason why we are conscious of it as categorically commanded. The only categorical imperative possible, then, is thus expressed : — " Act in such a way that, in willing to act, you can will that the maxim of your act should become a universal law." This, however, Kant, for reasons already given, immediately translates into the form : — " Act as if by your will the maxim of your act were about to be made into a universal law of nature." For it is only by thinking of it as a law of nature that we can represent 1 R. VIII. 46 ; H. IV. 264. Here, therefore, we have a practical a, priori syftthesis. VOL. II. O 210 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K 1L a moral law as realised. Kant then proceeds to test the maxims of immoral actions by giving them " the form of laws of nature." In considering the way in which he does this, however, we must always remember that " this comparison of the maxim of our actions with a universal law of nature is not the motive which is to determine our will to perform them. The law of nature serves as a type for our judgment upon the maxim according to moral principles. If the maxim is not of such a character that it can stand the test to which it is sub- jected in giving it the form of a law of nature, it is morally impossible." 1 Kant's appii- Applvins, then, this test to duties of perfect and imperfect cation of his rr J ° r nuo'dSties* obligation, towards ourselves and towards others, Kant attempts obligation ; to show that in the case of breaches of duties of perfect obliga- tion we have a direct contradiction when we conceive the maxims of such acts as universal laws of nature ; and that, though there is no such direct contradiction in the case of breaches of duties of imperfect obligation, yet a rational being, when he represents himself as willing that the maxims of such acts should be universalised, will be divided against himself. The former of these statements is illustrated by the cases of suicide and borrowing without the possibility of repaying. An individual seeking to escape the misery of existence would like to commit suicide, but " he asks himself whether this maxim based on the principle of self-love could become a universal law of nature"; and he speedily sees that "it is impossible to con- ceive without contradiction a natural system in which the same feeling, the office of which is to impel men to the preservation and furtherance of life, should by a universal law of nature lead them to self-destruction." Again, suppose an individual urged by his want to borrow, under promise to repay, when he knows he will not be able to fulfil his promise, and suppose that he " changes this suggestion of self-love into a universal law of nature," he sees at once that, ' the universality of a • R. VIII. 192 ; H. V. 73. chap. ii. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 211 law according to ■which each one, when he believes himself to be in need, may promise whatever he pleases with the resolve not to keep his promise, would make impossible the promising and any end it could have in view; since no one under such a system would consider that anything was promised to him, but would laugh at all such utterances as mere silly show and hypocrisy." 1 The examples of breaches of duties of imperfect obliga- Perfect 0901 tion are the refusal to exert oneself to educate one's powers, obllgatlon - and the refusal to assist others who are in need. A man finds that he has certain talents, but is disinclined to take pains in developing them. Trying his maxim by the pre- scribed test, he finds that "a nature might subsist according to such a universal law, though men allowed their talents to rust as the South Sea Islanders actually do ; . . < . but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of nature, or that obedience to such a law should be made instinctive. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that every faculty in himself should be developed, because they are serviceable for all sorts of ends, and have indeed been given him for the sake of these." Again, an individual is well off, and has no pleasure in assisting others, and is not disposed to take trouble in doing so; but he brings his action to a test by putting its maxim into the form of a universal law of nature, and what is the result? He finds that men might quite well continue to exist on the principle of self-help, but yet he cannot possibly will that such a principle should become a universal law of nature. "For a will which so determined would con- tradict itself, since many cases may occur in which the individual needs the love and sympathy of others, in which, by such a natural law springing from his own will, he would absolutely deprive himself of all hope of assistance." The result, then, is that some immoral acts are of such impossibility or universalis- 1 B. VIII. 48 ; H. IV. 270. ing either. 212 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B0OK tL a character that their maxims cannot even be thought of as universal laws of nature without contradiction, much less that one should be able to will the existence of such a nature ; while in the case of other immoral acts, where we find no such impossibility of thought, yet we cannot possibly will that their maxims should be raised into laws of nature, since such a will would contradict itself. In both cases, what we really want is that the law should remain in force, but that an exception should be made in our case for the benefit of our inclinations. "Hence, if we were to weigh everything from one and the same point of view, i.e., the point of view of reason, we should in all such cases find a contradiction in our will; for it would be at once a will that a certain principle should be necessary objec- tively as a universal law, and at the same time a will that subjectively it should not have the force of universal law, but admit of exceptions." 1 contaSdiudon I n regard to the supposed contradiction in any breach univeraaiising of the duties of perfect obligation, Mill 2 makes the remark of the maxim , involved in a that all Kant does show is that immoral acts would have breach of a obUgation? ect suc ^ injurious consequences, as no one would choose to incur. Hegel, as we have seen, 8 more exactly hits the mark, when he points out that the contradiction has always a presupposition. It is a contradiction to suppose the existence of a natural system in which sensitive beings form a part, beings who are urged by pleasure and pain to self-preservation, and at the same time to suppose that these impulses should iR. VIII. 51; H. IV. 272. 2 Utilitarianism, p. 6 (eighth edition). I say in the text that Mill's objection does not exactly hit the mark, because, — though it shows the necessity Kant is under of supplementing his principle from without, — it does not show what the defect is that makes such a supplement necessary. It is because Kant's prin- ciple is merely formal, and, as formal, cannot give rise to any determination of the particular content subsumed under it, that Kant is obliged to bring in utilitarian considerations, when he attempts to get such determination from it. 3 See above, p. 186 seq. chap. II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 2 1 3 also universally work to self-destruction. But the contradic- tion is simply that the same cau.se is supposed to act in two opposite ways without change of circumstances. We presuppose a certain impulse as the basis of self-preserva- tion, and, of course, if it led to self-destruction, we should have a contradiction ; but the contradiction is really with the presupposition as to the nature of sensitive beings, as beings urged to self-preservation by pleasure and pain. In the same way, universal lying would be the negation of a social system in which language was a necessary means of connecting the members with each other. Hence it is not, strictly speaking, the case that the maxim of such acts is self-contradictory when universalised, but rather that it is contradictory with a certain presupposed order in the life of rational beings. Universal lying, universal stealing, etc., are contradictory to the idea of an order based on the maintenance of truth and of private property. But then the question returns, how the duty of truth and the right of property can be derived from the moral principle. Hence we want a direct positive deduction of what is right, and cannot be content with a negative deduction of it from the self-contradictory nature of wrong. Indeed the latter , is possible only on the presupposition of the former. 1 When we go on to the duties of imperfect obligation, fjj|^ d |! e t s not we find that Kant does not pretend here to give us even dldtfcSo™ • mi T • it l e *^ e duties °f a negative deduction. The contradiction in the breach of perfect obligation. such duties does not show itself in the impossibility of conceiving a nature organised on laws corresponding to the maxims of such acts, but in the divided will which we must suppose in the rational being who adopts such maxims. For Kant, as we have seen, contends that a rational being as such must have a will in accordance with the impartial Observe that, as stated above, p. 187 note, it is not denied that right action must be the expression of a universal principle. What is denied is, that any particular rule can be selected as fit to be part of a universal legislation, by the mere formal principle cf self -consistency. 214 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K "' point of ' view of reason, and that this impartial will is necessarily in conflict with any special will which he has for his own hehoof as an individual. This reminds us of the "impartial spectator" of Hume and Adam Smith. To Kant a rational being as such is necessarily an impar- tial spectator. As he is a knowing self, all objects are essentially related, and equally related to him ; and his own individual existence stands before him as an object like other individual existences. And, as he is a willing self, his own individuality cannot be an end for him more than the individuality of others. He has an impartial will, which is not biassed by the particular character of his own desires to give their objects an undue importance in the order of ends ; just as he has an impartial understanding, which is not misled by the particular character of his own sense- perceptions to give to their objects a place other than that which is due to them in the order of nature. au impartial Now, it is not difficult to recognise the truth and the will cannot me'eT formal importance of this view of the moral consciousness. What, principle™ however, we have to 1 observe is that such impartiality can- not rest on a merely negative basis ; or, to put it other- wise, it cannot be made possible by a mere abstraction from all the special motives of desire ; nay, such an abstrac- tion itself is not possible except in view of a positive determination of the rational will to which it refers. A negative which does not spring from a positive, and does not contain the germ of a new positive, is an impossible abstraction. In the speculative sphere, we have seen that the ideas which enable us to condemn the objective world as phenomenal, must also supply principles which will enable us to transform the consciousness of that world: or, in other words, these ideas not only determine the phenomenon as phenomenon, but contain at the same time the beginning of a consciousness of the reality of which it is the phenomenon. So also, in the practical sphere, the negation of the ends of particular chap. II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 215 desires already implies a consciousness of a principle, which not only condemns those ends, but which is capable of reconstituting them on a new basis. In other words, it involves the idea of a moral principle, which out of itself positively determines the particular ends and the desires relating to them; and which thus not only enables us. to regard our own individuality on equal terms with that of others, but also to determine our own individuality in rela- tion to that of others, as members of a social organism in which both equally are subordinated and both equally are realised. It is because Kant does not recognise this, that he falls back on the self-contradictoriness of evil, and of the evil will as universalised, instead of showing how the universal will can positively determine itself. But on his principle, — that only that action is right the maxim of which can be universalised, — all particular will as such would be condemned, for no particular will can be universalised. As has been already shown, there cannot be many absolute rules in the moral life ; for they must limit each other^ and if any one rule were treated as an absolute law, it would substitute itself for the principle of morals. Hence morality necessarily involves the negation of every particular when taken by itself, and the restoration of it through the universal. In other words, it involves that each element of life should be regarded merely as an element, which owes its value to its place in an organic whole determined by one principle ; and this, of course, involves that it is not to be willed irrespectively of the other particular elements, but in relation to them. But Kant, by his negative method which starts with the absolute negation of the particular in view of the universal, has made it impossible for himself to. take up the particular again, except by a direct reasser- tion of it as simply identical with the universal. And he escapes the consciousness of the contradiction of this alter- nate negation and reassertion of the particular, by the 216 KANT'S ETHICAL WOKKS. book II. supposition that the negation of the particular as against the universal applies only to some particulars, and the re- assertion of the particular through the universal to other particulars ; a supposition to which, however, he cannot strictly hold, in face of his view that the particular ought to he willed only as the universal. 1 1 The moral rigour that insists on the literal observance of moral rules, and thereby raises them into the place of the principle which underlies and tran- scends all particular rules, finds its opposite counterpart in the moral laxity that treats such rules as essentially opposed to the principle ; as if the spirit of the law could be realised only when the letter is trampled under foot. A morality of mere command has its natural relief, its equally one-sided opposite, in a morality of mere sentiment. Hence we do not wonder to find Jacobi pro- testing with no little vehemence against Kant's stern assertion of the categorical imperative of law in his letter to Fichte ( Werke, III. 37). ' ' Yes, I am the Atheist, the G odless one, who, in spite of the will that wills nothing, am ready to lie as the dying Desdemona lied ; to lie and deceive like Pylades, when he pretended to be Orestes ; to murder like Timoleon ; to break law and oath like Epaminondas, like John de Witt ; to commit suicide with Otho, and sacrilege with David, — yea, to rub the ears of corn on the Sabbath day, merely because I am hungry, and because the law is made for the sake of man and not man for the sake of the law. I am that Godless one, and I deride the philosophy that calls me Godless for such reasons, both it and its Supreme Being ; for with the holiest certitude which I have in me, I know that the pre- rogative of pardon [privilegium aggratiandi] in reference to such transgressions of the letter of the absolute law of reason, is the characteristic royal right of man, the seal of his dignity and of his divine nature." Man, therefore, accord- ing to Jacobi, is called upon not to act "in blind obedience to the law " [blindgesetdicK], He must call in the aid of his heart, "the peculiar faculty of Ideas," to interpret the letter by the spirit. "This heart the Transcen- dental Philosophy will not be allowed to tear out of my breast, in order to set a pure impulse of Egoism in its place. I am not one to allow myself to be freed from the dependence of love, in order to have my blessedness in pride alone. " The meaning of all this is just that Jacobi recoils from the moral severity of Kant, which asserts the absoluteness of morality only in the form of abstract laws which are to be obeyed irrespective of circumstances. Such severity, he argues, fails of its aim, just because it disregards the voice of the feelings which, in their close relation to the particular, have in them a higher reason of their own than is represented by the mere letter of the law, (for "the heart is the faculty of Ideas that are not empty,") and because it substitutes for their guidance, either a mere abstract universality, — as Jacobi puts it, "a will that wills nothing," — or a particular rule which it elevates into a place of universal authority it has no right to occupy. What, however, Jacobi does not observe is that, when appeal is thus made from the law to mere feeling, we only sub- stitute for the abstract universal the equally abstract individual. And if the former fails either because it has no content, or because it does not take chap. ii. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 217 The root of Kant's inconsistency lies in this, that, while he If . thecoD ' , «/ ' ' sciousness of sees that " acting by law " is one thing and " acting from the llZ'tbewv- consciousness of law" is another, he yet treats self-conscious desire changes desire. desire as if it were not other in character than the appetite for an object which agreeably affects the sensibility. But, if the consciousness of a law makes determination by it self-deter- mination, does not the consciousness of desire give a new character to determination by desire ? In the consciousness of desire the self is withdrawn from immediate union with the desire ; it has the desire before it as a motive, which stands in relation to all other motives through its relation to the self. Hence, it is impossible for it any longer to wish to satisfy that desire apart from wishing to satisfy itself, and so from wishing to satisfy other tendencies of the self. And thus desire, as well as the law, changes its character. Kant, however, though he admits that in becoming, or giving rise to, a " maxim " of will, the natural desire gets a certain generality, 1 does not see that account of the limitation of any particular content that may be given to it, the latter equally fails because it has no^necessary relation to the universal prin- ciple. For it tells me nothing as to the Tightness or wrongness, the reasonable- ness or unreasonableness of any judgment or action to know that some indi- vidual is able to say "I feel it to be right." If, therefore, Jacobi is right in maintaining that there is something higher than the particular rules of morality, some spirit that transcends the letter of the law, yet, in his appeal to the heart, he is in danger of perverting the truth that the particular rules have their limits, into the error of an absolute denial of their validity. It is true that it is impossible to universalise any particular, and that the attempt to do so necessarily leads to a mechanical and external, rather than to a spiritual view of morality ; for the particular which is thus treated, as the universal, just be- cause it is put in place of the whole, loses its value as a " moment " in the whole. In other words, it ceases to be a living element in the organic system of morality. But what is wanted to correct this defect, is not the mere eleva- tion 'of feeling above reason, an appeal from the head to the heart, but that the universal of morality should be conceived as a synthetic principle, a principle which is able at once to vindicate the authority of the particular law and the value of the interest it protects, and. at the same time to determine the limits of that authority by reference to the other laws or interest, which along with it are needed to a complete moral life. Cf. Hegel's remarks in his essay on Jacobi ( We.rU, XVII. 23 seq.). X R. X. 25 ; H. VI. 118. " The freedom of the will has the quite peculiar characteristic that it cannot be determined to action by any motive, except in si far as the man has taken it up into his maxim, i.e., has made it into a uni- 218 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book 1 1. by this operation of consciousness the desire, as well as the relation which it establishes between its object and the subject, or the law which expresses that relation, are essentially changed. Hence, he thinks that in submitting to this law the individual is not determined by the consciousness of law, and that he is determined by the consciousness of law only when he abstracts from all the content of desire. Hence also, like the Stoics, he treats desire merely as an intruder upon the determination of the will, which must be extruded again in order that the will may be self-determined. Or he treats man as if he were made up on the one hand, of an animal, and on the other hand, of a rational being, who observes that animal, and who is in some inexplicable way united with it, so that he is under temptation to make the animal's impulses his own. 1 And thus it becomes impossible for him to get beyond the abstract unity of reason with itself from which all particular content is excluded, except by a new breach of logic. Kant's transi- It is, however, only justice to Kant when we go on to show Hon to the J ° fommiafot-tho now ne ma ^ es hi s wa } r > * w s P^ e °f logic, to a more concrete moral law. v - ew ^ ethics, which yet he persistently, by the aid of new saving clauses, identifies with the more abstract view first pre- sented to us. This he does by the aid of two new formulae for the moral law. The first of these formulae arises from the simple consideration that what we have to do with is the will of a rational being conceived simply as such ; in other words, " with the relation of the will to itself, in so far as it is deter- mined by reason alone." Only in a rational being can " we find a faculty of determining itself according to the conscious- ness of certain laws," and these laws are necessarily the ex- pression of the self-determination of a rational being as such ; so that in determining itself by them the rational bein°- is versal rule upon which he intends to act : thus only can a motive, be it what it may, agree with the absolute spontaneity of the will, i.e., with free- dom." 1 R. IX. 15 ; H. VII. 13. " We do not get knowledge of the laws of moral- ity by observation of ourselves, or of the animal [Die Thierheit) in us." chap. II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 219 determining itself by its own nature, or making its own being its end. To say tbat such laws have an unconditioned authority, is, therefore, the same thing as to say that the rational being as such is an end which can never be regarded as merely a means to some other end. " No object of desire has more than a conditional value ; for if the desires and the wants based on them did not exist, their objects would be without value. But, again, the desires themselves as sources of such wants, cannot claim any absolute value that should cause them to be in themselves objects of desire. On the contrary, to be entirely free from such desires must be the universal wish of every rational being} It appears, then, that the value of every object that can be acquired by our actions is a conditional value. All objects, though their existence depends not on our will, but upon nature, have nevertheless, unless they are rational beings, only a relative value as means, and therefore are called things : while rational beings are called persons, because their nature already marks them out as ends in them- selves, i.e., as beings who ought never to be used merely as means ; and in relation to whom, therefore, our arbitrary will has a limit put upon it. Such beings are objects of reverence. They are not subjective ends, whose existence, as an effect of our action, has a value for us, but objective ends, i.e., beings whose existence is an end in itself, an end for which no other end can be substituted so as to reduce it to the position of means. Apart from such beings, indeed, we could find nothing of absolute value anywhere, and in the absence of all but conditioned and accidental ends there could be no highest practical principle for the reason." 2 This being the case, we get a new formula for the im- Application ot ° ° the formula perative of practical reason. " Always treat humanity, both in p 1 ^^"*' 08 o£ your own person and in the persons of others, as an end ° ,sa lon ' and never merely as a means." This formula may be illus- trated by the same examples which have been used already. * 1 The italics are mine. 2 R. VIII. 56 ; H. IV. 276. 220 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK ir. Can the action of the suicide be regarded as consistent with the idea of humanity as an end in itself ? No. For " if a man destroys himself in order to escape from a painful position, he is really treating his own person as secondary to the main- tenance of an endurable state of feeling to the end of his life." But man is no thing, to be used merely as a means. Therefore " I have no right to dispose of humanity in my own person as I please, no right to maim, hurt, or destroy it." Again, if I make a deceitful promise to another man, I can see that I am using him " as a means without at the same time treating him as having an end in himself. For he whom I thus seek to use as a means for my ends, cannot possibly be supposed to be con- senting to my way of proceeding towards him : in other words, he is not treated as if he contained in himself the end of the action in question." And this principle is still more obviously true in relation to actions involving any attack upon the freedom or property of another. (2) to duties of Again, passing to the duties of imperfect obligation, we imperfect o ' J: o r o > obligation. gee ^^ a re f usa i t develop our own powers, if it does not in- volve a treatment of ourselves as means, at least involves that we are not treating ourselves as ends. " There are in humanity capacities for greater perfection which are elements in the end, which nature sets before me as a human subject ; and to neglect the development of these in my own case, though it may be consistent with the mere maintenance of the existence of humanity as an end in itself, is at least inconsistent with the positive furtherance of that end." Again, " it might consist with the maintenance of the existence of humanity, that one man should not seek to contribute to another's happiness, if only he did not deliberately hinder it ; but this is only a negative, not a positive, agreement with the idea of mankind as an end in itself. Such positive agreement would involve that each should seek, so far as lies in him, to further the ends of the others. For if a conscious subject be an end in himself and if the conception of him as .such is to produce its full chap. II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 221 effect in me, his ends must, so far as possible, become also my ends." It is obvious that Kant has here taken a step towards The second x formula can the concrete. His criterion of action is no longer the mere SlStslSytf consistency of its maxim with itself as universalised, but be^ra^^S to be one with its consistency with the idea of the self as an end. He has ? he un«ereai - " m man. passed from the abstract universal to the universal as realised in the individual ; from the conception of legality in general to the idea of a law which expresses the nature of the rational subject, or his relation to himself. Hence, the idea of an,««J, which seemed before to be excluded as identical with the idea of an object acting upon feeling and awaking desire, is now intro- duced. And with it' comes the distinction of persons and things, i.e., of the rational being as an individual who is also a universal, as against material objects and beings not rational, as individuals which are merely particular. Here, therefore, we have a similar movement of thought to that which supplied the relative conceptions of person and thing to Eoman law. We have the idea of the individual as an end in himself in so far as he is identical with reason ; and we have the inference that he is always to be regarded as a subject of rights, while the particular thing as such is merely an object over which rights can be freely established. The defect, however, of this view is that, as the universal or rational nature of the individual is not seen to be necessarily related to his particular nature as a sensitive being, the determination of the particular by it seems quite arbitrary. Thus in Jurisprudence, it may fairly be argued that, as the individual is universal, his particular rights should be respected : that, in other words, his body and any particular things which he has " occupied," or " into which he has put his will," should receive the respect due to himself as rational. But it seems hard to understand how a uni- versal personality should thus manifest itself in an individual with a particular nature, and standing in particular relations to other individuals ; and it is simply taken as an empirical fact 222 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K - "■ that it does so manifest itself. Again, in Ethics, the fact that the individual is universal, and so a law and anend to himself, seems to contain in it no reason for any particular duties : on the contrary, it would seem to be most natural on such a principle, to reduce all duty to the negation of the particular desires, and of the particular relations with other objects or beings which are due to such desires. Further, as the universal and individual are directly and immediately identified, the former cannot be conceived as a principle which differentiates itself, and by relations of its differences constitutes a system ; but simply as a common element in all individuals. These indi- viduals, therefore, are not conceived as organically related to each other through the principle, but simply as an aggregate or sum of units which are indifferent to each other. It is for this reason that the Universalism of the Stoics manifests itself in a pure Individualism, which, though it supplies leading conceptions to the Jurisprudence of private rights, is unable to furnish an adequate principle of social Ethics. In this, and still more, as we shall see, under the next formula, Kant makes a praise- worthy effort to get beyond the emptiness of the abstract universal ; but he is unable to conceal that, according to his own theory, the relation of the universal to the particular is immediate and external. Thus, even in relation to the duties of perfect obligation, we have in Kant a repetition of the assumption of the Stoic lawyers, that a particular will belongs to the individual in virtue of his universal nature, and that, therefore, the sacredness of that universal nature attaches itself to the particular will. But this is taken merely as a fact, though it is a fact quite inexplicable on the principles of a philosophy that identifies the individual with the universal by exclusion of the particular. " Eeverence Humanity in your own person and the person of others" is a principle which might fairly be deduced from Stoicism ; but as Stoicism deter- mines passion as unnatural to the rational being, and as it regards all relations which passion establishes between the CHAP ii. THE FORMULATION" OF THE MORAL LAW. 223 subject and particular objects. as enslaving, it is difficult to see why Humanity should be interested in the particular existence and relations of the sensitive subject as such. And when we come to the duties of imperfect obligation, the paralogism becomes still more obvious : for the duty of developing our special faculties and powers seems to have no necessary relation to that pure self-determination, i.e., that self-deter- mination in view only of one's own nature as a self, or in view of the self as an end, to which morality, on Kant's own principles, would reduce itself. And the duty of assisting others in the pursuit of that happiness, which is their end when we regard them merely as sensitive beings, seems to be no natural inference from the principles of a philosophy which teaches that men are ends in themselves only as rational. All, in fact, depends on the way in which the ethical negation of the particular is interpreted. If we take it as an absolute negation, (and this is the natural interpretation to give to it in Kant and the Stoics,) then the universal as end in itself excludes all reference to the particular. No doubt, even then we might say that, if the particular were to be conceived as related to the universal, it could only be as a means to an end. But why should it be so related at all ? If we admit it even as a means, we must give it some positive relation to the end : and this would naturally lead to the idea, that it is only when taken by them- selves as ends that the particular objects of desire must be negated or rejected ; while, as related to the universal, and as indeed forms of its manifestation, they become elements in the good, which is the end of all moral action. The third formula of Kant brings us very near to a recogni- The third . formula— the tion of this. For in it we find him advancing to the idea of a "f/y^™ 8 " kingdom of ends, i.e., a social community of beings, each i of " nds - which is reciprocally end and means to the others. " Act in conformity with the idea that the will of every rational bfing is a universally legislative will." This formula, as Kant 224 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K IL maintains, follows directly out of the other two formulae — the first of which expresses the idea that the moral law is not only universal, but that its essence lies in the form of universality, while the second tells us that the consciousness of that law is one with that consciousness of himself as an end which belongs to the rational being as such. Combining these two points, we get the idea that the rational being is subjected to a law which is universal, but which nevertheless he himself enacts. This is the principle of the Autonomy of the will, which, in Kant's opinion, had been lost sight of in all previous moral systems, owing to a very natural illusion. For, while the authors of such systems saw that man as moral is bound by duty to certain laws, they did not see that in submitting to this universal legislation, he is submitting only to himself. Thinking of him, then, only as subjected to a law, they were necessarily led to suppose that there must be some interest, either positive or negative, to connect his will with that law ; and this again involved that the law did not arise out of the nature of the will itself. Those who reasoned in this way necessarily viewed the will as heteronomous. On Kant's view this is not necessary ; for the same individual, as rational, is self-legislative, who, as a sensitive being, is subjected to the law. Now, " the. conception that every rational being must contemplate himself through all the maxims of his will as universally legislative, in order from this point of view to judge himself and his actions, leads to another closely con- nected and very fruitful conception, viz., to the conception of a kingdom of ends. By a kingdom, I here mean the systematic combination of a number of diverse rational beings under common laws. Now, such laws will determine the ends of the rational beings in question, so far as they are universally valid ends. Hence, when we abstract from all the personal differ- ences of rational beings, and likewise from all the content of their private ends, we get the idea of a complete and systema- tically connected whole of all ends (a whole of rational beings chap. ii. THE FORMULATION OP THE MORAL LAW. 225 as ends in themselves, as well as of the special ends which each of them may set up for himself), i.e., a kingdom of ends such as is possible according to the principles already laid down. ... To this kingdom of ends every rational being- belongs as a member, who, though universally legislative, is yet submitted to the laws he enacts. At the same time, he belongs to it also as a sovereign, because as legislative he is submitted to no will but his own. The rational being must always regard himself as legislative, in a kingdom of ends which is made possible by the freedom of the will. . . . Morality, therefore, is the reference of all actions to the legislation whereby alone such a kingdom is possible." * This kingdom is to be represented by us on the analogy of a kingdom of nature, since it is only so that we can represent it ; though we must always remember the essential difference between the self-imposed laws of reason, and the laws of external necessity which rule the natural world. The idea of a kingdom of ends, which Kant here presents to why it is with o ' £ Kant merely a us, involves nothing less than the organic unity of rational So'lSf" beings as such. It involves that the rational nature of man is not only a common element in them, in respect of which they are all alike, but a principle which determines their par- ticular natures in relation to each other, and so fits them, by virtue of their reciprocally complementary characteristics, to be members in one social organism. At the same time, while Kant states this idea, he does not work it out. He could not do so without two vital changes in his theory. Tor, in the first place, the universal, as the principle of unity in the particulars, must cease to be merely an abstraction from the particulars. But, secondly, it must manifest itself in the particulars in such a way as to bind them together as elements which are organically related, and which, through their very distinction, constitute one whole. This idea, however, could not be worked out by Kant without retracting the principles from 'R. VIII. 62; H. IV. 281. VOL. II. P 226 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. which he started, as to the negative relation of the universal to the particulars. And he escapes a direct contradiction only by the reservation which he has always in the background, viz., that the kingdom of ends is not capable of being repre- sented by us, except on the inadequate analogy of a kingdom of nature. According to this view, human society can never be organic, or, what is the same thing, can never be known as organic ; though the idea of it as an organism is the idea which underlies all our ethical life. Thus the kingdom of ends is possible from the point of view of the moral principle, which commands us to do our part in realising it ; but we can never expect to find it actually realised in experience. On the other hand, if we reject this dualism on the grounds already ad- duced, we must say that society can become an organism only because it is already, by reason of the very nature of its mem- bers, potentially organic. Its divergence in particular cases, and especially in the early stages of its development, from the idea of organism, will thus have to be conceived as a diver- gence from its own idea, a divergence which is ultimately to be explained as itself a stage in the process of realising that idea. Thus the " ought to be " will spring out of a deeper appreciation of that which " is." Or, to put it in a more palpable way, the particular ends which Kant bids us " limit " by reference to the universal end, are never merely particular. They are already, as ends, forms of the realisation of the higher end, and, therefore, even in the individual life form a kind of system by relation to it. And, again, the individuals who are actuated by such particular ends, in virtue of the relativity of these ends to the higher end, are already in process of bein" formed into the members of an organic social unity ; or, at least, the principle of such a unity is already determining in Kant's error in some way their relations to each other. separating the particular To sum up. lhe strength of Kant's theory lies in his ex- iJesii-fis from w *> " ^ desires from. Ifflm'prTcH- Passion of the antagonism in the moral life between what is cal reason in man. and what ought to he ; between what is actually desired and chap. II. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 227 what is ideally desirable ; between an end determined for us by the affections of our sensibility and an end determined by our own self-conscious nature. The weakness of his theory lies in the fact, that, in expressing this antagonism, he carries it to the point where it disappears altogether; where the negative relation ceases to be a relation at all, or where the community necessary even for antagonism disappears. On the one side he places desires for objects which affect us pleasurably, and which he considers as simply desires for pleasure. These desires exist in us as self-conscious beings ; yet they are conceived to be altogether undetermined by self-consciousness, and are therefore viewed as determining the self from without. All that self-consciousness does is to gather them together as a sum under the idea of Happiness. On the other side, we have the determination of pure self-consciousness by itself, which contains nothing but the abstract idea of its identity with itself in all differences, i.e., the mere form of universal law. This form, when related to the empirically given existence of a multitude of self-conscious beings, is supposed to generate the idea of a kingdom of ends, an idea, however, which we cannot verify or find realised in actual experience. Now, we have seen that this idea of a kingdom of ends, or, more generally, the idea of a realised good, is impossible even as an Idea except by the recognition of a relation between the empirical and the ideal, which Kant does not recognise. In this view, it is noticeable that Kant continually speaks of the identity between the empirical individual and the conscious self as an inexplic- able fact. That it certainly is, if the desires are to be regarded simply as determinations of the phenomenal object, which is presented to us in our inner life, but not as in any special way determined by the self, as the subject for which they are. If this were so, they would inevitably appear, not as determining the self, but, to take Kant's own example, as processes (like our yawning when we see others yawn) of which we are conscious, but which we do not attribute to the self, but 228 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK n. merely to a necessity of nature affecting our constitution as sensitive beings. Now, what is involved in the idea of desire being present in us as a determination of the self, and not merely as a determination of our physical being as an object ? Obviously this, that desire is always for an object which pre- sents itself as a form of the satisfaction or realisation of the self. In the satisfaction of desire there are, indeed, two moments ideally distinguishable, the satisfaction of the particu- lar desire and the satisfaction of the self ; but the former cannot exist separately in the rational being as such. For, though in the early stages of our life there may be a direct action of impulse, yet just in so far as such impulse is not dependent upon any action of self-consciousness, it is not attributable to the self at all. On the other hand, in so far as self-conscious- ness determines the impulse, that impulse must change its character, and take the form of a desire for an end which is not merely the satisfaction of an isolated tendency, but of the self. orSapptaess Kant takes happiness, in the sense of the greatest sum of be an end for _ --it -t to itself, as pleasure or the most pleasurable state continued through lite, distinct from teofcjaotWe as a mere generalisation of the special natural impulses, which he regards as desires of particular pleasures. Now, on this we have to remark — first, that the natural impulses of a sensitive being are not desires for pleasure, though they are undoubtedly desires for objects which are pleasant, because they are desired or wanted. The sensitive being is stimulated by a felt want in tension against an object forefelt as satisfying that want. But, for such an impulse to become a desire of pleasure two things are necessary. In the first place, the consciousness of the self desiring and of the object desired must not be lost or confused in the unity of feeling ; on the contrary, the self as desiring must be distinguished from, and opposed to, the object in which the desire finds satisfaction. For, only on the ground of this dis- tinction can the feeling of pleasure and pain be separated from the consciousness of the object as attained, and referred to the CHAP. IT. THE FORMULATION OP THE MORAL LAW. 229 subject as attaining satisfaction of itself in it. Only on the ground of the discreteness or dualism, which arises with self-conscious- ness, can the pleasure of the subject by itself become an object to which desire may be directed. But, further, ivhen the desire of pleasure thus arises, it is in us combined with a consciousness for which pleasure cannot be the sole or the ultimate end, a consciousness to which, as universal, pleasure is not an adequate end. This may be shown in various ways, the most obvious of which is to point out that pleasure must be had in some object, for which there is a desire independently of the pleasure it brings. In other words, the conscious self must identify itself with an object or end which is not pleasure, before it can attain pleasure : and if it makes pleasure an end, or identifies itself as satisfied or realised with that end, it by that very identification of itself with its own pleasure cuts off the connexion with the object from which the pleasure was derived. In other words, as a self-conscious being is conscious of itself only in relation to objects, so it can feel itself realised only in the attainment of objects, or in such a determination of objects, that they become conformed to its consciousness of itself. And the direct effort at self-realisation in the mere subject, i.e., the subject as opposed to, and separated from, the object, involves a contradic- tion. To put this in another point of view, pleasure is a state of the sensitive sxibject, of which, however, it can be conscious as distinct from the pleasant object, only as it ceases to be merely a sensitive subject, and becomes conscious of a self. But that very consciousness of the self just makes it im- possible that the self should find its end or satisfaction in pleasure. For the consciousness of self is the consciousness of a subject for which the whole objective world exists ; or, if it exists for itself, as an individual object, it is only as at the same time it is conceived as standing in relation to all the other objects in that world. The end must be that with which the self as subject can identify itself as satisfied, or in which it can find itself realised ; and the conscious self can find 230 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K "• itself realised only in the whole -world of objects. Pleasure, we might thus say, would be an object or end adequate to the sensitive being, were the merely sensitive being capable of having an object or end at all. On the other hand, to the self-conscious being pleasure is a possible, but not an adequate end ; hy itself, indeed, it cannot be made an end at all, except by a self -contradictory abstraction. Yet pleasure is necessarily involved in the attainment of any object, in so far as that is the realisation of the self in and through a sensitive consciousness ; for in such a realisation the consciousness of the self as realised in the world must be also a feeling or sensitive consciousness of the harmony of our individuality with itself and with its circumstances. 1 1 This subject has been one of the most fully debated themes of philosophical controversy in this country, at least since the time of Hutcheson and Butler. I can only refer to the most recent discussion of it in the works of Mil] and Green, of Professor Sidgwick and Mr. Bradley. Butler's distinction — between the particular desires, which he regards as natural tendencies prior to all reflexion, and what he calls ' rational self-love, ' — the desire of the pleasures, which, as we discover by experience, are to be attained by satisfying these natural tendencies — is unsatisfactory, because it involves that all desires except the desire of pleasure, are to be regarded as immediate appetites or instincts. Thus, in a well-known sermon, Butler maintains the unselfishness of compassion and of the benevolent affections generally, on grounds which are equally appli- cable to the appetite of hunger. In other words, he does not recognise that all the desires, and particularly the higher social impulses, have their character as our desires determined by self-consciousness. If, therefore, we are to main- tain Butler's conclusion, it must be on another ground : not that compassion or any other desire is prior to reflexion on the self, but that self-consciousness is possible only through the consciousness of objects. On this ground we may contend that we can as little realise ourselves except through the realisation of outward ends, as we can know ourselves apart from all knowledge of the external world or our fellow men. And pleasure, as the feeling of harmony with ourselves and our circumstances is, as Aristotle already maintained, the feeling that accompanies self-realisation. In speaking, as above, of pleasure as belonging to the sensitive subject as such, it is of course not meant to deny that there are intellectual and other pleasures, which are not due to mere sense. Kant, indeed, says that an ' in- tellectual feeling is a contradiction,' and, as we shall see in the fourth chapter of this book, he has great difficulty in finding a place for the feeling of reverence, which implies a negation of the immediate feeling of pleasure : yet when he comes to speak of the feeling of beauty, he seems to admit a fusion of sense and intelligence which in his ethical works he seems to reject. Generally in these works at least, he regards pleasure as the result of the action of the CHAP. ii. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 231 But if pleasure is an inadequate object or end for the self-con- ^ dmS£ ,ng ° f scious being, so also and for the same reason is happiness ; seeing it only differs from pleasure as being the sum of the pleasures of an individual, who is therefore a sensitive being, or at best as a continuous state of pleasurable feeling throughout its exist- ence. As referred to self-consciousness, however, this sensitive subject is at the same time reduced into a particular object relative to other particular objects in the world. The good for such a self-conscious subject must, therefore, necessarily involve the renunciation of its own sensitive existence as an end. It is the condition of spiritual existence that its subject must lose its natural life in order to gain it. No doubt it is also true that it does, and must gain or regain it, if the natural life ever becomes really conformed to the spiritual principle to which it surrenders itself; and, in this sense, it may be truly said that ' happiness is our being's end and aim/ or, at least, that the 'attainment of our being's end and aim is happiness. But what, then, of Kant's assertion that desire for objects is, ^ectsis as such, desire of pleasure ? We are obliged directly to con- SeJu-e of ere y pleasure, and tradict it. Desire for objects is never merelv desire for pleasure, therefore ° ■/ j. ' never abso- but always has implied in it a consciousness of a good with Ke^good ed which such objects are practically identified, or in which they are conceived as elements, — a good which, as adequate to the self, cannot be pleasure. On the other hand, the desire of pleasure can never exist by itself, as it would involve the object on the passive subject, just as he regards the desire of an object, as the desire for the pleasure so produced. Now, in both eases we need to make the same correction. Desire cannot have for its object the pleasure of its own satis- faction, and a pleasure must always be pleasure in something other than the pleasure itself ; and this something, which forms the content of feeling, need not itself be of a sensuous character. At the same time, in reference to what is stated in this and the following pages, we must remember that the attempt to sever pleasure as an end from all objective ends, involves the gradual ex- pulsion from it of all content which is not purely sensuous. And, even that content, if the ideal of the pure pleasure-seeker could be realised, must lose the form which it necessarily has, as 'the content of the feelings of a self-con- scious being. 232 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK n. severance of the object in which pleasure is sought from its context in the ideal world of ends, which alone can constitute the good of a self-conscious subject, and the reference of it" merely to a single feeling of the individual subject ; but as so referred it could not be considered as an object or end at all. If this be true, then, we cannot oppose the realisation of the self, as Kant does, to the attainment of objects of desire ; but we must in two ways correct Kant's abstraction : — by saying, not only, as we have said, that for a self-conscious subject objects of desire as such are always determined as realisations of the serf, but also that there is no realisation of the self which is not objective, and in which, therefore, there is not also a satis- faction of desire. The opposition of inclination and duty, of what is and what ought to be, on which Kant lays so great weight, is not to be denied or obliterated, but it must find room within the limits just stated. In other words, it must be made consistent with the doctrine that till our desires are, or in ultimate analysis involve, desire for the good, i.e., for an object adequate to the self ; and that, therefore, the good not only ought to be, but always is being, realised. It is, indeed, only through this conception that we can understand how these opposites should be brought together in one consciousness at all. The natural man may be opposed to the spiritual, but the spiritual must, so to speak, overreach this distinction, or, more exactly, the natural, in a spiritual being, can only be the spiritual in its first imperfect form ; otherwise there would be no relation between the two beings thus brought together " in one skin." An imperative of duty implies a negative relation of the ' law of the mind ' to the ' law of the members ' ; but it implies also a unity that is deeper than that difference, if the subjective command of reason is to be heard by the sensitive nature to XIys P 7 resur- which it is addressed. poses an , ■ n . objectivereai- Kant s idea. of the "kingdom of ends," when we remove from ISQtlOH 01 Seweofan ' li the merely ideal character which he gives to it as a possi- Sty. ed bility which can never be realised or known as real, throws CHAP. II. THE TOJRMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 23:3 important light on the question as to the relation of the moral to the natural, or of that which ought to be to that which is. For it then becomes an expression of the truth, that man as a moral being always is, — and is more or less definitely conscious of himself as being, — a member of a community, which, just because it subordinates him as an individual, is the sphere in which his spiritual nature is realised. This consciousness, no doubt, is very imperfectly developed at first. In purely savage life, so imperfect are the forms of such union, that it may even be denied to have any actual realisation at all. The conscious- ness of a unity which is beyond the caprice of individuals, and the consequent reverence for a law or will above their own, has •not yet separated itself from the submission of terror to a superior force. It shows itself not so much in the achieve- ment of a moral order as in the restless discontent which follows caprice and slavery as its shadow, and which makes the savage life so much worse than the life of animals, just because it contains the germ of something better. But still, it is by the secret working of this idea of good which goes along with self-consciousness, that gradually out of the chaos of conflicting self-wills there arises some kind of elementary social order, which can furnish the mediation necessary to the development of a distinct moral consciousness. For we must remember always that a moral consciousness does not spring from our minds full blown and complete, without any fertilisa- tion of them by experience. If it is the fruit of reflexion, it is the fruit of a reflexion upon relations between human beings which have long been established before they came to be reflected on. If it has its cause in reason, yet practical reason shows itself at first not as self-conscious thought, but as an unconscious power that moulds the outward laws and insti- tutions of men, and determines their social relations ; and it is only as the individual returns upon himself, and awakens to the meaning of this "objective realisation of freedom," that subjective morality arises. "We become conscious of being a 234 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK H. law to ourselves not directly, but only by recognising that the law which at first seems to come from another, is really imposed upon us by ourselves. This dependence of the moral consciousness upon a social mediation is, no doubt, hidden Hence there f rom us i n certain crises of our moral life. The morality of canbenoaoso- effective 011 reflexion always opposes itself at first to the outward reality to^objec-tiTO without which; nevertheless, it could not itself have existed. But of this one-sidedness we can only say that it is an illustra- tion of a tendency which is an accident of our moral develop- ment, the tendency to give exclusive value to the idea which is most potent at the moment : for, in absolutely opposing itself to the morality of law and custom, reflective morality only shows that it has forgotten its own origin. A moral conscious- ness is in reality the consciousness of an end which has realised and is always realising itself in human society. Its " ought to be," therefore, always rests on the " is " ; or rather it points to a deeper " is," of which the immediate facts are only the appear- ance. In this sense it is true that " might is right," and that " the real is the rational " : not in the sense that we can always justify the status quo, or that there are no wrongs to be redressed, but in the sense that the appearance which does not agree with its Idea or principle is merely a self-contra- dictory appearance, the reality of which lies not in itself, but in its being a moment of transition which prepares the way for an appearance which does so agree. 1 The phenomena of Cf. above, p. ITS, note. The above argument shows lowwe can escape from the difficulty in which Kant is landed by his denial of the reality of moral experience, and his abstract opposition of what ' ' ought to be " to what "is. " The moral consciousness is the consciousness of a law to which the individual as such is subjected ; and it is his own law, the law that flows from his own nature as rational. But this rational nature reveals itself, not in an isolated con- sciousness of self, or in a consciousness of self in which he abstracts from all relation to objects, but in a consciousness of self in distinction from, yet in relation to, other objects who are also recognised as self-conscious beings. The not-self, the consciousness of which is necessary to the development of a moral consciousness, is another self, or rather a society of selves in which the individual is a member. The moral law is therefore primarily a social law a law which not only ought to be but is realised. This point will be treated CHAP. ii. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 235 history are, therefore, either the realisation of reason, or, so far as they are not so, they are self-contradictory existences, which have their value only in the process by which they destroy them- selves ; and so negatively they are conditions of the realisation of reason. And, on the other hand, the moral consciousness is always the consciousness of that which has been realised and is realising itself, though in so far as it is the latter, it contains a negative side towards that which we usually call the real. A develop- ing being always is, and yet in a sense is not, what it ought to be ; for, if the secret principle of its development is in itself, yet it is by the negation of its immediate existence that it develops. And this has special reference to the self-conscious being, which alone, strictly speaking, has the principle of development in itself. But, just for that reason, such a being must represent the end in which it is to be realised as an end to be attained by self-renunciation. The defect of Kant's Ethics in this point of view is that How the inner r 3 Jaw comes to though he goes so far as to speak of a kingdom of ends and so the^utofaw to recognise the social character of morality, yet, by treating that kingdom as merely ideal, he falls back into the one-sided- ness of a merely subjective morality, which opposes the moral consciousness to the social mediation through which it has realised, and alone can realise itself. Like Plato, he sees that the good man must be a citizen, yet, like Plato, he regards him only as the citizen of an ideal State (a State ev Xoyocg Kei^ivt]). This tendency to set the ideal against the real appears in a still more abstract form in the ethics of the Stoics, which constitutes the opposite pole to that ethical spirit which characterises the social life of Greece in its healthiest period. With the Stoic the individual was divorced from the community as a law and end to himself, as a being who could realise the life of reason, which was his own, only as he excluded all foreign interference. With the ancient Greek citizen the ethical universal always more fully when we come to the practical application of Kant's ethical principles. 236 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. took the concrete form of the law of a community, through relation to which alone the individual was lifted above his animal individuality, and made conscious of the privilege of his humanity. The good Athenian citizen saw in the State the true manifestation of the goddess Athene, the outward appear- ance of which she was invisible spirit, the realisation of an ideal with which in his imagination she was identified ; and his obedience to the law of the State was thus identified with his worship of the divine power, which controlled his life and destiny. Hence the moral law could not for a moment appear to him as unrealised or unrealisable in the phenomenal world. On the contrary, it was present to him as realised, and it was as the reality, in contradistinction from his own trans- itory and imperfect existence as an individual, that it claimed his reverence. In the decay of the ancient social and political life, however, the moral universal was for the moment rent away from all particular forms of its realisation, and set over against them as an ideal which claimed to be, but was not, real ; and man was thrown back, as it seemed, upon his isolated individual being, in which he could realise that universal only by extruding all the particular interests still left to his life. But a nearer view of this period, and of the modern period which is most analogous to it, lets us see in it just that " ex- ception which proves the rule." The crucial instance, which seems to contradict, on a deeper analysis really supports the view of the ethical ideal as not only realised, but as in a sense the only ultimate reality. Thiaopposi- For the idea of a kingdom of ends, i.e., of a social svstem in tion is ^ as a l aw an d a n end to himself, just because he abstracts EndT. g ° mof from all that is particular in himself, and therefore from all relation to other particulars without him. But his individuality as rational is thus reduced to a merely formal universality : his determination or assertion of himself as universal is nothing, but his negation of himself as particular. He has a " will that wills nothing," a will which is self- contradictory. This dialect- ical movement of thought, however, which seems at first simply suicidal, really, when we examine it closely, gives just that transition from the. individual to the social self-consciousness for want of which the earlier forms of ethics were not able to retain their hold upon the spirits of men, and which is required to restore an objective social authority, i.e., an outward authority from which the inward is not divorced. Such restoration was possible after all immediate or natural forms of union between men were rejeeted, because it was then seen that the conscious- ness of self, in virtue of which we abstract from our own particular existence, and from all particular existences, is at the same time the consciousness of a community into which we are brought with all rational beings, a community to which that particular existence is subordinated. It is not by accident that the abstract individualism of the Stoics passes into abstract ■ universalism, or that this again gives rise to the idea of a TroXireia rod koct/j.ov. Nor again is it by accident that the Kantian idea of abstract law, as united with the idea of the CHAP. ii. THE FORMULATION OF THE MORAL LAW. 239 individual self as an end, gives rise to the idea of a kingdom of ends. It is true that to the Stoics and to Kant this idea remains a mere ideal which is not realised or realisable in the phenomenal world; yet the conception of reason as absolute finally forces both to recognise that that ideal must in some way be realised. Thus, their refusal to let the wheel " come full circle" scarcely disguises the fact that these systems end in the correction of the abstraction with which they began; or rather, we might say that that abstraction, when it comes, as in these systems, to be a definite object of reflexion, corrects itself. To the ancient moralists it seemed possible to realise the moral ideal only by an immediate and quasi-natural process, in which the individual learnt habitually to regard himself from the point of view of the family or of the state, and to treat himself as an organ of the domestic or civic life of the com- munity. But, in the light of the Stoic or the Kantian recognition of the rational as a social life, we can conceive of the same end as achieved by a spiritual process, in which the individual becomes conscious that he can realise his own end only as he makes himself the voluntary servant of the social end, which is realising itself in the world without him. The very abstraction out of which these systems arose was itself a negative which implied a higher positive than could be realised in the ethical life of the ancients : it was the germ of a con- sciousness that the universal principle of morality, which realises itself in man's social life, is inadequately represented by any domestic, civic, or national consciousness. It was, in fact, just because they were beginning to discover without them, as realised or realising itself in the world, the principle of a morality wider than that of the family or the state, and thus just because they were becoming conscious of a deeper reality than they had hitherto acknowledged, that they set the ideal against the actual- Athene and Olympian Zeus lost their abso- lute position, because it began to be evident that the city and the nation, though universal and permanent in relation to the 240 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B ° 0K - "•' individual citizen, are particular and transitory in relation to the spirit of man. For that spirit, which gives them their ethical value, can take it away without ceasing to find organs for its manifestation in the world. Here, therefore, in the case even of this abstract and negative philosophy, we may see that the moral ideal has no meaning except as it expresses, not only " the spirit of the years to come yearning to mix itself with life," but also the spirit which is already mixing itself with life, and which only as it does so mix, can be present to the consciousness of men as their moral ideal. This point, however, will require to be considered further in connexion with Kant's views of religion and of the Summum Bonum. It is here referred to only to show at once the truth and the imperfection of Kant's account of the moral conscious- ness, even in the highest formula for it which he reaches. But the moral consciousness, as the consciousness of reason determining itself, or supplying its own motive, is the con- sciousness of freedom : and we have now to consider how far Kant has solved the difficulties involved in that conception. 241 CHAPTEE III. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. TN the last chapter we have considered the different formulae The moral law in which Kant expresses the moral law, but we have freedom, passed over one special aspect of it, viz., that the moral law is the law of freedom. What does this mean ? We can see what it means only by considering its opposite, the necessity of nature ; for, as Kant says, freedom is in the first instance a negative idea. Nature, according to Kant, is a system in which all pheno- Freedom is mena are connected together by a law of external necessity, a negatively in opposition to system in which everything is conditioned by something else, t^e necessity and that again by something else ad infinitum. It is, indeed, regarded as a system of permanent substances ; but each of these substances stands in such necessary relation to other substances, that none of its determinations can be accounted for merely by its own existence. Its permanence, in fact, is nothing but the permanence of certain relations in which it stands to other substances, and which it maintains through all its changes. Its particular states are always to be explained by the action of other substances on it, and the changes of these states by the change of that action, which again presup- poses previous changes ad infinitum. The attempt, therefore, to account for any determination of a substance or any change of such determination as arising from itself alone must fail. VOL. II. Q 242 K ant's ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. A self-determined being, by its very definition, would be a being that could not be brought into the context of ex- perience. In that context we can have only beings which act as they are acted on, and the particular qualities of which arise necessarily from the particular relations into which at any given moment they are brought. Now, the moral consciousness seems to involve that we should regard ourselves as capable of determining ourselves independently of circumstances ; for it is a consciousness in which we lay down a law for our action without reference to circumstances. It sets before us an unconditioned imperative of duty. In doing so, therefore, it seems to demand that we should regard ourselves just in the way in which, as we have seen, no object of experience can be regarded as having the principle of determination in ourselves without regard to the conditions in which we are. The " ought " forces us to' abstract from all our particular tendencies and the conditions that call these tendencies into activity, and to deter- mine ourselves in view of a law which takes no account of either. It lifts us in our own view out of the order of nature, and bids us regard ourselves, not indeed as under no law or necessity, but as under no external necessity, as, in fact, only under a necessity which is one with our own freedom. Now, in the last chapter we have seen how Kant develops the idea of the moral law as involving an abstraction from all desire, and indeed from everything but the idea of law itself ; and we have seen also how from this he passes to the idea of an order according to final causes, which we substitute for the idea of the order of nature according to efficient causes, when- ever we regard ourselves as moral subjects ; or, in other words, how, as moral beings, we are forced to conceive ourselves as Butthisraises members of a kingdom of ends, which we represent as a teleo- bei^se we' logically arranged order of nature. XseiTeTbotii Here, however, we have to examine more closely how these assubjectsand . as objeots. two conceptions of ourselves are to be brought together, seeing chap. ill. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 243 that they seem to contradict each other ; for, in thinking of ourselves as moral subjects and members of the kingdom of ends, we are called on to attribute to ourselves just those characteristics which are excluded when we regard ourselves as objects in the kingdom of nature. Now, such a union of the " empirical " and the " intelligible object u not t ji ■ i • t • o • under the law characters in the same being, such a coexistence of necessity of necessity. and freedom in the same subject, would have appeared impos- sible, if the Critique of Pure Reason had not prepared the way for it by teaching us to look at ourselves (as well as at all other objects) from two points of view. The Critique points out that a relation to the unity of the self is involved in all objects of experience as such. We cannot, therefore, treat such objects as things in themselves, which have an existence independent of their being known. It follows from this that the idea of nature as a system of objects under an external necessity must be qualified by the relation of the whole system to the ego ; or, in other words, it must be recognised that it is not really a systematic whole apart from that ego. But from this two consequences follow. On the one hand, it follows that the law of external necessity cannot be taken as an abso- lute law, as an ultimate determination, even of the objects to which it is- applied. This Kant expresses by saying that it does not determine them as things in themselves, which are regarded by him as having an existence apart from any relation to our consciousness through sensibility, if not apart from all relation to consciousness whatsoever. On the other hand, the recognition of the relation of objects as such to the self carries with it the consequence, that a conscious self can- not be taken as merely one object among others, just because in it there is realised a principle which qualifies the existence of all objects. They are determined as bound to each other by a law of external necessity only for a self, and therefore a self cannot be determined as bound to them by that law. In becoming conscious of itself in relation to them, a conscious 244 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. being is not bringing them into relation to another object in the context of experience ; it is bringing to consciousness a principle in relation to which alone they have their previous determination. It cannot be, therefore, that that determina- tion which objects have only as objects for the self, should be extended to that very self. But the self as g f ar fljg distinction seems to be quite clear. Objects of object is. - 1 - S iXomy experience as such are under the law of nature and necessity, ^■pZeSS. but not the self for which they are. But we are involved in a peculiar difficulty when we consider that the self appears also as one of the objects of experience and that, therefore, Kant is obliged to apply to it all the principles which he applies to other objects. The phenomenal subject, i.e., the self as an object, is regarded by him as merely one of the objects in the phenomenal world, which is determined like other objects under the law of nature and necessity. It, indeed, is dis- tinguished from other objects, in so far as we are conscious of it as in a peculiar sense identified with the conscious subject for which it is. 1 But, notwithstanding this, it remains for Kant an individual object in the world of experience, which is determined in all its states and changes in relation to other objects. If it acts upon them, it is only as they act upon it, and all the actions and reactions on both sides are determined by universal laws. The discovery of its necessary relation to the conscious subject, and even its identification therewith, does not, in his view, enable us to give any new determination to it any more than to any other objects : it only enables us to recognise it like other objects as phenomenal, and to refer it to a noumenon, i.e., to an Idea of it which is derived from pure thought. - But that Idea, though it stimulates and directs us in the empirical determination of the self as an object, can never be satisfied in such determination. The result is that in 1 An identification which is for Kant an insoluble problem. In what follows I do not refer to another view of the ego suggested in the second edition of the Critique (cf. Vol. I. 645 aeq. ), as Kant does not refer to it in his ethical works. CHAP. in. THE IDEA OE FREEDOM. 245 all our knowledge of the self as an object, we can find nothing which enables us to determine it as free ; though the thought that it is exempted from the law of necessity is necessarily suggested, whenever we reflect on its identity with the conscious subject for which it is. This is the point at which, according to Kant, the theoretical change of the a ' o > problem in the consciousness leaves us. But the practical consciousness car- jjp'here'^Con- ries us a step farther, in so far as it is a consciousness of freedom with the moral law. our own action, i.e., a consciousness of the ego, which is the subject of knowledge, as determining its own objective exist- ence and the existence of other objects. In the theoretical consciousness, I do not, in the first instance, regard myself as a subject : rather, I am presented to myself as an object among other objects, determining them as I am determined by them ; and if there were nothing but such a conscious- ness, it may be a question whether we should ever think of ourselves as subjects at all, or whether our conscious- ness of ourselves would not remain like that of the child who still speaks of himself in the third person. Eeflexion upon the conditions of knowledge no doubt calls attention to the fact that objects can exist only for a self, which therefore is not merely one object among the others. But the "transcendental" reflexion, that reveals the relativity of objects in this sense, is not an element of the theo- retical consciousness as such, which, in the first instance, is occupied with its objects and not with itself, or only with itself as an object and not as a subject. On the other hand, the practical consciousness is essentially a con- sciousness of the self as a subject, which determines itself as an object, and other objects through itself. In it the " I," for which other objects are, is regarded as itself the source of the determination which it gives to itself as an object. While, therefore, reflexion upon the conditions of the theoretical consciousness teaches us that the knowledge of objects is impossible, unless the self for which objects 246 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK IX. are is exempted from the law of necessity under which objects are determined as such ; reflexion upon the condi- tions of our practical consciousness teaches us that action is impossible for us, unless the subject so exempted can find in itself a principle of self-determination. There is thus a parallelism, and at the same time a contrast, between the theoretical and the practical consciousness. The parallelism, consists in this that, just as we are conscious of ourselves as knowing, only as we oppose the knowing subject to all objects, so we are conscious of ourselves as acting only as we regard the subject so opposed as determining the object. In other words, in the practical sphere we are conscious that the sub- ject contains in itself a motive or principle of determination of itself as an object, and of other objects through itself. The contrast lies in the fact that, though knowledge of ob- jects is not possible except in relation to a conscious self, it is, nevertheless, possible without a reflexion- upon such relation; whereas, on the other hand, the action of a con- scious self as such not only involves the determination of the object by the subject, (and primarily of the object-self by the subject-self,) but it involves also the consciousness of that determination. Tor, only that action can be regarded as the action of a self which it attributes to itself, i.e., the action in which it is conscious of being determined by itself, and free from determination from without. It is in this sense that we have to understand Kant's assertion that "a rational being can act only under the idea of freedom," and that therefore "all the laws hold good for it which are insepar- ably bound up with the idea of freedom." In other words, a self-conscious being, as such, can act only as it ascribes its action to itself and not to external determining causes ; and it cannot ascribe its action to itself, if it has not in itself as a subject a motive of action, if it does not derive from its consciousness of itself a principle for the determina- tion of its actions. The reference of an action to the self CHAP - IIL THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 247 is, in fact, the determination of it as not occurring by the necessity of nature, but only in virtue of our consciousness of our own being as an end and a law to itself. Only as I, the subject of knowledge, find in myself as such subject a motive of action, can I have a consciousness that it is I who act. Now, in the last chapter, we have seen what Kant conceived to be the contents of this motive which the self-conscious subject derives from itself, or, in other words, what are the contents of the moral law. For the moral law is a law which is bound up with the consciousness of the self as a subject, in such a way that obedience to it is equivalent to making the self as subject our end. Hence, the consciousness of determination by that law is the con- sciousness of determination by ourselves, or, in other words, it is freedom. So far we have not much difficulty in following Kant How can other content than in the reasoning by which he connects the consciousness of *° t X^"p. w freedom with the moral law. But Kant is, of course, obliged mt ° the win? to admit that we are not always determined by the moral law, but also by passions, which he regards as determina- tions of the objective or phenomenal self by other objects in the phenomenal world. Hence, he has to face the ques- tion as to the possibility of such determinations being taken up into our will, so as to become the motives of actions which we can regard as ours. Sow this is possible Kant does not in this connexion attempt to explain : in fact, we shall find that he finally contents himself with trying to show that such deter- mination is necessarily inexplicable for us. But what he insists on, in the first instance, is that, as such determina- tions do not belong to our nature as rational or self-conscious subjects, they cannot affect our will except so far as they are taken up into it by ourselves. How a rational being should be determined by passion at all, we may not be able to discover: but what we can see is that he cannot be determined by it; otherwise, when so determined, 248 KANT'S ETHICAL WOEKS. book ii. he would not be conscious of acting at all. The conscious- ness of the pathological affections of his being as impelling him, cannot directly yield a consciousness of himself as acting; for in action he must be conscious of the determina- tion of himself by himself. That consciousness, however, can exist only as there is bound up with the very con- sciousness of self the idea of an end for which, or of a law according to which, we must act ; in other words, only in so far as reason supplies a motive to the will. If, therefore, any particular end suggested by passion is " taken up " into the will — as Kant supposes it to be — it would seem that it must be in some way identified with, or sub- sumed under, the end set before itself by reason. For, unless it is in some way identified or combined with the idea of the end involved in the consciousness of myself, how can I be conscious of it as my motive, or how can it have anything to do with my action ? At least it Kant's view, then, may be summed up thus. As he con- must be so Sto°eeif byan ce i ves tne consciousness of the self as knowing to be possible determination. only . in opposition, though in relation, to the objective world ; so he conceives the consciousness of the self as acting, to involve an opposition of the conscious self, as a subject which determines itself, to the self as an object determined by other objects ; and hence an opposition of the motives which the conscious subject derives from its own being, to the motives of passion, which are derived from its objective or pheno- menal existence. The latter, as they present themselves in opposition to the motive which the rational being derives from his own nature, are recognised as motives which ought not to determine him — except in so far as they coincide with the motive of reason ; and on the other side, the motive of reason, in opposition to the motives of passion, appears as a "categorical imperative"; i.e., it is accompanied with the feeling that a " moral necessity " is laid upon us to exclude all such motives from the determination of our chap. in. THE IDEA 0P FREEDOM. 249 will. How the motive of reason springing from the nature of the self can be absent in any action which we nevertheless attribute to ourselves, and how we can unite the conscious- ness of self-determination, i.e., of determination by the self as an end or motive, with an action determined by passion, is inexplicable. But that we do so, and that, whenever we are determined by passion, it is because we have taken up the motive of passion into our maxims, — in other words, that we never are fatally determined by passion, but al- ways make it our motive by our own choice, — is necessarily involved in the fact that we attribute such actions to our- selves. The obvious difficulty of this view is, that Kant seems Difficulty of ^ this view. to connect the very idea of the will with the moral law brfH r g < t£> we in such a way, that it is impossible to understand how necessity under the form it should be affected in any way by the natural desires, of freedom? or how it should be able to " take up " any of these desires as motives into itself : or, to put it otherwise, it is impossible to understand, how the subject should be able to descend from its position as subjecb so as to realise itself in, or unite itself with, desires, which are only determinations of its objective or phenomenal being. This difficulty is closely analogous to one which meets us in the Critique of Pure Season. There the pure unity of the conscious self to which objects as such are related, is supposed to make it the source of ideas of noumena in contrast with which these objects are determined as phenomenal ; but it is not supposed to enable us to alter our view of the objects themselves, and to determine their noumenal reality. Here, in like manner, the pure consciousness of the self is supposed to be the source of a moral law, in contrast with which the passions are recognised as determinations of the phenomenal or ob- jective self, determinations which, therefore, ought not to become motives of the rational subject ; but it is not supposed td be capable of giving a new determination to the passions, 250 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK n. in virtue of which they may be brought into positive relation with the moral law. Thus, as in theory phenomenal objects were brought into relation with a noumenon, to which the knowledge of them could not be made conformable; so in practice the passions conceived as motives, are brought in- to relation with a law of freedom, with which they can never be completely harmonised. For action, so far as it is determined by the passions, involves the combination of two things which are essentially incommensurable. It involves that we should have the consciousness of being determined by ourselves (which is possible only in so far as our motive is derived from our own nature as subjects), and yet that we should admit into our motive a content which is derived from the states of our being as phenomenal objects. In other words, it involves that the matter of necessity should be brought under the form of freedom. We are, therefore, reduced by Kant to this dilemma. On the one hand, we are conscious of ourselves as acting, only as we are con- scious of the motives of action as derived from the pure consciousness of self, as the subject in opposition to all ob- jects. Hence, in order to regard an action based upon a motive of desire as our action, we must be able to subsume the particular desire under the general principle of action which is derived by reason from itself ; or, in other words, to regard the end set before us by the desire, as only a particular form of the end of reason. But, on the other hand, the particular desires as such are determinations of the self as an object by other objects — determinations from which we must abstract in order to be conscious of our rational nature as a law and an end to itself. Hence, it seems im- possible to conceive that their content should be subsumed Kant'asoiu- under the law of reason, or how, not being so subsumed, difficulty by it should m any way be taken up into the will of a rational the distinction - " * ■*■ sal from the 06ing. poS°of view. The fundamental difficulty here suggested is for Kant, as we chap. ill. THE IDEA OP FREEDOM. 251 have said, insoluble, and it is confessed by him to be so ; but he thinks that he is able to explain why it should be insoluble. The union in one person of a consciousness of the self as a universal subject and of the same self as one particular object, is for him the difficulty of difficulties which no theory can cope with. But he points out that such a difficulty must arise, because we are obliged to regard ourselves, like other objects, in two points of view — as a phenomenal object and as a noumenon. For, when I look at myself as a noumenon, I necessarily abstract from the conditions of my phenomenal existence as an object in space and time ; and, at the same time, I think of a possible determination of that phenomenal exist- ence of mine, and, of course, of the world in which that existence is a part, in conformity with an ideal due to self- consciousness. To such an ideal, however, the phenomenal world must always stand in an asymptotic relation. Hence the process of determining practically, in accordance with that ideal, both myself and the world of which I as an individual am part, must be an endless process. I may determine myself and the world by actions in accordance with the ideal, but I can never find myself or it so determined as an empirical fact. If it be objected that we cannot aim at that which we know to be impossible, Kant's answer is twofold. In the first place, he points out that the objective impossibility of realising the moral ideal as an outward fact does not affect the subjective possibility of determining the will by that ideal as a motive. The action may be completed as a self-determination of the will, even though it produce no effect at all on the outward world. If it be then objected further, that this inner self- determination is with a view to the outward realisation of the ideal, and that, when the latter is found impossible, the former must also cease, Kant answers, in the second place, that, though we can express the ideal as an object only typically in terms of the phenomenal world, this does not affect its validity or reality as a law or end which is involved in the pure conscious- 252 KAKT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book ii. iiess of ourselves. 1 It is true that we cannot represent to ourselves any realisation of the moral end, unless we represent the phenomenal self and the phenomenal world as determined by moral laws as if they were laws of nature, i.e., unless we represent the kingdom of ends as a nature conformed to the laws of the spirit ; and it is true that this involves a con- ception of that as realised, which can never be realised, or experienced by us as realised, in the phenomenal world. But, we are to remember that this necessity of representing the law as realised in the phenomenal world comes of the general conditions that confine our knowledge to the phenomenal, and that, when we use the representation of the phenomenal self and the phenomenal world determined by moral laws as if they were laws of nature, to symbolise what we cannot other- wise express, viz., the realisation of moral laws, we are not really concerned with the particular phenomena of such a system, but only with the conception of it as a system. The natural system is the only system that we know under laws, and we use it as a type in order to think of the realisation of the moral law ; but this only means that nature is at least so far analogous to the intelligible world, — which we can think but fail to represent for itself, — that it is an order determined by general laws. This analogy is all we need for our pur- pose. The important point, however, is that the moral law forces us to abstract from the conditions of our existence as 1 There is a difficulty here which we can best explain by putting before the reader the two alternative views which seem to be possible. Does Kant admit that the moral end needs an objective realisation beyond that which it has in the mere self-determination of the subject, and does the defect of our moral consciousness merely lie in this, that we are obliged to typify this objective realisation of moral ends under the forms of our empirical consciousness of the natural world in space and time ? Or, on the other hand, does Kant mean that the requirement of any objective realisation beyond that which is involved in the mere self-determination of the will, is a defect arising from the empirical conditions under which we are obliged to contemplate the ends of action? The latter alternative would best harmonise with his view of the " good will " as an absolute end in itself, while the former would agree better with his con- ception of the moral end as an ideal " kingdom of ends." OHA.P. in. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 253 members of the natural world, and to transfer ourselves in thought into an intelligible world ; and though we are unable to represent the latter except as another, though differently constituted natural world, this theoretical inability of ours does not affect the reality of the system into which we are lifted by the moral law, as a system which is not naturally or phenomenally, but transcendentally, real. On the contrary, the moral law, with its absolute imperative, turns the idea of free- dom, which arises upon us as a possibility in connexion with the self-limitation of the theoretical reason, into an actuality or fact of reason, and thereby gives, so to speak, the casting vote in favour of the reality of the noumenal as against the pheno- menal. We must conceive ourselves as members of the intelligible world in order to think of reason as practical, and we must think of reason as practical because we are obliged to think ourselves as subjected to the moral law. The moral law, in fact, forces us to think of our nou- menal being as determined in itself, and as the source of all determination for our phenomenal being ; and it also forces us to explain, by the limitation of our knowledge to the pheno- menal, the impossibility of representing ourselves in the pheno- menal world as free causes, determined purely by ourselves or by the law that is one with our self-consciousness. All this, however, only enables us to understand how it But this explains only should be impossible to represent our determination by the law tow we cannot £ i *> represent the of freedom, as actually realised in us as phenomenal objects in asTeaiisedfnot a phenomenal world, which as such is governed by the law of act on other motives. necessity. It enables us to see why the self-determination of a free being as such can only be typified, and not schematised as a change in ourselves or other objects, as objects of experience. But it does not do anything to explain how such a being should ever determine itself according to any other law except the law of freedom. Nor does it even " explain the inexplic- ableness " of such determination. Kant, however, continually speaks as if the same reason, which prevents us from compre- 254 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. hending the actions of a free cause as events in the phenomenal world, might also be conceived to prevent us from comprehend- ing how such a cause should act by another law than that law of freedom. But, in the former case, the difficulty is simply to express the noumenon adequately in terms of the phenomenon ; whereas, in the latter case, the difficulty is to conceive the noumenon as acting against the only law or principle under which it is determined for us as a noumenon, i.e., to conceive a free cause as such enslaving itself. And while, in the former case, we have what is inexplicable, in the latter we seem to have what is self-contradictory. Kant's repudi- The difficulty here stated becomes still more pressing, when o/lndiferS we consider that Kant absolutely repudiates the idea of a freedom of indifference. Freedom is for him determination by the moral law, as the consciousness of it arises only out of the consciousness of being under that law. At the same time, as he conceives the will as capable of determining itself by other motives, which are borrowed from the natural being of the subject, he can escape the assertion of freedom of indifference only by taking refuge in the unknowable, i.e., in the impossi- bility of explaining the combination of the phenomenal with the noumenal consciousness of self. 1 The following passage expresses as clearly as any his view of the subject. i We have really two alternatives : either that all motives should be subsumed under the idea of self as an end, or that the will should arbitrarily nnite itself with a motive not so subsumed. Bnt the idea of the self as an end is equivalent with Kant to the moral law, and therefore only good actions can be so subsumed. On the other hand, an un- motived act, by which the will unites itself to the motives of passion, is an exercise of the liberty of indifference. Kant refuses to accept the latter alternative, though his logic seems to drive him towards it ; and in this he is guided by a true instinct. For, as I shall attempt to show, it is in the direc- tion of the former that alone we can expect a solution of the difficulty. In other words, there is a sense in which the Platonic doctrine is true, that every rational being as such desires only the good, or at least desires everything which it does desire, sub rations boni. The reader will observe the sense in which it is admitted that Kant's doctrine involves the idea of liberty of indifference. It is entirely owing to the way in which here, as in all other parts of his philosophy, he seems to combine two inconsistent points of view ; or rather, owing to the fact that CHAP. ill. the IDEA OP FREEDOM. 255 " The freedom of the will ( Willkuhr) cannot be defined as the capacity of choosing to act for, or against the law (libertas indifferentiae), though in will as the empirical phenomenon of freedom we find plenty of examples of this. For freedom, (as we become aware of it in the first instance through the moral law,) is known to us only by a negative characteristic in ourselves, viz., that we are not forced to action by sensuous motives. On the other hand, we cannot theoretically exhibit this characteristic in its positive aspect, as the faculty of man regarded purely as an intelligence to lay compulsion on his sensuously determined will ; for this would imply our knowledge of it in its noumenal reality. While, therefore, it is true that man as an object of sense shows in experience a his proposed method of abstraction conceals a method of " concretion." If we make him perfectly self-consistent in either way we escape the difficulty. If we say that the moral law is the sole motive which is derived from man's nature as a noumenal subject, we should be driven to the conclusion that determination by any other motive is attributable to him only as a phenomenal object. As a matter of fact we find that in Kant's treatise on Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, he does maintain that man's fall cannot be due to motives of sensuous desire ; but he still refers back the fall to an " intelligible act," i.e., an act of man as a noumenon. On the other hand, we may say that all motives as such, even if their content be derived from sensuous passion, are necessarily determined by self-consciousness, and, therefore, brought under the idea of the good ; and that it is only owing to an abstract way of looking at the desires, that they are regarded as desires of particular objects without relation to the good. And thus also we may reach a consistent view of man's practical life. For in speaking thus, we should just be following out, in rela- tion to practical reason, the same course of thought which we have already applied to theoretical reason. As in the latter case, the noumenal object was seen to be just the phenomenal in its relation to the conscious self, so here the motives of reason which determine man as a noumenal subject are seen to be not essentially different from the motives of passion which determine him as a phenomenon, but only the same motives as reinterpreted and transformed by relation to the principle which is the real source of their power over us. Now, whichever of these two views we adopt, we get rid of the idea of liberty of indifference, and we are able to arrive at a consistent view of man as free in the Kantian sense. And it is only because Kant's real progress from the abstract to the concrete, i.e., his progress toward the latter view, is concealed under an apparent movement from the concrete towards the abstract, i. e. , toward the former view, that he can be accused of favouring the idea of liberty of indifference, an idea which he always condemns whenever he has directly to speak of it. 25 6 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. faculty of choosing, not only in agreement with the law, but also in opposition to it, we cannot find in this fact the means of defining that freedom which belongs to him as an intelligible being. For phenomena can throw no light on a supersensuous object such as freewill : and freedom can by no means be placed in this, that the rational subject has a power of making a choice that conflicts with his (legisla- tive) reason, though experience often enough shows that he does so (a fact, the possibility of which we are unable to comprehend). But it is one thing to admit such a proposition to be true as expressing an empirical fact, and quite a different thing to make it the principle of explanation (for the conception of freedom) and the universal mark of distinction (between it and an arbitriwm brutum s. servum) ; for, in the former case, we do not assert that the predicate necessarily belongs to the conception, while in the latter case we do. Freedom, in refer- ence to the inner legislation of reason, alone is properly to be regarded as a faculty or power : the possibility of diverging from this law is a defect, or want of faculty (Uhvermogeri). How then can we expect to explain the former by the latter ? A definition which goes beyond the practical conception and brings in, in addition, the action by which it is realised, as that is exhibited in experience, is a bastard definition, {definitio hybrida,) and one which puts the conception in a false light." 1 insufficiency This passage shows in a very striking way how Kant refuses of the method r to J b J eJcI^from to a dmit into the conception of freedom the idea of a possible thatidea? determination by passion, while yet he asserts that, from the point of view of experience, man often appears to be so deter- mined. But the legitimate conclusion here would be that he only appears to be so determined ; or, in other words, that the imperfection of our empirical view of the facts of man's moral life, which we can know only in their phenomenal appearance, is the reason why we often seem to be determined by other motives than the moral law. But, as I have already pointed 1 R. IX. 28 ; H. VI 23. CHAP. in. T HE IDEA OP FREEDOM. 257 out, Kant does not use this, imperfection of our phenomenal view of freedom merely to explain, — what alone it can properly explain, — why we cannot " envisage," and so under- stand, the acts of a free subject as the manifestation of the law of its freedom. He would further use it to explain why we cannot conceive how such a free subject should submit itself to another law, i.e., should cease to be itself. To say, as Kant here says, that this choice to act by another law which is not its own law is to be explained, not by a faculty, but by a " want or defect of faculty," is an obvious evasion. For how, consistently with Kant's fundamental principles, can a defect of freedom be produced in the subject, whose essential nature is freedom, except by the exercise of that freedom ? And how in that exercise can the subject throw off a law which is identical with its consciousness of self ? In fact, no solution of the difficulty is possible, so long as the empirical self and its desires are regarded as simply incommensurable with the noumenal self and its law. But if, on the other hand, the good which is the end of the self, though not simply identical with the ends of the desires, is yet capable of being brought into relation to them as a principle to which they should conform, it necessarily follows that the desires and the empirical self to which they belong are not asymptotically related to the pure self. And thus, the negative relation of desire and duty must be based upon a positive relation which is deeper than itself. On this point enough has been said already, but there is one why the opposition of consequence of it which has special reference to the, present ^Jj.™^ subject. The desires, as we have seen, cannot be motives "aSSLtaktm to our will unless they present themselves as forms of self- absolute. realisation ; for it is not our desires but our self that we seek to satisfy. In other words, it is only as we regard an object or end as having a place in a totality of ends, the realisation of which is one with the realisation or satisfaction of the self, that it can be a motive to us. Hence, a mere natural impulse as such is never a motive to us. But also it must be added that, VOL. II. R 258 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK n. as such merely natural impulse, it cannot exist for us as a conscious impulse at all. We can be conscious of an external object without realising its relation to the self which is conscious of it, but we cannot be conscious of a desire as a desire in us and yet as merely something which we observe. In becoming conscious of it as our own impulse, we become conscious of it as having reference to an object which has its place among others in the sources of satisfaction of the self, i.e., in the ideal world correspondent to the self, which necessarily organises itself for us, as beings who will and desire, in opposition yet in relation to the real world of experience. When we are moved to its satisfaction, therefore, we are not subjecting ourselves to a natural necessity which is opposed to self-determination. Such a view of desires as determining us merely from without, may and does arise at a certain stage of our moral development ; and we shall have hereafter to explain its origin and its relative justification. Here, it is sufficient to point out that it is a one- sided and indeed self-contradictory view ; for it implies that the consciousness of our freedom or self-determination is present to us only through the moral law as opposed to the consciousness of determination by passion. If, however, this opposition were absolute, it would not take the form of an opposition of motives of which we are conscious in ourselves ; for where we were determined by passion, we should not be conscious of ourselves as acting at all. And on such a view it would be no exaggeration to say that in acts to which we are moved by passion, it is (not indeed ' sin ') but nature that acts in us. On the other hand, if the opposition be not abso- lute, or in other words, if passion caunot be a motive except as its object is represented as in some way a realisation or satisfaction of the self, and therefore as a form of, or element in, the same good which is abstractly opposed to it by the Stoics and Kant, then there is no reason to deny that we are conscious of our freedom in acting on motives of passion. While, therefore, Kant is right in saying that the consciousness, CHAP. in. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 259 Of freedom is necessarily a consciousness of the determination of our actions by the idea of self, (or an end which presents itself as the realisation of the self,) and while he is also right in saying that, at a particular stage of reflexion, determination by the idea of self necessarily takes on the aspect of determina- tion by an abstract moral law, he is wrong in supposing that this is the only form of the consciousness of freedom, and, in particular, he is wrong in supposing that we have not the con- sciousness of freedom, i.e., of ourselves as active, when our motives are motives of passion. What is necessary to the consciousness of freedom or self-determination is simply that, immediately or mediately, the object willed should be one in the attainment of which we have the consciousness of the self as realised. For, so far as this is the case, — and it must be the case whenever we have a consciousness of self as desiring the object, — there is a consciousness of self-deter- mination, i.e., of ourselves as acting and not as acted on. We may indeed admit that the distinct consciousness of the freedom of spirit, in opposition to the necessity of nature, first arises in connexion with that abstract opposition of reason and passion which is so fully expressed in the Stoic and Kantian philosophies. But it is the fundamental mistake of these philosophies, first to confuse the latter with the former opposi- tion, the opposition of reason and passion with the opposition of subject and object ; and then, as a consequence of this confusion, to treat the former opposition as absolute. Hence, in order fully to disentangle the intricacies of this question, two things would be necessary ; first, to show how the opposi- tion of reason and passion, as different motives of the one conscious self, i.e., different forms of self-determination, arises, and how it is related to the opposition of freedom and neces- sity, self-determination and determination by another; and, secondly, to show what are the nature and limits of the latter opposition, and to consider whether even it can be taken as- absolute. It will, however, be more convenient to take up 260 KANT'S ETHICAL WOEKS. book n. these questions in the opposite order, and to begin by consider- ing how the contrast of freedom and necessity can be traced back to the very rise of the consciousness of self, in opposition yet in relation to the consciousness of objects, rfo^ecfsto The first step towards the solution of this difficulty is to cannot be recall that it is only by a false abstraction that objects are con- taken as a relation of c eived as external to the self, in the sense of not involving a externality, or ' ° bythen^tue relation to it. The principle that constitutes our individual seif-determin- being as self-conscious subjects is a principle which is implied in all objects ; for it is only in relation to it that they are ob- jects, which together, and by their action and reaction on each other, make up one world of experience. • But if this is true, there can be no purely external relations between the subject and objects, such as were supposed to exist between objects as such : nay, even between objects, such external relations cannot be admitted to exist, except as they are conceived in abstraction from the principle for which they are. Or, perhaps we should rather say, that as their externality to each other is itself a determination which they have as objects for a self, it pre- supposes their unity, and exists only as the means through which the principle of that unity reveals itself. Or, to put it more directly, their existence is not merely an existence for a self but an existence of a self — an existence which is essentially spiritual. It is true that as external, i.e., as in the form of space, they appear (to use an expression of Kant) "to detach themselves from our spirit and hover without." But their exist- ence in this externality is phenomenal, i.e., as so represented, they are existences which are not self-maintaining wholes or realities, but involve an essential reference to a being different from themselves, in whose existence they are moments. Now, a self-conscious being necessarily stands to such objective or ex- ternal things in a relation which is not external, or not merely external. For, in such a being, the principle, which is involved though not expressed in them, is revealed ; and if, from a lower point of view, he, as self-conscious, stands apart from them. chap. in. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 261 marked off from them by the greatest of all differences, yet, from a higher point of view, the difference ceases to be an absolute one ; and that which, viewed in itself, is external and externally determined, becomes recognised when viewed in its relation to the conscious self, as the expression of an inward self-deter- mining principle. Hence, we might say that in him the external world becomes self-conscious, or that in him the substance reveals itself, in relation to which external things may be regarded as accidents ; he is the noumenon of which they are phenomena. Hence, if such a being stands, on the first view of him, in external relation to other beings and objects, determining them and being determined by them on equal terms, yet this merely external relation already, in becoming a conscious relation, has ceased to be external ; in becoming a relation for the self-conscious being, it has ceased to be merely a relation of him. Or, in other words, the self-conscious being cannot distinguish himself from his object without relating both to a unity which is revealed only in itself and not in his object (unless that object be another self-con- scious being) — a unity in relation to which all externality exists, and for which, therefore, nothing is external. The consciousness of the self is, therefore, necessarily a consciousness of freedom ; for, just in so far as the self is presupposed, or presupposes it- self as a subject, in all determination of the object and of itself as object, it cannot be conscious of the object as externally determining it ; and though the object-self, as one object among others, might be regarded as so determined, yet, in so far as it is identified with the subject-self, the external relation of deter- mination becomes itself a vehicle of self-determination. Or, to put it otherwise, as self-conscious it necessarily transcends its own mere existence as one object among others, and is thus cap- able of determining, or rather, we may say, it exists only in determining, that existence through a universal principle — a principle which is negatively related to its phenomenal existence as one object among others, and which reveals itself positively * only in reconstituting that existence in view of itself as an end. 262 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K n ~ SX To P ut this in anotner wav : — tne objective world cannot ex- Sf S -coScious ternally determine a self-conscious or spiritual being, unless it being only . . . q because he is is an existence external to and independent of spirit; or unless- in process of development. suc h spiritual being is imperfectly spiritual or self-conscious, so that what is really one in principle with itself comes to it as if 'it were external or alien : in which latter case, to say that it is ■ determined by an external object really means that it is not in harmony with itself. Now, the former alternative is excluded by the idealistic proof that existence is of necessity existence for a self. It remains, therefore, that necessity can exist for a spiritual being only as a consequence of its imperfect develop- ment, i.e., of the fact that in it self-consciousness is inadequate to its own idea, or, in other words, that it is a self-consciousness which is in process of growth. For such a self -consciousness the world may be an external and resistant sphere of action, just because the content of self-consciousness in its case is not adequate to the form. But, then, the very necessity that fronts it as something external and so limits it, is just the means whereby that content is gradually purified and the sensuous in- dividuality transformed into the vehicle of a higher spiritual life. The win of Self-consciousness is, in the first instance, a consciousness of such a subject .. 1 ., necessarily has the self m opposition to the world, and especially to other self- a universal character. conscious beings. In this point of view, the self-conscious being, though a subject, is present to itself as merely one being external to others, determined by them and determining them on equal terms. The content which it has in its consciousness, the ends of action which it recognises, seem to be entirely determined by its natural individuality ; and the form of consciousness, with which such content is invested, seems to leave that content altogether unchanged. But we have to remember that the con- scious self, is more than it knows ; and that the opposition which it establishes between itself and its object is a negative relation which implies a positive relation. This again implies a unity in the self which does not fall under that relation, but determines it. It is this unity, involved in the consciousness of chap. hi. THE IDEA 0F FRBED0M . 263 self, which makes it impossible for a rational being continuously and consistently to recognise itself as a mere object among ob- jects ; and it is this that gives a universal character to its will : or, as we should rather say, it is this that gives it a will. For only a self-conscious being, which sets its own being before it as an end, can be properly said to have a will. In other words ; it has a will, because it is conscious not only of objects but of itself, and because its consciousness of self is not something different from its consciousness of objects, but rather includes and subordinates that consciousness, or, in other words, gives it a new principle of unity by a return upon the self involved in it. What hides this nature of the will from us is the fact that This is hidden from us or the form of the will is determined by the nature of the self-con- r eveaI ? d onl y •J m an lmper- sciousness out of which, or in connexion with which, it arises ; ^ ' £"«£- i ■ P i i P . . . sciousness of and m so tar as that self-consciousness is primardy negative, i.e., sew. is a consciousness of self in opposition to other objects, it must be a selfish or exclusive will, which can assert itself only in taking away the apparent independence of objects, or in reducing them to instruments of itself. In other words, self-consciousness arises in opposition to the consciousness of objects ; and though it really includes and goes beyond the consciousness in opposi- tion to which it arises, though it is that consciousness in a further stage of development, the opposition is more prominent in the first appearance of self-consciousness than the inclusion, " the negative than the positive relation. Thus self-consciousness at first seems to stand to the consciousness of the object merely as the consciousness of one object to that of another. It is not seen that what from one point of view is the process whereby we become conscious of a self in opposition to objects, is from another point of view the process whereby the principle of their existence is disclosed, the process whereby, we might even say, they become conscious of themselves in us. And for the same reason, the content of a consciousness which is thus for it- * self external po its object is inadequate to its form. For the self, 264 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS, book II. viewed as an individual object in opposition to other individual objects, reduces itself to the mere animal individuality; and though the content of self-consciousness can never be strictly limited to that individuality, yet neither can it distinctly rise above it, so long as the universal principle in the conscious self is not seen to establish positive relations, which are not merely external relations, between the self as object and other objects. Self-consciousness, in short, is still in the dualistic form of con- sciousness, and, therefore, has its content limited by that form. Yet this cannot be altogether so. Self-consciousness, as we have seen, presupposes consciousness, and contains it as an element in itself; and though the opposition in which it first arises hides this wider compass, yet it cannot but show itself indirectly, if in nothing else, at least in an assertion of the individual self which denies all rights to the not-self, or seeks to absorb it in the self. If the ego is to itself only an individual among other individuals, yet its individuality becomes, so to speak, stretched to the limits of its universal nature ; or rather, as it is impossible to reach the universal without abnegation of the merely in- dividual self, it is stretched without limit. But the addition to each other of finite particulars, conceived as materially exclusive, can never realise a universal which is not in any of them. Hence selfishness gives rise to a progressus ad infinitum, a Schlechte Unendlichkeit, which mocks the true infinite. It sets up the self as an individual object external to all the objects in which its satisfaction is supposed to lie, and can, therefore, think of that satisfaction only as an external subordination of all other individual objects to itself. But, just because such satisfaction is in what is external, it can never be complete. Carlyle's 1 shoeblack cannot be satisfied, because, so -long as the 1 Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, II. IX. " Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack happy ? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two : for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach ; and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and satura- tion, simply this allotment, no more and no less : Ood's infinite universe altogether •chap. in. THE IDEA 0F FREEDOM. 265 self is to itself merely individual, the universality that belongs to it as self-conscious can show itself only as the continual un- sated demand for something more. The objects which it seeks, being taken as merely finite, isolated objects, are no sooner attained than they are rejected as inadequate. Now, this has an important bearing on the question of how the idea ' ' of the good freedom: for freedom, as Kant shows, consists in this, that the win, «. that ' 7 -which alone is conscious subject should determine itself in view of its own out 'of the* universal nature alone, and not by its particular passions or opposition of . duty to desire. their objects. Yet such determination is impossible, unless the universal can be willed in willing the particular, with which action is always concerned. Now, in one sense we must will the universal in willing the particular ; for, as I have already .said, it is as the satisfaction of the self that all objects are desired and willed. But the self is not at first directly con- scious of its own universality, and its will of the particular does not seem to receive anything more than an empty form from self-consciousness. The positive meaning of this form, and the inadequacy of the particular matter as such to it, are seen at first only in the reaction of our discontent with the particular as attained, or in the impossibility of satisfying our- selves in particular objects as such. The self is not realised in them ; for, what such objects as merely particular can give to it, is but a momentary or partial gratification of some tendency ■of the sensitive subject, and in this point of view the value of the object as an end is only its pleasure-value. Though, therefore, we may say that a rational or self-conscious being always acts under the idea of freedom, inasmuch as it is always itself its own motive ; yet, in so far as those objects in which it •seeks to realise itself are taken by it only as particular, its realisation of its freedom is a continual enslavement of itself. to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. . . . Try him with half a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. — Always there is a black spot in our sunshine, it is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves. " 266 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book n.. The matter of its end is derived from its own sensuous indi- viduality, in opposition to other beings, or it is found in objects-- only as satisfying that individuality : it is, therefore, a matter which, as particular, is not adequate to the form, and which, as particular, is always externally dependent upon other par- ticulars. In two ways, then, the self so conceived is unrealisable- as it cannot be satisfied with that which satisfies, or would otherwise satisfy, its sensuous individuality ; and as that indi- viduality is limited in its satisfaction by its relations to other- objects, and is thus dependent on what, in relation to it, is a mere contingency. Its consciousness of an act as done in view of the idea of itself, or, in other words, its consciousness of the act as its own, — which is, therefore, a consciousness of freedom, — is vitiated by the content of the act, and, by the result of it ; and thus the consciousness of freedom turns into a con- sciousness of enslavement to accidental desire and external- contingency. Hence, we do not wonder that Kant should refuse to connect the idea of freedom with it at all, and should recognise that idea only in the abstraction from such contin- gency, which is connected with the consciousness of the pure- law or of the universal self as an end. It is, however, to be- remembered (1) that the consciousness of particular objects as- ends of action cannot arise apart from the presentation of the- self to itself as an end : and (2) that when, on account of the inadequacy of such matter to the form of self-consciousness, the division arises of a higher from a lower end, — and so of the moral consciousness from the consciousness of the self as a natural individual, — the moral consciousness does not, in the first instance, take the form of a pure idea of law, or of the pure universal self as an end. Bather, the moral end at first presents itself as the realisation of what Kant calls a kind of kingdom of ends. The individual recognises his membership in some social unity, be it the family or the clan or the nation, as the ground of a law which ought to determine his individual existence. Still, as was shown in the last chapter, the idea of chap. in. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 267 such a kingdom in its widest and truest form, as embracing all rational beings as such, cannot arise till the abstraction from all particular bonds has revealed to us the pure principle of unity which lies in self-consciousness. The consciousness of freedom or self-determination in the Relation of this negative individual, i.e., the consciousness of his being the author of his toTh^posm^ own actions and responsible to himself independently of all * ea of lt circumstances, must always appear a paradox so long as, and in so far as, the individual, in whom such a consciousness is awakened, regards any thing or being to which he is related as purely external to himself, and acting on him from without. Hence, for the individual, the consciousness of freedom must be a contradiction, unless he can regard himself as identified with a principle which, while it realises itself through his particular individuality and that of others, binds them all to each other as members of one organic whole. For it is only through such organic continuity with all other beings, and even in a sense with all other things, that the individual as such can overcome the limits of his individuality, or the limits which the individuality of others sets to him. Self-consciousness — as dissolving the limits of mere individuality, or as the consciousness of a being which finds itself only as it tends to go out of itself to the whole to which it belongs, or only as it makes the life of that whole its own, — is thus the bestower of real freedom, a freedom which is not merely the negation of limits, but of which such limits have become the expression. Kant never quite escapes from the idea of negative freedom, k. ant's P ^-^ and hence he is not able clearly to rise above the idea of ^f setw0 freedom of indifference. This consequence will be seen at once if we consider that to reach freedom in the negative way, we must abolish that from which we abstract. The ego, set against the world and its own being as a particular object in the world, can determine itself freely only if, with this abstraction, all relations, including even negative relations, to that world and »to his own particular existence in it, are annihilated. For, 268 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. unless this is so, the particular appears outside of the universal self as still limiting it ; and it may even be argued that, except as determined by this negative relation, there is no universal self at all, or, in other words, that we cannot separate its universality from this negative relation to the particular. Hence, the Stoics found it necessary to regard the passions as un- natural, and moral action as a determination by pure reason without any reference to them. And the apathy of the wise man was conceived by them, not merely as the ascetic negation of passion, but as an absolute disappearance of passion from the presence of the pure self- determining reason. Kant accom- plishes the same necessary movement by his distinction of noumena and phenomena. According to him, we are restricted to the noumenal point of view in determining the subject as free ; in other words, the abstraction from the particular and objective aspect of the self is fixed as an absolute and final abstraction, and the phenomenal from which abstraction is made, is supposed absolutely to disappear in the pure self- affirmation of reason. But Kant, as we have seen, is too much concerned about the concrete content of morals to hold firmly to this point of view. He even goes so far in the opposite •direction as to demand that the phenomenal self should be not merely negatively but positively determined by the noumenal. Thus the noumenon, though defined only by abstraction from the phenomenal, has after all to be realised in the phenomenal; though it is true that Kant again tries to escape the consequence of this admission, by asserting that the representation of the moral law as a law of nature gives us merely a type of the intelligible world. StMm 0a to ^ e nmst tllus meet Kant ' s v i ew b y a double correction. In Sciulve S ofau tne first P lace > we must P oint out that the abstraction from the andbeingf 8 phenomenal world and the phenomenal self cannot be an abso- lute separation of the two. Such separation is impossible • since . it is just the relation, though the negative relation, to the particu- lar which defines the universal for us. The subjective self which chap. in. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 2 6 9 is opposed to the objective world and the objective self, has all its characteristics determined by this opposition ; and if we re- move this opposition, together with the phenomenal world and phenomenal self which it implies, there is nothing left. The consciousness of a self is impossible apart from the conscious- ness of an objective world, in which its own particular existence is determined in relation to other particulars ; nor is there any self-consciousness which is not at the same time a consciousness of the not-self. This is the truth which underlies the error of those who take the self simply as one object among others, and are thereby led into the easy way of determinism. But, in the second place, it is not the whole truth ; for we must remember that this negation and opposition, which seems from one point of view to presuppose the object, in another point of view first reveals what the object is. In a true sense, therefore, though with a paradoxical expression, we may say that it is just the return of consciousness upon self from the object that reveals the nature of the object from which we make return. A consciousness which had not made such return, could not properly be said to know what the object really is ; for what it really is can only mean what it is for a self. Here, therefore, we find a clue to the meaning of that first consciousness of freedom, which arises with the consciousness of the self in opposition to the object, a clue which enables us to detect at once the truth and the error contained in it. The ego is really free, only as it is more than the mere subject ; or as its consciousness of itself is not the consciousness of one object as opposed to other objects, but of a- unity in which the consciousness of all objects is an element. But, in its first consciousness of freedom, it attaches freedom as a predicate to the self, as external to, and exclusive of, the objects which it really implies. The ego in itself gets the predicates which properly belong only to the ego as includ- ing that to which it seems to be opposed. It, as abstracted from all objects, is credited with being that which it is only as ^n its concreteness including the object, as being the object and 270 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. something more : or, as Schelling said, as being the object in a higher power. As thus abstracted from, the object ceases to be even so much as an object, and the phantom of libe indifference, the abstraction from all determination, subst itself for the idea of self-determination. The negation of < mination by which self-consciousness arises, is not se include the determination which it negates, and becoming indeterminateness, it ceases to mean anything. For a which is determined by no motives can have no will. Suth £\ he Thus, liberty of indifference is an absurdity : it is the li dSfflS °f the void. Yet we must add that in our earliest consi caprice. ness of freedom, or of ourselves as acting, there is some that corresponds to such liberty ; something which partly fies the idea, that freedom is necessarily liberty of indiffei by showing that it contains an element of the truth, that element is, we may briefly indicate by saying man is never a mere creature of impulse, but always ming his impulsiveness an element of caprice. The consciousm the self as acting, even in the man who seems most simj obey the stimulus of passion, always involves at leas inchoate distinction of the self from the special desires their objects, a distinction which rests On the universali the self. This distinction and relation brings with it a c fication of the desires in virtue of which they cease to be animal impulses : but it brings with it also, what at present we are more interested in observing, a tendency to set up the self as an end, in opposition to all particular ends of desire. We can best show what this tendency implies by taking it in its most developed form, in the man whom we call wilful or capricious. For what caprice shows, is that the abstract self is becoming an object of will as distinct from, or even as opposed to, all objects of desire. The will of the capricious man is one whose motive is to show the bare self as a power in the world. To him, it is more important that it is his will and not another's that is realised, than that what he wills is realised. Stat pro •CHAP. in. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 271 ratione voluntas. Such a will cannot but have some particular content, but it is not concerned with that content, and its wilfulness may even go so far as to rebel against every par- ticular content in turn : for, to the capricious man his whole ( past may seem to be a constraint, and what he seeks is to get rid of constraint, or to show himself as independent of it. Such caprice is, of course, no real freedom ; and its effort ^^01™?" after independence turns by a natural dialectic into its direct SeXtionof -r i i l n t . it in the idea ■opposite, in the abstract self there is no content to set aeamst of obedience to ° law. the content from which it would free itself. And if we, from a higher point of view, can regard it as seeking to realise a universal end, yet it is conscious of no such end, and with all its contortions it merely shifts from particular to particular. The capricious man is, therefore, the plaything of circumstances and ■of the passing whims which they suggest. In his emptiness of substantial interests, he makes himself the slave of chance. Thus, caprice contradicts itself, and takes from the ego it seems to exalt, the very characteristic which must be the ground of any opposition between the self as universal and the particular inclinations. It is, in fact, always a merely particular will, an inconsistent willing of this at one time and that at another; and we can understand its possibility, as opposed to a mere animal obedience to impulse, only if we regard it as the first imperfect form in which the universality of the self manifests itself as opposed to the particularity of the impulses. Caprice, we may say, is blindly seeking the universality of law ; and this is often shown in practice by the fact that the capricious man tires of his " unchartered freedom," and throws himself at the feet of an outward authority that he may escape from him- self. He learns by the self-contradiction of his life that nur das Gesetz harm uns die Freiheit geben ; but, as he has -not yet learnt to know himself as universal, the law which frees him from himself only enslaves him to another. The absolute fixity of external law and inviolable custom is the natural refuge of the wilful man from his own wilfulness. The breaking of 272 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K "" wilfulness by a despotism, the subjection of a lawless caprice to capricious and arbitrary law, is the first step towards morality,— *• i.e., towards an obedience to law which is freedom, an obedience of the rational subject to the law which as rational he lays- down for himself. r^satXst Now, it is just such a consciousness of freedom which is ex- an outer law. pressed in the Stoic and Kantian philosophies, a consciousness that man is free as he obeys the law of his own being, and no other law. Such philosophies, however, could arise only after a long process of social development, in which individuals were gradually disciplined or moralised by subjection to the outward law of society ; while, on the other hand, that outward law was gradually made less capricious and unfair by the reaction of the individuals subjected to it. The Stoic set the inward against the outward law : but it was only because the outward law had become to a considerable extent the expression of reason that the idea of an inward law was suggested to him. For his revolt was not against a capricious despotism, but against the com- paratively rational order of the Greek or Eoman State. It is not the faults of a bad, but of a good state of things that are felt most keenly ; for it is the latter alone that bring with them a standard of excellence by which they are condemned. The re- lative equality of Roman justice thus awoke a consciousness that the source of all authority over man is in the reason within him, which is at once the maker and the destroyer of all outward atfiiSappiara ^ aws - At the same time, it was only natural that when it had opposition 1 to once arisen, this first consciousness of reason as self-legislative the outer law. . 1 _ . _. , . - .. should rapidly become one-sided and abstract ; m other words, that it should become a consciousness not of the outward law as the inward, but of the inward law as opposed to the outward. Hence, in this new form of the consciousness of freedom there seemed to be a revival of the idea of self-will as opposed to any other will. The difference was that the self-will was no longer caprice, for it was no more the bare " I " that was willed but the "I" as universal reason. The individual was viewed as inde- CHAP. in. THE IDEA 0F FREEDOM. 273 pendent of all that is without him, only because his consciousness of himself was one with his consciousness of an absolute law or principle, to which all things and beings, even himself as regards all his particular powers and tendencies, were sub- jected. Thus, the Stoic idea of freedom seems at first to be removed toto coelo from caprice. It has, however, a point in common with caprice, in so far as it separates the consciousness of self from the consciousness of the object, and therefore necessarily empties the former of all its positive con- tents. Its universal law is so opposed to all particulars that it cannot become a principle of order among them. On this point we need not dwell, as the merits and defects of this abstract idea of morality, especially in Kant's expression of it, have been so fully considered in the last chapter. We have seen that he was not able, after all his efforts, to correct its fatal flaw, or to discover any essential relation between the universal law and the particular matter of desire to which it is opposed. Hence, the law, which, as a law of freedom, is bound up with the con- sciousness of self, remains for him an empty word, a universal which has no particular contents, a " will which wills nothing." Kant, indeed, tries to supply this defect by symbolising the moral laws as laws of nature : but this, as we shall see, makes it necessary for him to think of the moral life as aprogressus ad infinitum towards an impossible end, an end which is fixed as impossible by the abstract opposition of the moral and the natural with which he started. Further (what is of more im- portance in relation to the subject of the present chapter) Kant's view of freedom, though it seems to remove some of the difficulties of the question by showing that there is a motive which reason can derive from itself, yet in the end forces him to postulate something very like that liberty of indifference which he explicitly rejects. For if, like Kant, we represent the will as owing subjection to the moral law, and yet, on the other hand, as capable of being led away from it by passion, we are forced to think of an empty ego standing between the law and the VOL. II. s 274 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. motives, and arbitrarily determining itself in one way or another. Sieaa Sew of Tne onlv wav in which we can clear up the difficulties of finauy™atis- the subject is, by showing that the consciousness of freedom under those two subordinate forms, as caprice and as obedience to abstract law, can be regarded only as anticipative of a truth which is adequately expressed in neither. For, in both these forms, freedom is claimed for the self in virtue of an abstrac- tion from the particular content of consciousness ; and the particular content must, therefore, be regarded as absolutely annulled ; for, if not, we should be obliged to treat it as exter- nally limiting and determining the self. It is, however, because the self is potentially more than is represented in either of those imperfect forms that relative truth can be ascribed to them. Both of these ideas of freedom, in fact, bring together the elements of that idea in a way that involves an imperfect statement of the universal, as well as the particular, side of it. Both, therefore, give rise to an antinomy or dilemma, in which the alternatives are : — on the one hand, the fatal determination of the will by the feelings and passions of the particular subjectivity ; on the other hand,the negation of such determination, which can mean only the liberty of indifference. "When, however, we see not merely that the self-conscious will of the individual, in virtue of its universality, opposes itself to the particular desires and their objects, but also that this universality can only be conceived as the principle of unity in the particular, and as, therefore, bring- ing, with every step in the development of the consciousness of it, a new determination of the particulars, we get beyond from the alternative of a freedom which is empty, and a determina- tion which is necessary and external, (both of which alternatives- would be equally fatal to the moral consciousness). For, from this point of view, we perceive that all the moments by which the consciousness of self is determined, are really its own moments ; though in its imperfect development they are neces- sarily presented as external to it and to each other. In other CHAP. ill. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. 275 words, this apparent externality is itself one of the phases through which it must pass in virtue of the law of its own development, — though it is a phase which has its value only as a moment of transition. But it is the truth only " which is the index of itself and of But the y bottl furnish ole- the error it corrects." It is only from the highest point of view, Sue idea! the or in reference to its own completed development, that the un- developed consciousness becomes intelligible, or receives a relative justification. It is only when we get beyond the abstract antagonism of the universal to the particular will, only when we reach the idea of a kingdom of ends in which the particular nature of each becomes the means to the realisation of the one universal principle' or end which inspires all, that we can understand the relative value of this and all other im- perfect conceptions of the moral life. We can do justice to the truth contained in the inadequate, and in themselves contra- dictory, forms of the consciousness of freedom, only when we regard them as stages in the development of a higher idea of it. For it must be acknowledged that, if there had been nothing latent in these forms beyond that which was explicitly present to consciousness, there would have been an absolute contradiction between the different elements contained in them. Equally in the idea of freedom as caprice, and in the idea of freedom as obedience to the moral law, the consciousness of the will as containing its own motive is combined with the consciousness of the will as having a particular content. But in neither do . we discover the unity that holds these two opposite factors together. But from the point of view which we have now reached, we are able to see that the self-contradiction of the consciousness of freedom in those earlier stages of its develop- ment, is the very means by which it is developed to a form in which the contradiction disappears. "We are enabled, in fact, to regard them as necessary, because the elements of that consciousness must be divided, and even opposed to each other, before they can be truly and conclusively united. 276 CHAPTEE IV. MORAL FEELING. Determination rFIHERE are two aspects of Kant's moral theory which have tnemoraiiaw. nQt ^ heen directly discussed, though they have been referred to, viz., (1) the way in which the feelings of the subject are determined by the moral idea, and, (2) the nature of the Chief Good as at once the ideal or end which is set before us by our rational nature, and the ultimate reality from which all else that is real derives its existence. The former of these topics will be treated in this chapter, the latter in the chapter following. ciiaracter of ^ l iave already referred to Kant's distinction between 'produced* 80 motives which are based upon feelings of pleasure and pain and which, therefore, are dependent on the action of objects on our sensibility, and motives which are derived from our con- sciousness of ourselves as rational subjects. The consciousness of the moral law is at the same time a consciousness of freedom, because it forces us to abstract from all the motives of desire, and to regard ourselves as capable of determination by the unconditioned imperative of duty, without any regard to the circumstances of our individual life, or to the particular nature of the feelings of pleasure and pain which are excited thereby. It thus produces a negative effect on our sensibility — a feeling which is like pain l because it comes into collision 1 Kant (E. VIII. 197 ; H. V. 77) says that it is " a feeling which may be CHAR IV - MORAL FEELING. 277 with the immediate movement of natural desire in us. When we stand face to face with the moral law, we cannot feel that we have any value or merit in ourselves apart from it. Our natural vanity or inclination to be satisfied with ourselves is absolutely set aside and extinguished. And the self-love which would lead us to make our own happiness our end is, though not extinguished, yet limited to conditions of agreement with the law. On the other hand, this negative effect of the law is not final ; for, whenever we lay aside our vanity, and submit our self-love to such limitation by the law, whenever we reverently bow before the law and accept its censure, we find that " what humiliates us on the sensuous side, on the intellectual side elevates us." 1 For the law is a law arising out of our own rational nature ; it is a law which we im- pose upon ourselves as self-conscious or rational beings. Reverence for such a law throws us down in order to raise us up : if it makes "our mortal nature tremble like a guilty thing- surprised " before the awful legislation of reason, it enables us at the same time to feel that our mortal nature is not our inmost self. When we identify ourselves with the very law that humiliates us, we find that it gains such power of attrac- tion, that " we can never satisfy ourselves with gazing upon it." " The soul believes itself to be exalted, just in the measure in which it recognises the elevation of the holy law above itself and the frailty of its own nature." 2 " i "~ Hence, we cannot class this feeling of reverence either with is it pleasure or pain ? called pain," and (R. VIII. 255 ; H. V. 123) that it is " scarcely an analogon of pleasure " ; but even this latter phrase, and still more, the whole account of the way in which the feeling is produced, shows that he conceives it as a pleasure reached through pain, a, satisfaction of the higher nature reached through the negation of the lower, but still a satisfaction. Kant shrinks from calling it pleasure, only because he confines that word to the imme- diate satisfaction of the original impulses. He does not recognise that these impulses, as they appear in a self-conscious being, have already ceased to be mere appetites ; or in other words, have been reconstituted through the negation of their immediate natural form : though, of course, this process has not itself been conscious, as it is in the case of the moral feeling. » 1 R. VIII, 204 ; H. V. 83. S R. VIII. 203 ; H. V. 82. 2fi8 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. deasure simply or with pain simply. We might best describe t as a positive feeling reached through negation ; for the moral law, while it makes us abstract from our own nature as sensu- ous beings,— as particular objects like other particular objects in the world we know, — at the same time makes us feel that we can determine ourselves by our universal nature as rational subjects. Eeverence, in short, is the appearance of the moral consciousness in the region of sensuous feeling, in which it must appear if it is to realise itself in finite beings like us. " Eever- ence before the law is not a motive to morality, it is morality itself viewed subjectively as a motive ; for our pure practical reason, by setting aside all the claims of self-love that conflict with itself, procures for the law, to which alone it leaves any influence, an absolute authority." 1 It is, so to speak, the " Word made flesh," reason speaking the language of feeling, a language which it necessarily must speak in every finite or .sensitive being. The possibility Eeverence is a feeling which is felt primarily for the law of reverence for persons, itself, and secondarily for persons who are believed to have realised it in themselves. Such persons we are obliged to reverence : '' our spirit bows before them, whether we bow our heads or no." But, as we can never know even in our own case, much less in the case of others, how far any act is done purely from a regard to duty, so there never can be, strictly speaking, any empirical proof of the possibility of realising the moral law. " In moral action imitation has no place." It is because his life awakes a consciousness of the true archetype, the moral law which is bound up with our consciousness of ourselves, that even "the Holy One of the Gospels " 2 can be set before us as an example ; and the text, " Why callest thou me good ? There is no one good but God," may be cited as reminding us of this. The ultimate appeal is always to the law within, and it is through con- formity to it alone that any person can claim our respect. 1 E. VIII. 200 ; H. V. 80. 2 E. VIII. 31 ; H. IV. 256. chap. iv. Moral feeling. 279 Hence, it is the sole determinant of the end for which we should act. Eeverence at once repels us from, and identifies us with, j^J™ teti & is to be observed that " this moral Saw moral 13 necessity is subjective, i.e., it is a need or requirement of our law. . • li? moral consciousness, and not objective, i.e., it is not itseli a duty. For there cannot be a duty to assume the existence of any thing or being," 2 which can only be a matter of theoretic conviction, and not of practical obligation. Nor, again, can the assumption of the existence of God be made the basis of our obligation to obey the moral law, which necessarily is itself the only basis of obligation. The place of this assumption is deter- mined only by its necessity as involved in the possibility of the realisation of the Good which the moral law commands us to realise. It has, therefore, the value of an hypothesis necessary to explain the possibility of the existence of a certain object ; but, inasmuch as the object in question is one which is set before us by our own rational nature as that which should be attained, we may call it more appropriately " a faith, and indeed a faith of reason." atemoeof this -^is deduction enables us to see why the Greek schools were ^etk^thics. unable to solve the problem of the practical possibility of the highest Good. They tried to deal with it directly, and to treat the highest Good as realisable through the will of the finite moral subject, not seeing the necessity of the postulate of the existence of God. Hence, the Epicureans were led to lower their ideas of happiness to what is attainable by man through his own endeavours, and the Stoics to exclude from considera- tion any happiness which is separable from goodness. Christ- ianity, on the other hand, connects happiness with goodness by the idea of a " Kingdom of God, in which nature and moral excellence are united together in a harmony, which is not 1 It. VIII. 265 ; H. V. 130. * R. VIII. 266 ; H. V. 131. ■chap. v. THE SUMMUM BONUM. 297 necessitated by the conception of either taken by itself, but •established by a holy Being, the Creator of all, who makes the highest derivative Good possible." 1 At the same time, the •Christian principle of morals is " not theological, not the heteronomy, but the autonomy of pure practical reason ; for Christianity does not make the knowledge of God or of His will the ground of the law," 2 or place the motive to fulfil that law in any consequences attached by the divine Being to •obedience. On the contrary, it maintains the idea of duty, as the only true motive of action, and also the ground of our belief in God. Now, this gives us the true idea of Beligion ; for Beligion is not obedience to a will that is foreign and alien to our own, in view of certain sanctions which that will has attached to its arbitrary decrees : it is a consciousness of our own will as one with the will of God, and hence as directed to an end which not only may, but must, be capable of realisa- tion. We have, then, three postulates of practical reason, which Relation of the 7 x x postulates to are closely related to the three Ideas of theoretical reason. * heI ' te,s ' !f These Ideas reason in its theoretical use set before itself as problems to be solved ; but it was unable to supply the solution. Thus, the attempt to prove theoretically the per- manence of the thinking subject led only to a paralogism ; for it involved a confusion of the subject presupposed in all know- ledge of objects, and only in that point of view permanent, with an object known under the category of substance. But now, we find that a faith of reason in the endless existence of the self- conscious subject is bound up with the possibility of his ful- filling the moral law. Again, the attempt speculatively to determine the world as a system complete in itself landed us in an antinomy which we were able to escape only by the distinc- tion of the phenomenal from the intelligible world — a distinc- tion which theoretic reason suggested, bub which it could not verify. But now, the moral law forces us to think ourselves as * 1 R. VIII. 270 ; H. V. 134. " E VIII. 270 ; H. V. 134. 298 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK n. free, and therefore as belonging to an intelligible world, which we are further obliged to treat as the reality of which the phenomenal world is the appearance. Lastly, the absolute Being was to theoretic reason a mere ideal which knowledge could not realise; but now His existence is certified to us as the necessary condition of the possibility of the object of a will determined by the moral law. Thus, through prac- tical reason we gain a conviction of the reality of objects corresponding to the three Ideas of pure reason. We do not, indeed, acquire what is properly to be called knowledge of these objects. "We only change the problematic conception of them into an assertion of their real existence : but as we are not able to bring any perception under such Ideas, so we are unable to make any synthetic judgment regarding the objects the existence of which we assert. With this limitation, how- ever, it is true that, in the sphere of practice, the Ideas which to theory were transcendent and without objects, become immanent and constitutive. " For they contain the grounds of the possi- bility of realising the necessary object of practical reason (the highest Good), whereas theoretical reason finds in them merely regulative principles, which have their value in further- ing the exercise of the intelligence in experience, but not in enabling us to gain any certitude as to the existence of any object beyond experience. When, however, by the moral consciousness we are once put in possession of this new certi- tude, reason as a speculative faculty comes in (though properly only to protect its practical use), arid goes to work with these Ideas in a negative way, i.e., not to extend but to elucidate them ; and so to exclude, on the one hand, Anthropomorphism as the source of a superstition which pretends to enlarge our knowledge by a fictitious experience, and on the other hand, Fanaticism, which pretends to a similar enlargement of know- ledge not by experience, but by means of supersensuous intuition or feeling. For, both these equally are hindrances of the prac- tical use of reason, and the exclusion of them may be regarded CHAP. v. THE SUMMTJM BONUM. 299 as an extension of our knowledge in a practical point of view. 1 " When these Ideas of G-od, of an intelligible world, and of ^postulates 3 o ' do not give us immortality, are determined by predicates which are taken from aSr objects, . . . . but only our own nature, we must regard this determination neither as enable us to assert their a sensualising of these pure Ideas (Anthropomorphism), nor as reallt y- a transcendent knowledge of supersensible objects ; for the predicates we use are only understanding and will, and, indeed, these regarded only in that relation to each other in which we are required by the moral law to regard them. All other psychological characteristics of our understanding and will, which we empirically observe in the exercise of those faculties (as, e.g., that our understanding is discursive and not intuitive, that our ideas follow each other in time, that our will is dependent for its satisfaction on the existence of its object, etc. — all characteristics, in short, which cannot be attributed to the understanding and will of the Supreme Being) we necessarily leave out of account. There remains, therefore, of all the con- ceptions through which we think of a pure intelligence only those which are necessary to the possibility of a moral law : in other words, we have a knowledge of God solely from a prac- tical point of view. If, on the other hand, we attempt to go beyond this, or to enlarge it to a theoretical knowledge of God, how must we think of Him ? "We must attribute to Him an understanding which does not merely think but perceive, and a will which is directed to objects on the existence of which its satisfaction is not at all dependent, (not to mention such transcendental predicates as that His existence must have a quantity, i.e., a duration, which yet is not in time, though time is the sole means whereby we can represent existence as a quantity). Now, of these attributes we can form no conception which can give us real knowledge, of the object, or enable us theoretically to explain the existence of supersensuous beings, but only such a conception as is sufficient for practical pur- * 1 R. VIII. 279 ; H. V. 141. 300 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. poses." J We are thus obliged to content ourselves " with the conception of a relation of understanding to will which the practical law determines a priori, and to which the same prac- tical law secures objective reality." 2 This, however, is sufficient to enable us to determine God, as an allwise, allgood, all- powerful Being, and so to mediate a transition from the finite world to the infinite; whereas theoretical reason, even if it could be permitted to ascend from the finite world to its first cause, could never authorise us to attribute to that cause more than is given in the effect. We postulate God as that which we require him to be, just as we postulate freedom and immor- tality ; so that " the righteous man may say: I will that there should be a God ; I will that, though in this natural world, I should not be of it, but should also belong to a purely in- telligible world ; finally, I will that my duration should be endless. I insist upon this, and will not let this conviction be taken from me." s Yet this is not a case in which a mere subjective wish deludes us into the assumption of the existence of its object. It is the one case where the " I will that a thing shall be " is equivalent to the assertion that " it is." " It is the sole case in which my interest, because I have no right to surrender or limit it, inevitably determines my judgment." * There is, therefore, no force in the criticism of Wizenmann, who compared this conviction to the dream of a lover, who be- lieves in the objective reality of an idea of beauty existing nowhere except in his own head. " I entirely concur with him in all cases where the feeling of want is due to mere in- clination or natural desire. Such a want cannot postulate the existence of the object wanted even for him who feels it; much less can it be the ground of a demand or postulate which is universal. In this case, however, we have a want of Reason, springing not from the subjective ground of our wishes, but from an objective motive of the will, which binds every rational being, 1 R. VIII. 280; H. V. 143. 2 R. VIII. 282; H. V. 144. 3 R. VIII. 289 ; H. V. 149. * 7a. CHAP. v. THE SUMMCTM BONUM. 301 and hence authorises him a priori to presuppose the existence in nature of the conditions necessary for its satisfaction." * In the above statement we have followed Kant very closely ; Principle on •> * ' winch Kant's we have now to consider what must be said in the way of fum°Lm e .,• . Bonum will be Criticism. criticised. In the first place, then, we have to observe that Kant's doctrine of the Summum Bonum marks the farthest point which he reaches in a positive determination of the moral life, the farthest point to which he conceives himself entitled to go consistently with the negative conception of its principle with which he starts. Here, therefore, we are called upon espeeially to press the question which we have had so often to consider, viz., whether consistently with Kant's starting point he is entitled to go so far as he does, and whether, if he goes so far, he is not logically obliged to go further. In this point of view, it is important to observe how he deals ™ama le staai[d with the question of the connexion of virtue and happiness, whylusnot To him there are only two alternatives: either that happiness and goodness should be so related that by logical analysis of the one we can at once find the other ; or that they should be com- bined by an external synthesis as two things which are not essentially connected, but which are brought together by means of some third thing that mediates between them. In other words, he puts before us the alternatives of a movement of thought by external synthesis and a movement by bare iden- tity. Now, it has been part of our general criticism of Kant to maintain that this opposition involves a separation of two phases of thought which cannot logically be separated : that, in fact, thought is always synthetic, but never purely external in its synthesis. And here, as elsewhere, we can show that Kant himself is pointing towards the very principle by which the defects of his philosophy may be corrected, and even may be said to have been the discoverer of that principle. For, as in the theoretical sphere, the identity of thought, though conceived 1 R. VIII. 290 note; H. V. 149. 302 KANT'S ETHICAL WOKKS, book II. as purely analytic, yet showed itself as a principle of unity in the manifold of sense, and ultimately as the source of an ideal of knowledge not realised in experience ; so here, in the practical sphere, the moral law, though represented as formal and subjective, becomes the source of an idea of objective Good, the realisation of which involves the synthetic unity of goodness and happiness. What Kant at first put as it were on one side, thus over-reaches, and brings under it, the side opposed to it ; and what he at first regarded as an external synthesis, which, therefore, requires a tertium quid to make it possible, is now seen- to need nothing for its mediation except that which can be derived from one of the elements to be connected. Of course, the endeavour to extract this view from Kant is em- barrassed by the fixity of the distinctions with which he at first started. But it is no less true that he has practically surrendered the merely formal and analytic conception of the law, when he makes it a ground for the assertion of an objec- tive Good, which not only must be capable of realisation, but even, we may say, must already be realised. Theprajrosw! Kant, as we have seen, takes a double view of the Summum ad infinitum extiaMna'" Bonum; as the chief Good which is realised in the determination of will even if it should produce no outward result, or as the perfect Good which includes such a result. This distinction forces him to deal with the problem of the realisation of the good in two ways. In the former sense, the moral conscious- ness is supposed directly and immediately to carry with it the possibility of its realisation in the inner experience of the in- dividual, i.e., of the complete harmonising of the feelings and desires of the empirical subject with it. And this realisation of the moral Good in the individual, because of the inherent opposition of the two terms brought together, can be conceived to be attained only by a progressus ad infinitum. On the other hand, in relation to the combination of happiness in due proportion with goodness, the moral principle enables us to postulate not only the possible but the actual realisation of the chap. v. THE SUMMTJM BOOTM. 303 end ; but, because here we have to go beyond the self-determina- tion of the individual, it enables us to make this postulate only indirectly, by means of the idea of God. Now, these two postulates illustrate two different, but equally Fallacy a J involvedin the imperfect, methods of solving the difficulties caused by dualism, f^Em ""* the progressus ad infinitum and the Deus ex machina. Of the former idea we may remark that it is the very negation of that attainment of the moral end which it is regarded as expressing. If passion, as passion, is essentially at variance with the law of reason, so that a progressus ad infinitum requires to be resorted to as the only way of realising the latter in the former, that means that the realisation can never be attained ; for infinite time is not enough for an impossible task. But it means also that the task cannot even be begun ; for not a single step can be taken towards the reconciliation of absolute opposites. If, on the other hand, there is no such essential opposition, the progressus ad infinitum is unnecessary. Nor does it help to say, with Kant, that God sees the infinite series as a unity, and that for Him, therefore, endless progress is equivalent to the attainment of the end. For this is at once to assert and to deny the conditions of time ; it is to say not only that what for God is eternity is for us endless time, but that in an actual ex- perience we have to traverse that time in order to realise the moral law in ourselves. But this would involve both that time is, and that it is not a mere form of our perception. For if it is such a mere form, then what Kant should say is that, though we can represent the realisation of morality in ourselves only as an endless progress, yet, for God, i.e., in reality, it is (eternally) realised in everyone who wills its realisation. But, if we put it in this way immortality ceases to be a postulate of reason, except as the way in which we are obliged to represent some- thing which we cannot properly think, viz., the eternal realisa- The postulate tion of goodness in the will of the rational being who determines solve the esnt " difficulty, un- himself according to the law of reason. less it betakes ° in another . The other postulate entangles us in equal difficulties : for St adSts 304 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. while, according to Kant, the realisation of the moral law is completely attained in the character of a rational being whose will is directed to its fulfilment, without reference to the attainment of any external result, and hence without happiness, it is yet conceived as desert of happiness. And from this arises a necessity for a God, as a deus ex machina, to realise the combination of the two terms, virtue and happiness, which are indifferent to each other, — a combination which, therefore, must be merely external. Here again we seem to be between the horns of a dilemma ; for, if the Good as the end which moral action is to realise, lies merely in the inner act of will, then all that is necessary for its realisation is that the indi- vidual should act virtuously and have a character confirmed in virtue, and not that he should also attain a corresponding happiness. If, on the other hand, the realisation of the Good is to be taken as involving the production of an outward order of things in which happiness goes with goodness, then the principle that obligation implies possibility, or that " I can because I ought," seems to involve that the individual by his will can produce such an order, and not merely that he has a right to postulate God as a power that produces it. 1 What ^n the Critique of Pure Reason (A. 809; B. 837) Kant says: — "In thinking of an intelligible world, i.e., of the moral world, in which we abstract from all the hindrances to morality, it is allowable for us to regard as necessary the systematic combination of happiness in due proportion with goodness. For in such a world, freedom, as partly impelled and partly restrained by the moral law, would of itself be the cause of universal happiness ; and therefore rational beings, under the guidance of such principles, would themselves be the authors of their own permanent happiness, and at the same time of that of others. But this system of self-rewarding morality is only an Idea, the realisa- tion of which is dependent on every one doing what he ought to do, i.e., on all the actions of rational beings being so performed, as if they sprang from one supreme will, which comprehended in itself or under itself all private wills. As, however, the obligation of the moral law continues binding upon every one in every use of his freedom, even though others do not conform to that law, it is obvious that neither the nature of things in this world, nor the causality of the actions themselves and their relation to morality, can determine in what relation the consequences of these actions will stand to happiness. If, there- fore, we take our stand upon mere nature, it is impossible rationally to estab- lish a necessary connexion between the hope of happiness and the persistent chap. V. THE SUMMUM BONTJM. 305 Kant's postulate really involves, however, is that the moral consciousness has a " Primacy " over the theoretical conscious- ness, in a higher sense than he admits. For, as was shown in a former chapter, the moral consciousness is the consciousness of the self for which all objects are, as containing in itself a principle for the determination of itself as an object, and of other objects through itself. And this means that it is a con- sciousness of God, the prius of all existence, the unity to which all things and beings are referred, as revealed in the conscious- ness of self. For, if all objects are referred to the self, then in the self-conscious being the world of objects may be said to come to self-consciousness. Hence, such a being necessarily regards its own objective existence, in distinction from other forms of such existence, as an organ by which the one principle of life, which is working in all things and beings, comes to expression. In so far, therefore, as man is determined by the law of his own being, he is not determined by a merely sub- jective principle, which other things and beings may resist on equal terms, in virtue of the subjective principle of their existence. Bather, he is determined by a principle of freedom, endeavour to make ourselves worthy of it. We can cherish such a hope based on such a foundation, only if we presuppose that a highest Reason, which rules according to moral laws, is at the same time the cause of nature." There are two things which prevent Kant from admitting that moral action can realise the complete good : first, the division between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of freedom ; and, secondly, the isolation of each rational being in his moral life from all his fellows. The former, even if all men were morally good, would prevent him from concluding that all men must necessarily be happy. But, if this difficulty were got over, and it were allowed that universal goodness would lead to the establishment of a system in which happiness was joined with goodness in perfect proportion, the latter would still hinder him from conceiving the establishment of such a system as within the reach of the individual ; for it would hinder him from admitting that there is any necessary connexion between the goodness of one individual and that of other individuals. Thus, even if the difficulty arising from the dualistic oppo- sition of the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds were removed, still the Individualism of Kant would not allow him to entertain any conception of the Good as realised in a systematic or organic way in the life of man. As we have already seen, Kant wants the idea of the social nature of morality, or brings it in only in the form of conception of a "possible, kingdom of ends." U 306 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. which underlies all the necessity of nature, and which, there- fore, nature cannot resist. Man is a microcosm, in which the world first shows its meaning or returns to its principle ; and, therefore, the world is to be regarded only as the means which that principle has prepared for the manifestation of itself. The world cannot resist him if he is true to himself ; for, in being true to himself, he is true to it. This is the secret of the religious certitude, the absolute faith in which the moral con- sciousness culminates. It is the consciousness that that which " ought to be " rests on a deeper " is," than that which " ought not to be." The faith in the infinite power of goodness is a faith which springs up in the mind of the good man naturally and spontaneously ; because it is simply an intuitive anticipation of the truth that in the moral self-consciousness an ideal is revealed, which is not only our ideal but the principle to which the reality of our own and of all existence must be referred. the SU ortuiate ? Kant's two postulates of immortality and God can, therefore, £™mto be regarded as valid, only if we take them as pointing to a kind on our limits of synthetic unity between the two terms opposed which he is rather than on onabils'us'to never awe IuU y to admit or to state, because to do so he would them?™" 1 need to have cast himself loose from his dualistic starting point. The first postulate takes its peculiar form as a progressus ad infinitum from the abstract way in which the passions are conceived, as elements united with our consciousness of self and yet not determined by it. But on the defectiveness of this view enough has already been said. Kant speaks as if in man the natural movement of impulse still remained what it is in a being not self-conscious. He holds, indeed, that in such a subject it is further characterised by distinction from the law of the self, but that otherwise it remains a mere indifferent material which is determined as bad or good according as it is, or is not, subsumed under the moral law. But, as we have seen, an impulse cannot become my impulse, and therefore can- not acquire any moral character, unless it takes the form of what chap. v. the SUMMUM BOXTJM. 307 Aristotle called fiovXrja-is, that is, of desire or will of the Good as an end with which the self is identified : and if it has taken this form, its particular matter cannot be essentially incapable of assimilation, and even of perfect assimilation, by the self. For if the will, as a will for the realisation of the self, is present in all the particular desires, the opposition of passion and reason must be explained as a merely relative opposition which arises at a particular stage in the development of the moral con- sciousness. Even at such a stage, it never actually takes the abstract form which it is has in the Stoical and Kantian theories. 1 The moral life, therefore, can never have the form of a movement towards an external end, such that all the previous stages of it should have value only in reference to that end. Even the life of an animal cannot be conceived in that way, as Kant himself showed ; 2 for it is a continual self-production or self-reproduction, and therefore a continual realisation, as well as a means to the further realisation, of itself as an end. Hence, it has at every stage a reference to what is past and what is future: it may even be said in every stage to contain the past and be pregnant with the future, and therefore to have a value which is not measured by time. Still less can we separate any end attained in human life from the process of its attainment and the possibility of further progress. Yet, although the value of one stage in our life cannot be estimated apart from its relation to the other stages, the particular stage must not, on this account, be regarded as merely making a contribution to an aggregate which is valuable only as "summed up" in a whole, or a step to an end which is outside of the process towards the attainment of it. On the contrary, just through this relation to the whole, it is in a sense complete in itself. The throb of re- ligious emotion in the humblest breast has, as Hegel has said, nothing less than an infinite value ; because it is, and in so far as it is the gathering up into one consciousness of the whole 1 See albove, p. 238 seq. 2 In the Critique of Judgment. 308 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. bookh. meaning of life. 1 The moral force which at supreme moments of life seems sometimes to give a man the command of himself, of others, and of circumstances, needs nothing to be added to it to give it a supreme ethical value ; for it is the concentrated expression of that principle which alone gives value to any- thing. If, however, we have a right to say that, though that principle is bound up with our very consciousness of self, yet no time can fully exhaust or realise all that is contained in it ; and if, further, we are entitled to base on this an argument for immortality — because " man is immortal till his work is done," and it never can be done, — we must shape this argument in a way which is the very reverse of Kant's. We must not infer that we shall live for ever because there is an irreduc- ible surd in the passions, which it will take endless time to eliminate ; but because the principle of morality is universal and therefore contains in it an exhaustless spring of life. Kant conceives the moral end as the goal of a perfect harmony of desire and duty, which cannot be attained, because its attain- ment would be the union of elements which he defines at the outset as essentially different, and the difference of which constitutes our finitude : so that the end, if attained, would be the annihilation of finitude and humanity. But, while it is impossible to annihilate the difference of the particular from the universal, because each disappears with the disappearance of its distinction from the other, it is, owing to that very rela- tion, true that the attainment of any goal of the moral life is at once an end and a new beginning. The Scripture metaphor of a well of water " springing up to everlasting life " is nearer to the truth than any conception of the moral ideal as a goal to be attained, and in the attainment of which we should find a final satisfaction. And the faith of immortality which arises in connexion with the moral life must be a consciousness of the infinite possibilities that are contained in the very principle of that life as it is already present in the moral subject, and Kegel's Werlce, IX. 46. chap. v. THE SUMMTJM BONUM. 309 not, as Kant makes it, a feeling of the defect that separates us from the attainment of the moral ideal. Kant, in fact, attri- butes the belief in immortality to exactly that aspect or element of the moral life to which it cannot be attached, — to the consciousness of our weakness and imperfection in face of the demands of the moral law ; and not to the consciousness of a principle withinus, which reaches beyond all such weak- ness and imperfection and is the earnest, and even in a sense the realisation, of triumph over it. But, if it is only in the consciousness of a power with which we as self-conscious beings are identified, and which in us as well as without us is working towards the absolute Good, that we can find a valid basis for the belief in immortality, we have at the same time to remem- ber that such a consciousness is primarily rather a consciousness of what we have already attained, than of what lies before us. To connect the idea of immortality with the consciousness that we have not attained, still more with the consciousness that we cannot attain, that which yet is our end, is to treat the reason for unbelief as if it were the reason for belief. 1 The criticism of Kant's view of the Summum Bonum, in the in supporting the postulate second of the two senses which he distinguishes, cannot be com- of ? oi ■?? ° externalises pleted till we have considered the attempt which he makes to den^ngttfat mediate between religion and morality, in his treatise on to God simply as moral Religion within the Bounds of mere Reason. Here we need only bein g s - observe that God is brought in only to mediate the connexion of happiness with goodness, and not to explain the development of goodness itself. If such a view be taken, it is difficult to regard religion as other than an external and somewhat precari- 1 No doubt, it might fairly be said, that what Kant rests upon is the belief that we must be able to attain, and that the fact that we cannot attain is not the basis of our belief in immortality, but merely limits it to the form of a progressus ad infinitum. But, if we look at it in this way, we must rather say that it is because we are limited to the forms of sense in representing anything to ourselves, that we are obliged to represent the realisation of morality as such a progressus. And thus the belief in immortality will be reduced to a faith in something which we can represent only as immortality, but which is no*t adequately or truly so represented. 310 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. ous support to morality. At any rate, religion cannot in consis- tency with this view be regarded as the essential spring of man's inner life ; for, in that life, man is conceived to be alone with himself and the moral law, to the exclusion of all extraneous influence even of God. To admit religion into the primary place would, as Kant thinks, be to mix a dubious alloy with man's moral life, which must be one of pure self-determination. In one place 1 Kant discusses the consistency of man's relation to God as his Creator with his freedom as a moral agent ; and argues that God cannot be viewed as the Creator of phe- nomena, but only of things in themselves, and that he cannot, therefore, be supposed to cause the actions of men as phe- nomena in the world of sense. This answer is so far ad- missible as it rejects the application of the category of cause to the relation of God, as Creator, to His creatures. But with the exclusion of this category as expressing the relation in question Kant stops ; nor does he attempt to trace any positive relation between the consciousness of God and the consciousness of self as under the moral law. God, therefore, appears only as the executor of that law, who connects rewards or punishments with obedience or disobedience to it. But, as has been already indicated, the consciousness of the possibility of the realisation of the law, whether within or without us, cannot exist except in so far as we discern that all that appears to resist our moral life is necessarily subordinated to it, because we are rational beings in a world, which in its ultimate reality must be regarded as the manifestation of reason. Such a con- sciousness might find its appropriate expression in Kant's " I can because I ought." "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, But morality " . is directly con- Ho near 18 (Jrod to man, ?eiig!on7 U n- When duty whispers low, ' Thou must,' be S reducedto r The y0Uth re P lies . ' * oan -' " the pursuit of which has no But this " * can because I ought " must be taken as involv- necessary reality. 1 E. VIII. 234; H. IV. 107. chap. v. the SUMMUM BONUM. 311 ing a negation of the resistance without as well as within us, which reduces it to something "phenomenal," i.e., to some- thing which exists only as a factor in that very life which it seems to oppose. It is the expression of the consciousness that " morality is the nature of things," the ultimate reality even of sense and matter. And this, on the other side, means that the consciousness of self involves the consciousness of God. The consciousness of right is the consciousness of might, in so far as it is the consciousness of unity with the absolute prin- ciple, to which all things are to be referred, even those that seem to resist it ; and in this view, it matters not whether the hindrances to the realisation of the good are outward or inward : they exist only to be overcome. Or, looking at the matter from another side, they are hindrances only in so far as the principle, which they resist, is taken in too abstract a way, and has not yet developed its full meaning. At the same time, we are to observe that the consciousness of the universality of the principle, and hence of its being capable of overcoming all resistance, and turning all resistance into a means of its own manifestation, is not dependent on the full development of its meaning. It is thus only that we can explain how the religious should arise out of the moral consciousness, i.e., that the con- sciousness of the moral ideal as at the same time the absolute reality, should exist even when the moral ideal is itself very imperfectly developed. That " the Eational is the Eeal," that the practical consciousness which sets before us the good as that which ought to be, is at the same time a manifestation of that which is, is a conviction which may be felt in its utmost strength while as yet our ideas of what is rational and good are far from adequate : just as we may be able to see that existence is necessarily existence for a self, while yet we are unable to work out in detail an idealistic view of the world, in W hat sense Hence, we can iustifv the power of religious faith over the admitted that ' ° " x ^ we nave only minds of men, under the most imperfect forms of religion. know^geof Kant draws a wide distinction between faith and know- reality.™ 3, e 312 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K "• ledge ; for faith in his view is essentially a consciousness, the object of which is present to us as a general idea that does not admit of being particularised, or represented as a fact under conditions of space and time. Now, there is a sense in which we can accept this distinction, and a sense in which we cannot. We cannot treat this ultimate universal as if it were one par- ticular among all the other particulars which it conditions. We cannot, therefore, have it for our object at all, if we take objects in the way in which science takes them, as external to each other and indifferent to the self for which they are ; for it is just with the correction of this abstract way of looking at things that the ultimate universal comes into view as presup- posed in the particulars. But again, when the universal prin- ciple is thus brought into view, it appears as a principle, which not only qualifies and determines the particulars known, but reaches beyond them, and makes us regard them as elements in a system which they imperfectly represent to us. Hence, our knowledge of the universal, and of the particulars in relation to it, is always accompanied by a consciousness of defect, which we may express by saying that it is the object of a rational faith and not of knowledge. But we need not interpret this as Kant does, as if faith were less than knowledge. If we con- fine the name of knowledge to our consciousness of objects as particulars, and of their relations as in time and space, without reference to the conscious subject for which they are, such a faith is more than such knowledge. But, in so far as this faith has for its object a principle which, though present in all the particulars, is not exhausted by them ; and in so far as that prin- ciple enables us, as it were, to describe the outline of a circle within which all things must fall, but which for us is filled up only to a limited extent, we are obliged to admit that it cannot be verified, as a definite scientific law can be verified. For a scientific law is a hypothetical judgment, in which we abstract from all but definite conditions ; whereas the principle of which we are speaking is a universal principle, in asserting which we -chap. v. THE SUMMUM BONUM. 313 ■do not abstract from anything. In expressing the faith of reason, we are laying down propositions as to the totality of things, and this we can do only in so far as we apprehend in its universality the principle to which that totality is related. Now, the moral consciousness sets before us as the motive of ^ s ^ h o£ •action the realisation of a kingdom of ends — a world in har- mony with the principle of self-consciousness. But that realisation would be an impossibility, if the world in which this kingdom is to be realised, were not already determined as phenomenal, in the sense of not having an existence which is independent of the principle of self-consciousness. Out of the combination of these two thoughts we get the idea that the moral consciousness sets before us, as an end to be realised in the world, that very principle through which the world exists. But, in opposition to that principle, the world can be regarded only as a phenomenal appearance, and can, therefore, be conceived ■only as making such resistance as is necessary for the develop- ment of the principle which is resisted. The faith that the moral ideal will be realised is thus one with the faith in it as the abso- lute reality. It ought to be realised, because it can be realised, and even because, in a sense, it is realised already, at least for one who can discern the deepest meaning of the facts before him. In this last movement of Idealism, however, Kant refuses to fol- low it ; for, by him, the antagonism of universal and particular is stated in such a way as to involve, not merely that in our particular experience there is never a final realisation of the universal, but in the sense that in it there cannot be a realisa- tion of the universal at all, i.e., not merely that there is a continually reproduced opposition between the universal and the particular in which it realises itself, but that the universal is a principle to which the particulars are externally referred, to which, therefore, they can never become adequate — if it is even allowable for us to regard them as an inadequate realisation , of it. Now, this gulf is fixed between the universal and the particular by Kant's imperfect view of the universal, which for 314 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. him has no contents. Yet, even while he so conceived it, he was obliged by the very nature of the universal to postulate the possibility of transcending the division he had made ; for the universal would not be universal, if it did not transcend its own distinction from the particular. He is obliged, in other words, to find room for the universality of the principle, in spite of the fact that he had conceived it in a way which does not correspond to its character as universal. But, if we take from his theory the idea of an irreconcilable opposition of particular and universal, and substitute for it the conception of the universal as synthetic, no objection can be taken to the definition of the religious consciousness as a faith of reason ; the Summum Bonum is never realised as a matter of sight, just because it always is realising itself. It is an object, we may say, not of sight, but of insight, and therefore of faith. 315 CHAPTEE VI. APPLIED ETHICS : THE PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. rpHE application of the moral idea to the legal and ethical f™^*^, relations of men, is for Kant encompassed with many difficulties, owing to the abstract way in which those principles are conceived by him. Yet it is at the same time a test of his intellectual sincerity and comprehensive insight, which force him to make room at any cost for the facts of the moral life, and to advance to what is really a new point of view, in order to find principles that will embrace and explain them. In no part of Kant's work, therefore, can we more manifestly see at once the defects of his professed theory, that is, of the theory with which he starts, and the anticipative insight by which he already suggests a theory better than his own. We have already seen how it was that Kant was led to fix His Dualism J and his and deepen the antagonism between nature and spirit, and how trSen'dit. at the same time, he was forced, almost in spite of himself, to point to their reconciliation as the necessary terminus ad quern both of man's life and of the life of the world. The absolute antagonism of spirit to nature seemed to him inevitable ; because the subject becomes conscious of itself only in opposition to the object, and because the judgment of self-consciousness is an analytic judgment, in direct contrast with the synthetic judgments of knowledge. Hence, even in the theoretic con- sciousness, the actuality of knowledge is asymptotically related 316 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. to the ideal suggested by self- consciousness, and experience vainly reaches after a completeness which, from its essential conditions, it cannot attain. In the practical consciousness the parts are inverted : self-consciousness becomes prior to the consciousness of objects, and the ideal which it brings with it takes the place of the absolute reality to which the phenomenal must in some way accommodate itself. The moral law is, therefore, conceived as pointing, not to an wwattainable ideal, but to that which can be, and so, in a sense, to that which must be, because it ought to be. We find, indeed, that we cannot schematise or represent as realised in the phenomenal that which the law forces us to think as realised, but this in- adequacy, while it reduces our belief in the realisation of the law into the form of a postulate, does not make it less certain. A faith of reason is not knowledge, but in a sense it is some- thing more ; for knowledge is of phenomena, while the faith though inadequate in form, yet grasps the noumenon or abso- lute reality. We know only the shadows of our cave, but in the light of the moral law we see, though as it were in distant outline, the real nature of the world and of ourselves. how far do Thus, by means of his Postulates, Kant, as it were, over- the Postulates •> ' ' thSdirloUon? reaches and reconciles the antagonism, which, as he stated it at first, seemed to be irreconcilable. The law, which by its abstractness had been emptied of meaning, was re-filled by the use of the phenomenal world (under a law of nature identical with the moral law) as a type of its realisation ; and the two postulates of immortality and God were brought in to make intelligible the subordination of passion to reason within, and of nature to spirit without. Thus, within us, the moral law at first presents itself as the negative or opposite of passion, and so as competing with passion for the rule of our lives, which it can secure only as it drives out passion. Yet, on the other hand, that law has no contents except through the passion, to which it opposes itself, and it can be realised only if it absolutely subjugates passion and turns it into an instru- CHAP. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 317 ment of its own manifestation. Caught between these two opposite tendencies of thought, Kant escapes absolute self- contradiction by placing the law in the foreground with its abstract command, which we obey with the conviction that its realisation is possible, though this realisation can be represented by us only as an infinite series of approximations to an un- attainable end. Again, when we look without us, the law forces us to abstract from all objects of desire, and hence from happiness as an end ; and no connexion can be traced between the conformity of the individual in his desires and feelings to the moral law, and the conformity of the outer conditions of life with these desires and feelings ; i.e., between goodness and happiness. Yet, inasmuch as the consciousness of self, (from which the moral law has its origin,) is, after all, the conscious- ness of the principle of unity to which the objective world is referred, the conformity of our actions to the moral law must be at the same time their conformity to the law of the universe, and the unity of man with himself in his self-deter- mination must be at the same time the harmony of the world with his desires. The consciousness, therefore, that the moral law is an absolute law that binds us as noumena carries with it the sense that all things " work together for good " to those that obey it ; and the postulate of God (the almighty Law-giver who binds happiness to goodness) is, for Kant, the necessary form of the conviction that the ideal, which appears at first as negative relatively to that which is phenomenally real, is, after all, the reality of which the phenomenal is only the appear- ance. In applied Ethics, upon which we are now entering, the »«» g of same difficulties appear in a slightly different shape. The |^Pf ed moral law is not merely the object of a theoretical conscious- ness, whether of knowledge or of faith. The consciousness of it is not merely the knowledge or belief that something is realised or realisable, but a consciousness that we are impera- tively called upon, that " necessity is laid upon us," to realise 318 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. it. We must seek to mould, and we must be able to mould, the nature within us and the nature without us into conformity with the law of reason ; and the postulates of immortality and of God come in only in the second place, to assure us of the direct possibility of the former, and the indirect possibility of the latter. How, then, are we to conceive of the process in which inner and outer nature are made the means of the realisa- tion of man's moral life ? H r°biems of ^- an * s a self-conscious subject, and yet a particular object an3™^T ce in the world ; and the problem of his life is to determine himself differ. as a particular object in all his relations to other subjects who, like himself, are particular objects ; and also, so far as may be, to determine them in their relations to him, in conformity with the universal law of reason, which springs from their common nature as subjects. We may add, as a subordinate point, that it is his duty to determine the outward world in such a way as to make it the fitting medium of the relations of self-con- scious beings to each other, in conformity with the law that binds them all as rational or self-conscious. In short, man has to conform his particular to his universal nature ; and this in- volves the double task of establishing within himself a harmony of the particular desires to reason, and of conforming his rela- tions as one individual with other individuals, to the same reason regarded as a principle of social unity. Or, more simply, he has to bring himself as an animal into harmony with himself as a rational being, and in doing so he has to work out, so far as lies in him, the harmony of all beings and things with each other under the principle of reason. Kant expresses this by saying that man is presented to himself in two ways, in outer and inner sense, and that his acts, therefore, have a twofold aspect, as external manifestations of his will, and as determina- tions of his will by motives. In the former aspect, he is brought into relation to outward things and to other beings like himself, while in the latter he is, at least primarily, alone with himself. In the former aspect his acts are considered by chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 319 Law, in the latter by Morals. Not, indeed, that morality excludes the consideration of actions as outward facts, but it views them in relation to their motives, with which law does not concern itself. In truth, here as always inner sense implies outer sense ; for it is only a reflexion by which we go beyond the immediate consideration of the action to consider its motive. Hence, morality presupposes law ; though it is also true that, in another point of view, it is prior to law, in so far as it dis- closes the principle on which law rests. In beginning with Jurisprudence and proceeding to Morals, Kant is, therefore, proceeding from the abstract to the concrete, (though it is true that his abstract way of opposing outer and inner, as if they were two independent forms of experience, is apt to hide this from us, and may be said sometimes even to have hid it from himself). We are able to consider acts as external expressions of the will of rational beings, and to determine when they are conformable to reason, without asking any question as to the motives of these acts ; but the opposite abstraction of motives from the acts they determine is illegitimate and misleading. Hence, the application of the moral principle properly begins with Jurisprudence, or the doctrine of Law. Now, the doctrine of Law, as has already been indicated, Law as u, correlative presupposes the existence of conscious or rational subjects as „l ^Steand™ particular beings in an outward world. As existing in such a world, our acts are not mere determinations of ourselves, but may affect the outer existence of others, who are also self- conscious beings. Hence, in our action we are limited by the moral law which calls upon us to treat all self-conscious beings as ends, and never merely as means. Out of this law, as applied to beings existing in one outward world, there arises a seeming contradiction. For, as such beings, self-conscious subjects have a particular existence which is limited by the particular existence of others ; while, as being each of them an end in himself, they are not capable of being so limited. Hence, the great problem of Jurisprudence is to keep self- 320 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II- conscious beings from collision with each other, to secure that each should exercise his freedom in a way that is consistent with the freedom of all the others, who are equally to be re- garded as ends in themselves. And this, again, is impossible unless the self-conscious being by his own action imposes- upon himself the limit as regards others, which he is required to respect. For the freedom of a subject disappears, if he is- limited by any one but himself. The possibility of such self- limitation becomes visible, when we consider that for the rational being to act in conformity with his nature is for him to act on a maxim which he at the same time thinks as- universal law, and therefore as a law which binds himself as well as others. If, therefore, his act is such as to establish any special relation of others to himself, it must at the same time establish an identical relation of himself to others. If it is a claim of right against them, it must be at the same time a vindication of right in them as against him. For at every step,, the rational being is legislating at once for himself and for all others, and his freedom belongs to him just on condition that he does so legislate. In this sense " nur das Gesetz kann uns die Freiheit gehen." Our freedom is essentially self-limiting, as it is realised only in acts in which we give on the one side what- ever we take on the other ; and thus reciprocally determine our particular existence in relation to the existence of others, and their particular existence in relation to ourselves. ta^oiUdintbe " The idea of right, in so far as it implies an obligation right?' legal corresponding to it, has to do in the first place only with the external, and at the same time practical, relations of one person to another, in so far as their actions as facts can have influence (directly or indirectly) on each other. But, secondly, a right signifies the relation, not of the will of the one to the wishes of another, and so to his mere wants, (as in acts of philanthropy or the opposite,) but only to his will. Thirdly, in this recip- rocal relation of wills, what is taken into account is not the matter willed, i.e., the end which each has in view in the object CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 321 which he wills, .... but only the form of the relation of wills, regarded as on both sides a relation of freedom; and the question is only whether the act of the one can be brought into union with the freedom of the other according to a universal law. Legal right is, therefore, just the whole com- pass of the conditions on which the independent will of the one can be united with the independent will of another accord- ing to a universal law of freedom." 1 When it is said above that the great problem of law is " to Th e ide a °* » compulsion keep self-conscious beings in their acts from coming into Accordance collision with each other," and that such a collision is avoid- WIth freedDm - able so far only as their acts are in accordance with rules that can be universalised, it is implied that all acts of a self- conscious or rational subject which do not correspond with such rules — all acts in doing which he does not at the same time leave it open to all others to do the like — are self-contra- dictory, i.e., they are acts in which the agent is not in harmony with himself as a rational subject. They are acts which bring such subjects into collision with each other, because, being contradictory to the rational nature of the agents which they pretend to express, they are at variance also with the conditions on which these agents can live to- gether as free. Prom this it follows that it is in accord- ance with the law of freedom, that such acts should be restrained or annulled. Hence we get the idea of a com- pulsion which is not opposed to freedom, because it is the negation of a compulsion or violence done upon freedom. " When a certain use of freedom is a hindrance to freedom according to universal laws, the compulsion which is opposed to it, as the hindering of a hindrance to freedom, itself agrees with freedom according to universal laws." 2 andvosiuuty -.-r . -r . 1 , . .n .-. of compulsion Now, in Jurisprudence, we are content 11 the action, as being ewenti- allyconnected, an outward fact, agrees with the law, and we do not ask the so called ° equitable right whether the motive does so or not ; and, in like manner, ™ c d es r ^a°{ excluded from * i R. IX. 32 ; H. VII. 27. 2 R. IX. 34 ; H. VII. 28. Jurisprudence. VOL. II. X 322 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. if the act as an outward fact does not agree with the law, we are content that it should be outwardly annulled or counter- acted. It is, therefore, obvious that Jurisprudence, in the strict sense of the word, reaches so far as, and no farther than, the possibility of compulsion : or, in other words, that that alone is my right, in a strict legal sense, which it is possible that others should be compelled to respect ; and that that only is a wrong, in the strict legal sense, which can be annulled or done away with by an opposite act. " A right, in the strict sense of the word, is therefore an altogether external thing. It is grounded, it is true, on the consciousness of the obligation of each one according to the law ; but in order to determine the will accordingly, legal right is not authorised to appeal to that consciousness as a motive, but must base itself firmly on the principle of the possibility of an external compulsion which is consistent with the freedom of every one according to universal laws. When, therefore, it is said, that a creditor has the right of exacting payment from his debtor, this does not mean that he can put it to the conscience of the debtor that he ought to pay. It means that a compulsion to pay in such a case can be applied consistently with every one's freedom ; consistently, therefore, with the debtor's own freedom, according to a universal external law. Eight and claim to apply compulsion are therefore the same thing." J Hence, we can construct something like an a priori intuition corresponding to the principle of universal freedom by the aid of the analogy of the law of the equality of action and reaction between bodies in motion, i.e., we can bring it before ourselves in intuitive presentment, as a law of reciprocal compulsion, which agrees with every one's freedom. We can thus repre- sent a society of self-conscious individuals, who are also particular beings in space, as held apart from each ether in in- dependence by a reciprocal compulsion, which, so to speak, annuls by reaction any compulsion which any one of them i R. IX. 55 ; H. VII. 29. chap. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 323 may exert upon another. This close association of claim to compel with right, in Kant's view, excludes from the sphere of law two cases where the ideas are divorced ; the case of what is called equitable, right, and the case of what is called the right of necessity. An equitable right is a right which is not armed with a compulsory power, because the conditions are wanting which a judge would need in order to determine the amount and character of the satisfaction required. When the currency in which it is covenanted that a debt should be paid, has become depreciated in the interval between the covenant and the payment, the creditor may have an equitable claim to be reimbursed ; but it is impossible that a judge should enforce it, seeing the creditor has got that for which he bargained, and nothing was said in the contract of such a contingency. Sum- mum jus may in this case be summa injuria before the court of conscience, but it is an injuria that cannot be pleaded before a court of Law. In what is called the " right of necessity," we have the converse of this. It is sometimes alleged that an individual has a right to preserve his own life by sacrificing that of another, where one only can be saved, e.g., when two shipwrecked men are grasping at a plank which can support only one of them. But this is true only in the sense that the wrong thus done by the one to the other cannot be treated as a legal wrong, and that in this sense "necessity has no law." You cannot - punish the individual for sacrificing the other's life rather than his own, since your punishment could not outweigh the danger. But it is obvious that the act is not, therefore, to be regarded as guiltless ; for the " subjective im- possibility of punishment is not to be confused with an objec- tive agreement with the law." 1 Here, therefore, we have an unpunishable wrong, as in the former case we had a right which is incapable of being asserted. In both cases, the judge cannot have the conditions given him for decision in the case of the right which is in dispute, and, neither, therefore, can be 1 R. IX. 40 ; H. VII. 324 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. brought under the head of Jus in the strict sense of the word. frsfoTrigMs, What, then, is implied in Jurisprudence, in the strictest %lta™. acceptation of the term ? We start, as is already obvious, with freedom as the original or innate right upon which every acquired right is based. Freedom here means independence of compulsion by another will ; and, on the other hand, it implies that no limit shall be put upon the action of the one except by the similar freedom of another. Such freedom carries with it equality ; for one who is thus free cannot have an obligation laid upon him by others, except where he in turn can lay a similar obligation upon them ; while, on the other hand, he can act towards them in any way he pleases which does not exclude a similar liberty of action towards him on their part. persons ana ISTow, how does this freedom realise itself in the outward things. world ? what acquired rights can be built upon it ? and what limits does it impose on such acquisitions ? The answer to these questions must start from the principle, that it is only the freedom of one rational or self-conscious being which can limit the freedom of another. Eights are inherent in persons and not in things, which can be only the objects over which rights are established, but never the subjects to which they belong. The outward world cannot, speaking from the point of view of law, resist the will of a person : it is essentially a means, or a possible means, to that will. In the second place, rights are always in one person as against another, or against all others. They always imply reference of one will to another ; for right on one side is always obligation on the other. Finally, the relation between persons must always be reciprocal ; it can never justly be one in which all duties are on the one side and all rights on the other, as in the case of slavery, rndthewei Now, in working out our conception of the rights which are itateofnatme. f oun( ied on these principles, it is convenient to think of man as in an ideal state of nature, prior to the founding of any social CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 325 community. The actual state of nature, if we mean by that his first state, is indeed, a state of violence and wrong, in which no rights are respected, because there is no authority armed with force to compel respect for them. It is a state in which right does not realise itself ; for the realisation of right is not possible except by a reciprocal compulsion, by which each is confined to the acts that are consistent with the freedom of all the others ; and this reciprocal compulsion cannot be carried out except by a power which acts in the name of all. It is useful, however, in the first instance, to abstract from this process which makes right real, and look simply at the rights which it exists to realise ; and it is in this sense that we can properly speak of natural rights, or rights determined by the Jus Naturale, and of an ideal state of nature. The basis of all right is the freedom of the individual person, How the right of persons a freedom which makes him inviolable to other persons. But ^™ s ds 0Y01 ' this inviolable personality reveals itself in a physical existence, and in acts which establish relations between that existence and other external objects, especially acts by which these objects are submitted to his uses. Each personality may be regarded as expressing itself also in the objects into which he has put his will, and which thus have come to partake of his own inviolableness. In this way, liberty implies or gives rise to property, the ego and the tu to the distinction of meum and tuum. What is mine " is that with which I am so bound up that the use which another should make of it without my con- sent would be a wrong to me." 1 Each person is thus viewed as dominating by his personality a certain circle of material things, in such a way that to interfere with them is to interfere with him. Hence, such interference cannot be consistent with the freedom of each and all according to universal laws. Now, such a connexion of objects with my personality as F r °P^= as makes them " mine," in the sense just mentioned, is obviously °^?J° 1 R. IX. 51 ; H. VII. 43. 326 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK "- something different from physical possession. It is a kind of possession which attaches them to the me within the me, making them parts of our " intelligible " existence, and com- municating its sacredness to them. We may, therefore, call it "intelligible possession," to indicate that it is independent of actual physical contact. The thing that is mine in this sense, remains mine when I am not there to assert my claim ; because it is attached to me, not by a sensible, but by an ideal bond. Now, to say that he who interferes with a thing violates me, when I actually hold it in my physical possession, is a mere analytic judgment; but to say that he wrongs me who interferes with the thing, when I do not actually hold it, is a synthetic judgment, and indeed a synthetic judgment a priori. For in it the thing is claimed as mine to the exclusion of all other possessors, while at the same time abstraction is made of all the " conditions of empirical possession in time and space." And if we ask how this is possible, the answer is that in bringing the thing into relation to the ego as mine, I necessarily abstract from such conditions. My act, as the ex- pression of the will of a self-conscious being, establishes a relation between me and the object, which is independent of the immediate physical existence of either. For, if we denied the possibility of such a relation, then we should practically be denying the possibility of the personal will manifesting itself in act, so as to subject external objects to its uses. If it does so manifest itself, it must be able to establish an intelligible relation between the object as a permanent object and its own permanent personality, and so to give to a physical act a universal or ideal meaning : for only in this way can all other personal wills be excluded from the object. And as a " thing " cannot be a subject of rights, it follows that this per* Exciusivenes* manent relation can only be one by which it is made mine, or of private . property as appropriated to my use. based on an i 1 A Sitcom- 11 ' We are > taen » t0 conceive the external world as, in the first p^ssewtoi. instance, open to appropriation : i.e., we are to conceive it as a chap. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 327 common possession of the race, which, however, can only be realised by the personal appropriation of individuals. This does not mean that there was an original community of pro- perty ; it means that the common possession of the earth by all is the ideal presupposition of its appropriation by each ; seeing that each can establish a claim to a part of it, only in so far as he grants an equal liberty of others to establish an exclusive possession against him. The ideal community of possession can thus be realised, in the first instance, only by the exclusive appropriation of individuals ; and if an actual communism is in- troduced, it must be by means of a further step, in which each gives up his private right. In this way prior occupation must be regarded as establishing an exclusive right as against all who come after, so that they cannot interfere with the objects appropriated without injuring the person of the proprietor. We may, therefore, define right in a thing as the right to the private use of an object of which I am in common possession with all others ; for I exclude them from the use of the thing only in virtue of a common right in it which belongs to all as persons. So far we are speaking of the Jus in rem, the right of J ^ sin - rm - persons in things, a right which primarily refers to the soil as the basis of all other possessions. Such right is, it will be ob- served, the right of a person in a thing, not irrespective of other persons, but as exclusive of them : it is, in other words, a right to bind other persons to refrain from the use of a thing, which otherwise they would be free to use. It is a right the recogni- tion of which is necessary to prevent the wills of persons from coming into a collision which would imply that each was externally limited by the other and therefore not free. Such collisions are to be avoided if, and only so far as, each asserts the limiting right of all others in asserting his own, and excludes himself from their property at the same time that he claims his own. In this way, each individual, in virtue of his * freedom, is self-limited, and each manifests his freedom in acts 328 KANT'S ETHICAL WOEKS. . book II. which are consistent with the like freedom in all. Thus all collision of personal wills is excluded ; for the only limit of freedom admitted is the ideal limit, which is one with the freedom it limits. A real right is a right to which others are bound to assent even apart from civil society ; as it is based on a manifestation of the freedom of one that does not trench upon the freedom of others. But it does not necessarily imply the actual assent of others. It may be described as a " right against that moral personality which is nothing but the idea of the will of all as a priori in unity with each other." 1 It is different with personal rights : rights of one person to an object first possessed by another person, or to some service which that other can per- form for us. Here we have an extension of the mine, which necessarily implies the actual assent of another. Such a right cannot be acquired by my act, nor even by my act coupled with the neglect of another; but it implies a direct act of trans- fer of that which is primarily his, to me. Hence, " in every contract there are two preparatory and two constitutive acts of will." 2 There is the offer and expression of willingness to receive it, and again there is the promise and the acceptance of it. For an offer cannot turn into a promise, till it is known that the promisee is willing to accept it. These acts on each side are, of course, successive in time in their performance; but we are to remember that properly they must proceed from the united will of both parties in one moment ; or rather we should say that the relation is one in which abstraction is made of the conditions of time, as it is not the actual but the intelligible possession of the object which is transferred from the one to the other. By contract the right established is only a jus in personam not in rem, i.e., a right not as against all but as against one particular person, on whose causality or will we are entitled to work. It is thus a right to be set in possession of a thing by, or to exact some service from, another person ; but, i R. IX. 86 ; H. VII. 73. 2 E . IX . 83 . H y n 71 •chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 329 in the latter case, the service in question must be definitely limited in extent and character, otherwise the jus in personam would amount to slavery, and so become self-contradictory. For, though contract brings in the notion of a common will, and by this means allows the inviolable spheres of the separate personalities, so to speak, to touch each other ; yet this coin- -cidence is limited to things that are external, or special ser- vices which can be detached from the personality of the individuals who render them, and do not compromise their independence. It is, however, different when we come to a third set of rela- *%£ tions which Kant still includes as private right, relations which involve the very personality of the individuals concerned, and in which, therefore, a person becomes not only the subject but the object of a right. It is difficult to see how Kant could for ■a moment admit such a negation of his fundamental idea of personality as essentially independent and self-determined. The idea of a jus realiter personale, of a right over a person as if he were a thing, carries with it a confusion of the primary catego- ries of the Jus Privatum, the categories of " Person " and " Thing," which we can define only by their opposition to each other. But Kant has, at whatever cost, to make room for the relations of the family, and he reconciles himself to the necessity by the idea that, where the right of each person in the other as a thing is reciprocal, it is not inconsistent with the idea of freedom. On this we shall afterwards have to make some remarks. In marriage one individual acquires a kind of right over the JJf^ghte. °' person of another, which seems to contradict the right of humanity in his or her person. But we have here, as Kant holds, the one condition under which such a relation is possible, viz., that, while the one person is thus acquired by the other like a thing, that other person acquires a similar right over him in return; for so she again recovers herself and restores her *personality, which would otherwise be lost. Hence follows the 330 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book n. exclusion, as wrongful, of all kinds of polygamy or polyandry, as well as of irregular unions of all sorts. The relation of parents and children is another relation in which the usual independ- ence of persons is annulled ; though, in this case, apart from any special act of contract between the persons concerned. But, as the child is brought into the world without his own consent, a right is thereby given to him against his parents to be sup- ported and educated ; and, on the other hand, with this goes a right on the part of the parents to govern and direct the child while its powers are yet immature, in a way that would be otherwise a violation of the rights of persons. To this Kant, curiously yielding to old-fashioned usages, adds a right of the head of the household over his children, if they choose to remain as his servants after they have reached their majority ; and over other servants who may have covenanted to give him their services in the household. Kant points to the fact that such a householder is invested with the right to bring back his servants if they run away, but otherwise does not show any reason why the case should be distinguished from one of ordin- ary contract. The rational These are the main points in the determination of the Jus necessity of the state. Privatum which is also conceived by Kant as the Jus Naturale. It has, however, been already observed, that this Jus Naturale does not refer to any state of nature prior to the civil state, in which such rights and obligations as have been above described, are actually realised. On the contrary, Kant holds that it is "possible for persons to have outward, things as their pro- perty only in a civil society," 1 i.e., under a public authority with power to enforce the laws it enacts. "What is meant by speaking of rights and obligations as natural is, therefore, that these rights and obligations flow from that rational principle which is in every man, and which determines his relation to the others. In virtue of this principle, there is an " original community of possession " and this is the presupposition of all 'B. IX. 64; H. VII. 54. chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 331 private property, which means only a claim that others should withhold from the use of a thing which I have appropriated ; a claim which is balanced by concession of similar rights to them. But this merely ideal community gives no security that any individual will be allowed to enjoy the rights in question. In order that there may be such security, it must realise itself in an actual political power which renders each man's right effective at the same time that it limits it by reference to the right and freedom of others. Until such a power is established, each man is, even apart from any actual act of injustice, a standing men- ace to the rights and freedom of the rest, against which they are at liberty to protect themselves as best they can. " I am not bound to leave inviolate the property of another, if the others do not make me secure that they will refrain from mine on the same principle. And this reciprocal securing of each other's rights does not require a special legal act, but is involved already in the conception of an external legal obligation on account of the universality of that obligation ; for a universal obligation as such is reciprocal. Now, the one-sided will can- not be intrusted with a compulsory power which is to be exer- cised against every one alike ; for that would not be consistent with a freedom which is to be enjoyed under universal laws. Therefore, a will which binds every one equally, a collectively universal will armed with absolute power, is that which alone can give security to each and all. Now, the state of those who are under a universal external legislature armed with power, is the civil state. Hence, it is in the civil state alone that there can be an external mine and thine." 1 Till such a state is entered upon, rights of property are merely " provisional " ; it is in it alone that they become " peremptory." It has been already stated that, according to the Jus Naturale, violence is justified only to neutralise an opposite violence, to annul an act which is legally null, as being an exercise of freedom which does not consort with the freedom of all according to a uni- ♦ iR. IX. 64; H. VII. 54. 332 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK. II. versal law. But there is one exception which we may say " proves the rule." We have a right to compel others to aban- don the state of - nature and enter with us into that state in which alone there is security for right. For the state of anarchy is a state of potential violence to all ; and in view of it, any violence which is necessary to establish a civil society is a violence which counteracts violence, and so is consistent with freedom, contracts an Now, "the act whereby a people constitutes itself into a ' on ' State, or, we should properly say, that act the idea of which is presupposed in the State as rightfully constituted, is the original contract, by which all (omnes et singuli) members of the people give np their freedom, in order to take it up again as members of a commonwealth, i.e., of a people regarded as a State (universi). We are not therefore to say that man in the State has sacrificed a part of his innate external freedom to secure an end ; we are to say that he has surrendered the whole of his wild and lawless freedom in order to find it all again undiminished in a dependence regulated by law. For such dependence springs out of his own legislative will, and there- fore is one with freedom." 1 The social contract is no fact of history, but an Idea of rea- son, which is presupposed in the conception of a State as a right- ful institution, i.e., as an expression of the universal or rational nature of all men, which determines their rightful relations to each other. It is, in short, a way of expressing the fact that the State is founded, not on the enslavement of men to a foreign yoke, but on the subordination of the particular nature of individual men to their own self-legislative reason, and that it exists in order to the realisation of the latter in the former. The State is a means to free the individual from himself, as well as to protect him against the possibility of enslavement to others ; and only in so far as it discharges this function, does it correspond to its Idea. . But in Kant's view, it can discharge this 1 R. IX. 161 ; H. VII. 133. CHAf, VI. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 333 function only as the outward minister of justice which " forces men to be free," which uses its power to "hinder the hindrance of freedom " ; and it is going beyond its office if it attempts to do more. And, confined as it is to the outward acts of men, its excellence depends on the degree in which it realises the idea of a power springing from the people, who unite in order to govern themselves, and to exercise upon themselves their own justice. The process by which a people becomes a State is a process The social which is necessary to the realisation of justice, and therefore '"Jfi violence may be used to further it ; but, on the other hand, it involves an act upon which men can never rightfully go back, which they can never rightfully reconsider ; for to do so would be to outrage justice itself. Hence, if we call it a contract, we must add that it is a contract men are bound to make, which it is no outrage to force them to make, and which, when made, may never be broken, but constitutes an absolutely sacred and inviolable relation between them. A right of revolution, of breaking up the State to fashion it anew, would be the negation of all right. " The origin of the highest power is for the people, in a practical point of view, inscrutable,; i.e., the subject of a State ought not to raise subtle questions as to its origin, or treat its right to his obedience as a jus controversum which he is free to question. For, as the people, in order to have a rightful authority to judge the highest power in the State, (summum imperium) must be viewed as already united under a universal legislative will, it can and ought not to judge otherwise than as its present supreme governor (summus imperans) wills. To ask whether originally it was an actual contract which led to its subordination under that supreme power (pactum sitbjectionis civilis) or whether violence came first and law only followed after, is for a people which already stands under civil law an aimless question ; and yet it is one that may be fraught with danger to the State. For, if the subject who has found ♦historical proof that the latter of these hypotheses is the truth, 334 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book n. were to proceed on the ground of his discovery to resist the established authority, he would, according to its laws, and that means with perfect justice, be destroyed or expelled as an outlaw. Now, a law which is holy and inviolable, so that practically even to question it, or for a moment to suspend its execution, is already a crime, is usually represented as one which has come not from man, but. from some higher immacu- late lawgiver. And this is the force of the dictum that " all the powers that be are ordained of God," — which is not meant to express the historical basis of the civil constitution, but an Idea which is a practical principle of reason, that we ought to obey the existing legislative power, be its origin what it may." 1 The guiit of Kant thus so far agrees with Hobbes, that he regards the destroying the ° S^rigl'is institution of a State as the realisation of a universal will, in inexplicable. re j a ^ on t0 w hi c h Q ie w j]j f (jjg individual " has no rights, but only duties." However imperfect the form of the State, indi- viduals as such can never have a right to rebel against it ; for the social contract cannot contain a clause for its own abroga- tion, and to go back into the state of nature is to renounce the very principle of justice itself, a principle the maintenance of which cannot be weighed against any possible suffering from bad government. Eebellion, therefore, can never be just, and to consecrate the principle of rebellion by judging and executing the sovereign himself, as was done in the case of Charles I. and Louis XVI., is something far worse than simply to murder him. It is to bring justice into collision with its own idea, and to make transgression of the law a maxim of action. It is thus an " immortal and unexpiable guilt, like the sin against the Holy Ghost spoken of by theologians, which can be forgiven neither in this world nor the next." 2 Perhaps, however, we should say that such a making of evil itself into the maxim of his conduct is impossible to man ; and that such crimes were after all not intended, as they seemed to be, to strike at the 2 R. IX. 164 ; H. VII. 163. * R. IX. 168 ; H. VIT. 139. chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 335 very idea of sovereignty, — the idea of the State as a highest power lifted above the arbitrary will of the subjects as indi- viduals, — but were really precautionary measures against the vengeance of a particular sovereign ; i.e., that here, as in other cases of yielding to temptation, the transgression was thought of as an exception to the law, which in itself was reverenced by the transgressor and which he did not wish to abrogate. While Kant thus thinks of the highest power of the State as The ideal form " r of the State is sacred and inviolable, independently of the special form of the ^p^ente- 13 "* political society, and regards rebellion or revolution as abso- tlve ' lutely unauthorised, we must, on the other hand, observe first, that he holds the true or ideal form of the State to be Republican : and, secondly, that he declares it to be an obliga- tion incumbent upon the sovereign power gradually to bring the relations of the State into harmony with that ideal form of government. A State, indeed, even under the lowest form, is still a State ; it is an order in which a universal will is main- tained against the particular wills of the subjects; and it is an absolute duty to support this order and not to let society relapse into a state of nature. In one passage only Kant so far relaxes the rigour of his absolute prohibition of revolution, as to admit that this return to the state of nature may begin with the sovereign himself, who acts merely as an individual ; " for, if the question comes to be not one of right but of force, the people also might claim to use its own, even though they would thus destroy the stability of any constitution based on right." x But this is merely introduced in the course of an argument to show that governments should base their claims upon right, and not upon expediency. "While, however, Kant thus maintains the inviolable sanctity of the State order, he yet asserts that the Ideal State is one in which the supreme legis- lative power is exercised by the representatives of the people. In the way in which he reaches this result there is a curious iE. VII. 210: H. VI. 338 336 KANT'S ethical works. BOOK ii.. combination of Eousseau's idea of a social contract with the- semi-historical theories of Montesquieu. Kant starts with the conception of free, equal, and independent < citizens, each of whom is to be regarded not only as a subject, but as a ruler ; i.e., as under a law which he himself enacts, from this it would seem to follow that only the wills of all can constitute that universal will (volonU ginirah) to which each and all must submit. And so at first Kant states it. " The legislative- power can belong only to the united will of the people. For,. as from it all justice must proceed, it must by its law be incapable of doing wrong to any one. Now, if one has to lay down the law for another, it is possible that he should do injustice ; but it is not possible that anyone should do injustice in that which he determines for himself (since volenti non fit injuria). There- fore, only the agreeing and united will of all, in so far as each determines the same for all, and all for each, i.e., only the united will of the people, can institute legislation." 1 Kant, however, partly evades the natural meaning of this by two limitations. In the first place, he recognises a distinction of active and passive citizens — the latter including not only women and children, but also house servants and even day labourers,. i.e., all who sell their services and not their work ; for all these are regarded, as we said, as falling under a kind of tutelage (Jus realiter personate) of their employer. All these are, it appears, legitimately deprived of their votes, and treated as- potential and not actual citizens ; though they are never to be deprived of their natural freedom and equality, or brought under laws which shall render it impossible for them to work their way up from passive to active citizenship. But, in the second place, he holds that a Republic must be a representative system, and that the people must not themselves take in hand the legislative power, but only elect deputies to do so. The reason given for this is, that it is only under a representative system that it is possible to separate the legislative from 1 K. IX. 158; H. VII. 131. CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 337 the executive power ; which separation he considers to be so important that he even makes it an essential characteristic of the true State. "Every form of Government which is not representative is the very negation of constitutional form, (eine Unform) because the lawgiver may then be* in one and the same person the executor of his own will, (which is as if the major premise, which expresses the general rule, should at the same time be the minor premise which subsumes the particular under it). Now, though the autocratic and aristocratic forms of government are defective in that they admit such a confusion, yet in them it is still possible that the spirit of a representative system should be maintained, the spirit which was at least professed by Frederic the Great, when he said, '' I am merely the highest servant of the State.' But in a democratic State this is impossible, for there every one seeks to be a master." 1 It appears, then, according to these principles, that the ideal Necessity for J -- L ° J.J.' a ^vision of or universal will of the people can never, properly speaking, *^^ fthe find its organ in the united wills of each and all of the citizens. To use Eousseau's. language, the will that ought to rule is not the " volonte de tous," but the " volonU genirale" But this " volonte" ginirale " is not the will of all individual men as such. It is the will of reason which, though it is the nature of all men, and is, indeed, that which constitutes them self-conscious individuals, yet cannot' possibly show itself in practice as a collective will of all. To get the true universal will, even in the most advanced republican State, we have, according to Kant, to leave out certain classes ; and further, we have to introduce a representative system with a view to the establishment of a division of the three .powers, executive, legislative, and judicial. Thus only can the enactment of the general laws be separated from the determination .of particular cases that fall under them ; and thus only can security be taken that each, of the three great powers of the State shall be free from the causes .of error to which it is most exposed! The < *R, VII. 244; H. VI. 419. VOL. II. Y 338 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book H. legislative power, therefore, should spring from the whole body of the people ; and it should be confined to dealing with laws which are to affect every one equally, in order that it may not be tempted to partiality, or to the enactment of decrees with regard to particular cases. The Eegent or executive should ultimately be under the control of the legislative power, which should even be able to dismiss him from his office ; but so long as he holds it, he may be, and ought to be, held irresponsible, and so protected from its direct influence. And the jury by which justice is administered ought to be selected from the people themselves, in order that the people may as far as pos- sible execute justice on themselves ; and also in order that the separate interests of the regent or his subordinates may not be allowed to interfere with the course of justice. fnstiicitionof These securities make a republican constitution the best, if diverge from it can be attained, and in any case make it the ideal after the ideal. which we should strive ; but Kant confesses that men, while yet rude and uncivilised, may be neither willing to adopt such a constitution, nor capable of living under it. Nor, even among men who are comparatively civilised, can it be said that these securities are absolute ; or that, even in a republican constitution, the " volenti ge'ndrale," the will which is one with reason, must necessarily realise itself. We can only say that with the advance of civilisation and of morality, an approximation will be made to this form of constitution, and at the same time men will become capable of living under it and drawing from it all its advantages. Hence, Kant is not so careful to separate the real from the ideal in the case of the republican constitution as in the other cases. The social That ideal is based, as we might expect, on the principle of Contract and ° * r r university. 01 universality. In fact, the social contract theory, as Kant accepted it, is just that principle in its application to Politics. The social contract " is a mere Idea of reason, which, however, has its indubitable (practical) reality in that it binds every legislator to enact no laws but such as might have arisen from PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 339 I the united will of a whole people, and in that it regards every subject in so far. as he claims to be a citizen, as if he had given his personal assent to such a will. For this is the criterion of the justice of a law of the state. If any law is of such a character that a whole people could not possibly give its assent to it (as eg., the law that a certain class of subjects should have' the supreme authority in the state secured to them by inheritance) then it is not just. If, however, it is even possible that a whole people should agree to the law, it is a duty to regard it as just, even though at the moment, the people be in such a position or temper, that if they were asked, they would probably not yield their assent." i On this principle, which is only Kant's principle of morals Partiouiaroon- sequences of in a new form, all laws are just which the citizen can be con- this p™<:ipie. ( ceived as enacting for all, including himself. And Kant, in the usual way, tries to deduce from it the injustice of all privileges of birth, of all right of inheritance in offices of State, and of an established church, especially an established church with a fixed creed. In the same spirit he reduces all corporate institutions, for education or charity, or any other public purpose whatever, to a position of direct subordination to the state, which has the right, at any time, to interfere with their property or abolish them without being liable to the charge of confiscation. On the other hand, he contends for the right of free speech and publication, as the inviolable right of the citizens ; for, as they are expected to assume that no law enacted by the sover- eign is intended to wrong them, but on the contrary, that every law is intended to be such as might flow from their united will, they must be allowed to criticise freely what the sovereign has done. " To deny to them such freedom, is not only (with Hobbes) to take away from them all claim of right in relation to the sovereign, but to withdraw from the sovereign — who issues commands to his subjects as citizens — only because he represents the universal will of the people, all knowledge of * > R. VII. 207 ; H. .VI. 329. 340 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K lh wrongs which he would redress if he were properly informed, and so to bring him into contradiction with himself." x Here, there- fore, Kant sets his own doctrine against that of Hobbes. He agrees with Hobbes that, in one sense, the sovereign has only rights, and not duties, towards his subjects, i.e., he admits that the subjects have no rights against the sovereign, in the strict sense of the word in which a right is a right to compel. But he maintains that this does not imply that, in a wider sense, the sovereign has no duties or the subject no rights. On the contrary, the sovereign is bound to enact every law that is needed for the maintenance of justice, and no law which is not so needed. For, it is the right of the citizen to seek his happi- ness in his own way, and according to his own judgment ; and it is despotism, it is going beyond the due province of govern- ment, if the ruler seeks to make his subjects happy according to his own judgment. " If the sovereign power ever enacts laws which primarily are directed by Hedonistic principles, (intended to secure the comfort of the citizens, the encourage- ment and restraint of population, and the like,) this cannot be justified directly on the ground that happiness is an end of the State, but only as a means to secure law and order, especially against external enemies of the people. The sovereign must be authorised to judge alone, and on his own responsibility, whether such steps are required to secure the strength and stability of the State within and without ; but he must not seek to make the people happy, as it were, against its own will, for his business is merely to maintain its existence as a commonwealth." 2 It is this reference to happiness, as if it were the primary consideration, which is the cause of all mistakes as to the right of rebellion on the one side, and the right of undue interference on the other. " The sovereign wishes to make the people happy according to his own conceptions of their happiness, and he becomes a tyrant ; the people refuse to submit to anything that interferes with the general claim of man to have happiness in his own way, and 1 E. VII. 216 ; H. VI. 336. a R. VII. 209 ; H. VI. 330. CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 341 they become rebels." 1 On the other hand, when the sovereign limits himself to his proper task of maintaining the State as an institution for the administration of justice, and interferes with the welfare and happiness of the citizens only so far as is necessary to secure this end ; and when, on the other hand, the citizens are allowed freely to criticise the acts of the government, but never seek to resist it, — then we have that union of the spirit of freedom with obedience to the law and loyalty to the State, which is the political ideal. And this may be attained even when the form of the State is autocratic, if the sovereign, like Frederick, recog- nises himself to be only the highest servant of the State. For, in such a State it is really the law that rules and not a man, and, therefore, other men in submitting are still free. At the same time, a constitution which is in form as well as in essence Republican, brings with it a kind of objective security for that which in other constitutions depends on the character of an individual or a class. Hence, it is a duty laid upon those who have authority to work , towards this ideal, and gradually to abolish all institutions that stand in its way. And, indeed, just as Kant had said that all individual rights in the state of nature are 'provisional, so here he regards all other constitutions as provisional forms, which find their ultimate justification only in the fact that they prepare the way for the Eepublican form of government. " The (lower) forms of the State are only the letter of the original legislation, and, therefore, they may re- main so long as, through old and long custom, they are held to be necessary to the machinery of the constitution. But the spirit of the original contract (anima jpacti originarii) contains the obligation of the constitutive power to adapt its manner of governing to the Idea of the State ; or, if this cannot be done once for all, yet to make gradual and continual changes, till in effect the government is in harmony with the one rightful constitution, to wit, that of a pure Eepublic ; and till all empiric forms which served only to secure the subjection of the people, !R. VII. 214; H. VI. 334. 342 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book ii. give place to that rational form which alone makes freedom the principle and the condition of all compulsion. In this way the letter will finally be accommodated to the spirit." 1 T^ti&aSon Ifc is > tnen > onl 7 in the highest form of constitution, in a Ee- conSttois. public, or in a State which is in effect a "Republic, that we can expect to see the idea of the State, as Kant has described it, realised. In earlier times, the subjection of the citizens to law and the checking of violence and anarchy is so important that political freedom must be postponed till these ends are secured. Thus Kant admits a provisional justification for many institutions, which yet he condemns as essentially inconsistent with the free- dom and equality of the citizens, — for a hereditary nobility, for corporate property, for an established church, and generally for the interference of the State with the liberty of the individual citizen to seek his happiness in his own way. It is true that, while such institutions remain, the Idea of the State and its reality will be in opposition ; the letter of the social contract will not be conformed to its spirit. But the latter works silently under the former, and must ultimately mould it into harmony with itself. SducelToifn ^ e nave now sa ^ enough to show the principles upon executive. wn i cn Kant deals with all questions of Politics. It is obvious that his ideal State is what has been called a Mechtsstaat, a State in which the laws are only the expression of the ab- stract idea of justice, and the regent or magistracy is merely the executor of these laws. Kant's tendency to conceive the Sovereign as a mere executive and to deprive him, so far as possible, of all individuality, is shown among other things in his doctrine that the regent should possess no private property in land. He is to be the over-lord of the whole country, but he must own no special domain which would put him in opposition to other proprietors. " Of such a landlord we may say that ' he possesses nothing ' (of his own), except himself ; for if he had anything of his own, and so stood alongside 1 E. IX. 192 ; H. VII. 158. CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 34S of others in the State, a dispute between him and them would be possible and there would be no judge who could be called in to settle it. But we may also say that ' he possesses every- thing ' ; for, (in order that he may secure to every one his own) he has the right of supreme command over the people to whom all external things belong." x He lays taxes on all with a view to the public service and he is the source of all dignity and authority, but just for that reason he is in no way to be set in opposition to others. We shall not anticipate the criticism of this view, but only observe that, in so far as the constitution takes one of the inferior forms, it is impossible to avoid the confusion between private and State property which Kant here seeks to avoid. In so far as it takes the republican form, however, the confusion is avoided ; for, in a Republic, all will be under the law, and. no person or persons will be confused or identified with the sovereign power. The most characteristic part of Kant's Politics is perhaps Penal Justice, his treatment of penal justice. For in it we see most definitely his resolve to confine the State to the function of the maintenance of justice, and to prevent it from taking any account of happiness. " Legal penalty " (poena forensis) he declares, "as distinct from the natural penalties {poena naturalis) by which vice punishes itself, and of which the legislature takes no account, can never be regarded simply as a means to secure any other good either for the transgressor himself or for society, but must always be imposed upon him because of the transgression he has committed. For a man may never be employed merely as a means to the end of another, or confused with things which are mere objects of right. He is protected against this by his own inborn personality, which he cannot be condemned to lose like his citizenship in the State. He must therefore be found deserving of punishment, ere we can begin to think about any use of punishment to him- self or his fellow citizens. The penal law is a categorical 'E. IX. 171; H. VII. 142. 344 KANT'S ETHICAL WOEKS. BOOK II. imperative, and woe to him who creeps through tortuous paths of Eudaemonism, seeking something which, by the advantage it promises, may free him from punishment or from that de- gree of punishment which the law of justice requires. Such an one may use for his defence the Pharisaic saying, ' It is better that one man should die than that the whole people perish ' — but he must be met with the answer that, if justice perishes there is no longer any value in the existence of men upon earth." 1 Further, the principle on which this punishment should be inflicted, is the principle of equality. " The un- merited evil which thou inflictest on another, thou by that very act inflictest on thyself. If thou doest outrage to the good name of another, thou, doest outrage to thine own ; if thou robbest another thou robbest thyself, if thou slayest another, thou slayest thyself." 2 In every case, the return of the deed upon the doer, must be made manifest. This principle of equality, indeed, is in some cases incapable of being literally carried out ; still it can be always carried out in spirit, and we ought to avoid punishments which are incom- mensurable with the transgression, such as e.g., a fine for an insult. In the most important case of all, the punishment of death for murder must be strictly exacted ; for there is nothing but death that is commensurable with death. " Even if civil society were on the point of being dissolved with the consent of all its members, (as e.g., if a people dwelling on an island, should resolve to separate and scatter to all parts of the world,) they would be bound first of all to exe- cute the last murderer in their prisons, that each one may meet with that fate which his deeds deserve, and that the guilt of blood may not rest upon the people." s practical Yet ' after this remarkable declaration of the principle of the modifications * £ tai^tl'L iex talionis, Kant goes on to say that in certain cases, where murder. the accomplices in deeds of murderous violence are so numer- 1 R. IX. 180 ; H. VII. 149. 2 "R. IX. 181 ; H. VII. 150. 3 R. IX. 183; H. VII. 151. CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 345 ous that their punishment according to state law might cause a revolt of feeling against all penal justice, the sovereign by a Macht-spruch may order some other kind of punishment. Further, Kant maintains the general right of pardon in the sovereign, though only in cases where he is personally wronged, and not in cases where one citizen has wronged another. And he admits that the lex talionis cannot be applied in the case of a duel forced upon a soldier by the public opinion of his class, so long as the common barbarous ideas of honour prevail ; nor, again, in the case of the murder of a child not born in wedlock by its mother. This last exception he bases upon the strange ground that the illegitimate child is born without the law, and is not, therefore, entitled to its protection. In arguing for death as the necessary punishment for murder, B ^. coa 5 ia ' s Kant mentions the objection of the Italian jurist, Beccaria, who p^aity!* 1 " maintained the injustice of the death-penalty on the ground that it could not be contained in the original social contract ; for no one would dispose of his own life, or give assent to his being slain in the event of his murdering another. Kant answers that in willing his crime, the individual has willed his punishment. It is true that " I, as with others the author of the law which attaches punishments to crime, am in a sense not the same person, . who, as a subject, is punished according to the law ; for, as a criminal, I can have no voice in the laying down of the law." But " when I lay down a penal law against myself as a criminal, it is the pure legislative reason in me, which subjects me to the law as one who is capable of crime. I, therefore, (as homo noumenon) subject myself under a different persona (as homo phenomenon), along with all the other members of the same civil society, to the penal law." 1 Thus the difficulty is solved by reference to the two characters in which each man appears, as a universal subject, who, as such, is the source of the law which finds its outward expression in the State, and as an individual, ex- 'E. IX. 185; H. VII. 153. 346 . KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book ii.. temally related to others, and subjected along with them, to the law of the State. Owing to this double character, it is his own justice to which the man is subjected, and by which, as a criminal, he is condemned, whenever he breaks the law of the State by assailing the rights of his neighbours. The ideal of ]? rom the law of the State, Kant passes on to interna-. international ■*■ !aw - tional law, the Jus Gentium in the modern sense, and asks on what principles it is based. Obviously, he answers, on the same principle as the Jus Civile. If it was the duty of indi- vidual men to put an end to the state of nature, and to combine with each other in a civil state, and even to use force to produce such a combination, it seems reasonable that the same prin- ciples should be applied to States, which, as regards each other, are in a state of nature, in so far as they recognise no supreme authority above themselves ? Must not the primary duty, here as in the other case, be to establish a Universal State, in which an end is put to the continual menace of war under which each State lies in relation to all the others ? Kant acknowledges that the two cases are similar, seeing that no mere league or treaty can be relied on permanently to secure nations from war with each other. At the same time, he sees so vividly the practical difficulties in the way of realising such a Uni- versal State or Community of all States, that he seems to regard it rather as an ideal which we must aim at, than as an end which we can ever completely attain. " As the state of nature between peoples, like the state of nature between individual men, is a state which they ought to leave in order to enter into a state of union regulated by law, all the law of nations, and all the outward rights of States which are acquired or maintained by war must be regarded as provisional, and can only become peremptory, or, in other words, can only be finally secured, by a universal Union of States, analogous to that by which a people becomes a State. But, as the too great extension of such a Polity of peoples over wide regions must finally render the government of it, or, in other words, CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 347 the protection of each member of it, impossible, while, on the other hand, the existence of a number of separate communities necessarily carries with it a state of war, it follows that an ever-lasting peace is an ideal that cannot be realised. Neverthe- less, the political principles which point to such a peace as their end, the principles which prescribe that such agreements should be entered into between States as may serve to cause a continual approximation to this Idea, are not incapable of being acted on ; but, on the contrary, they give rise to a practical problem, which is necessarily bound up with the duty, and therefore also with the rights of men and States, and which it must be possible to solve." In an essay, in which he seeks to refute the doctrine that „ f h t e h "t7 d B e s ^ y " that may be right in theory which does not hold good in practice," bem g reallzed ' Kant speaks in a somewhat more confident tone. " I, for my part, put my trust in that theory which is based on the prin- ciple of right, and which determines on that principle what the relations between men and States ought to he, laying it as a duty on the gods of this world to conduct their warfare in such a manner as to pave the way for a universal State of all nations, and to assume that such a State is possible because it ought to exist. I have faith also in the nature of things, which comes to the aid of justice, and forces men to advance toward a goal which they do not seek of their own accord {Fata wlentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt). In this I am mainly calculating upon human nature itself, in which the reverence for right and duty has never yet died out, and which I cannot and will not hold to be so deeply sunk in evil that practical reason, which is the source of our moral ideas, shall not, after many failures, at length gain the victory over it, and bring it into a beautiful harmony with itself." 2 We are, in fact, here brought into the same alternative between moral necessity and impossibility, which in morals gave rise to the idea of a progresses ad infinitum. 1 R. IX. 203 ; H. VII. 168. 2 R. VII. 228 ; H. VI. 346. 348 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K "• ttefutureLw In the treatise 0n Me Possibility and Means of attaining to a of Nations. £ asf i ng j> mc ^ we h ave a f ur ther development of the same thesis. In Kant's view, the whole of the Jus Gentium is summed up in the principle to avoid everything which could make the state of nature, the state of actual or possible war, permanent ; and on the other hand, to act, even in the state of nature, on those maxims out of which a lasting peace is most likely to spring, even if we are not yet able definitively to secure it. With this view he lays down certain preliminary articles, which he would have adopted into the Law of Nations by general agree- ment, and which might lead on to a lasting peace. These preliminary articles prescribe that no treaty of peace shall be made with the secret reservation of causes of quarrel, which might furnish material for another war ; that no State shall be treated as the patrimony of an individual, or transferred from hand to hand by inheritance or gift ; that no public debts shall be contracted with a view to war, or in preparation for it ; that no State shall interfere with the constitution or administration of another ; that no State shall use in war such means of in- juring the enemy as must make impossible that reciprocal trust which is necessary for peaceful relations in the future, and that on this ground all recourse to the weapons of assassination and poisoning shall be proscribed, and at the same time, all breaches of capitulation or attempts to make use of treachery among the enemy. For such means of war, as they destroy all that trust in the enemy, which is based on our common humanity, and which ought to subsist even in war, tend to produce a war of extermination, which could bring about a lasting peace only in the "great churchyard of the human race." Some of these articles admit of no delay in their application, as for instance, the last ; for the acts which they proscribe are direct violations of the fundamental principles of justice. Others, as e.g., the article that prohibits all inheritance or sale of States, may be carried out as regards the future ; but it may not be ex- pedient to go back upon, past arrangements, in so far as these CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 349 were regarded as allowable at .the times when they were prac- tised. At the same time, these articles are to be regarded as merely The establish- merit of a preparatory, and something more is required for a definite bond ^ a "™^ which would give security of peace. It would require, first, wa^l^j™ that a republican constitution, i.e., a constitution such as we secure peace. have described, based on the freedom and equality of the citizens, should be established in every State. For, as it is the great body of the people who suffer from war, and not the king or governing aristocracy, a decisive step will be made towards lasting peace only when the power of declaring war is trans- ferred from the latter to the former. " The objective reality or practicability of a Federation, which shall gradually extend over all States, may be exhibited in this way. When fortune' so wills it, that a mighty and enlightened people can shape itself into a Republic (which by its very nature must be inclined to lasting peace), this will furnish a nucleus for the federative union of other States, to which they can attach themselves in order to secure that freedom of States which is in harmony with the idea of the Jus Gentium; and thus, by various alliances of this kind, the federative unity may gradually be extended in ever widening circles." 1 It is true that such a federative alliance will not absolutely put an end to the state of nature, the state of lawlessness and war, which can be finally abolished only by the establishment of a Republic that includes all nations. But, so long as the different States are not willing to give up their independence, " in place of the positive idea of a World-Republic, we must be satisfied with the negative sub- stitute of a continually advancing league of States to prevent war ; and this may be of sufficient avail to resist the pressure of lawless passions, though it cannot secure us decisively against the danger of their breaking loose." 2 In such a league; one special article should be to secure the rights of .each citizen in the contracting States as a "citizen of the world "; that isj to 1 R. VII. 250 ; H. VI. 423. , 2 R. VII. 251 ; H. VI. 424. 350 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BQOK II. secure to him the freedom of visitation and trade in other countries than his own. For the earth (which, as Kant remarks, is a sphere, and therefore does not permit men to disperse them- selves indefinitely) must, from the point of view of right, be regarded as the common possession of all ; and the title of each man and nation to their own appropriations is based on this common right. The fact that men at the present day are so far sensible of their community, that " a violation of right in one place is felt everywhere," makes this idea of citizenship of the world no longer a mere dream of philosophical enthusiasts but a thing after which practical efforts may be made. b?if whf ?* to Finally, the essential principle on which we are to go in all Politics is that the practicable is to be measured by the right, and not the right by the practicable. For what is right is ascertainable, what is practicable according to the laws of nature is beyond calculation. Hence, the need of calling in the philosopher to assist the statesman — not, indeed, in the way of realising Plato's dream that philosophers should be made kings, but in the way of allowing philosophers freely to discuss the principles on which States are and ought to be based. Thus we will gradually learn to say in Politics as well as in Morals, that what ought to be done can be done. Nay further, a deeper study of nature may give us ground to believe that the opposi- tion of the practicable to the right is a superficial appearance, and that " a design may be traced in the mechanical course of nature itself, out of the very discord of men, even against their wills, to elicit concord." 1 To exhibit this aspect of the Kantian theory, however, would carry us beyond the limits of the philosophy of Jurisprudence, and it must be postponed for the present. We have now to criticise the view of Jurisprudence which has been explained. We must, however, confine ourselves mainly to the general principles on which it is based. i R. VII. 257 ; H. VI. 427. chap. VI. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. -351 In the first place, it is easy to see that Kant has to begin the The principle ,,.„_...., ; of Universal- appllCatlOn of his principles by what he calls a salto mortale % '° its »p- from the a priori to the empirical. We have to assume it as a dencT ""' fact that in the particular individual in the outward world the universal principle of reason is realised ; and that he stands, therefore, in outward relations to other individuals in whom also the same principle is realised, as well as to objects animate or inanimate, in whom it is not realised. This being pre- supposed, we have to consider that each of these individuals as rational is an end and a law to himself; and we have to find out how the outward relations, in which, as natural beings, they limit and come into collision with each other, may be brought into conformity with the conception of them as rational beings or ' Persons,' who cannot be externally limited. It is obvious, as has been already indicated, that this reconciliation of necessity and freedom, external limitation and pure self-deter- mination, can take place only according to the principle of self-limitation, which again flows from the universality that attaches to the determinations of a rational being. Such a being by his very nature must in his action abstract from his own existence as one particular being opposed to others ; or, if he determines anything for himself as against others, he can do so consistently with his rational nature, only if he also determines the same thing for others as against himself. What he claims for himself, he claims in principle for all ; what he takes, he at the same time must give. Now, this idea, as applied to a phenomenal world in which persons appear as exclusive indi- viduals who are externally related to each other, cannot mean that different individuals should form one personality, (which would make the individual cease to be an end in himself) ; nor can it mean that they should have common property in the same individual things ; for where one individual will manifests itself, another individual will is excluded. It can only mean that any exclusive claim set up on one side, is at the same time an admission of the right to establish a 352 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. similar exclusive claim on the other. la this way each personality, whenever it manifests itself, excludes all others, who, for their part, equally exclude it. But yet there is no limitation of each by the others : for, in the first place-, there is perfect reciprocity of exclusion ; and secondly, this reciprocity is not like a physical action and reaction of bodies in which each meets with an external obstacle in the other. Here each person is limited by himself in relation to the other ; in other words, each, in virtue of the universality that attaches itself to his determination, excludes himself from the sphere of the others in the very act of defining his own. And, conversely, each would renounce his own right, if he in- vaded the right of another. rfScompiu- ty From these premises we can easily see, that it is possible Consistent 8 ' that there should be a force or compulsion which is in perfect ' consistency with freedom ; the force, namely, which confines each person within the physical sphere to which his rights extend, and which annuls or reverses all acts of invasion by one personality on the sphere of right dominated by another personality. Such force is not violence, or it is a violence directed against violence ; as Kant expresses it, it is a hindrance of the hindrances to freedom. In other words, it is a negation of the negation of freedom, which is therefore one with the affirmation of it. As a mere natural being, I may, and probably will, have the tendency to disregard the limits marked for me by my practical reason or ideal personality, and to invade the sphere dominated by the personality of another. But, in doing so, I at once lose the inviolable sacredness, the absolute right to exclude extraneous force, which belongs to me in virtue of my nature as a 'Person.' I have reduced myself, so to speak, to a natural being, and I fall under the law of nature. I have made myself a physical hindrance to the realisation of spiritual laws, and so subjected myself to a physical reaction,. The text, " He that takes the sword shall perish by the sword," may be taken to express the idea that in CHAP. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 353 an act which is condemned by the law and justified merely by natural impulse, the person can no longer carry with him the claim to be treated as free, and unlimited in his freedom by anything external to himself. He has come down into the region of outward compulsion and violence, and he may there- fore be legitimately compelled and violated. He has appealed to nature against reason, and to nature he must go. When, however, we put the matter in this wav, we see how Necessity of J the State to Kant is led on to assert the necessity, with a view to the main- ^^ h ° tenance of freedom, of a State Power armed with irresistible persons ' force. Such a State Power is necessary, because otherwise there would be no organ of freedom, as distinct from the com- peting wills of individuals ; and the law of freedom would not necessarily be realised. The outward existence of freedom can be maintained only by an outward power, which is able to " compel men to be free," i.e., to respect the limits in which the freedom of each shall be consistent with the freedom of all the others. Otherwise, we will have a state of things in which " a random right redresses a random wrong " ; or, rather, in which every vindication of right is at the same time a new wrong ; as e.g., in the blood-feuds of clans we have a succession of crimes followed by punishments which are themselves new crimes, and which s therefore, demand punishment in their turn ; so that the infinite series of revenges is never summed up in a final act of penal justice. Hence Kant maintains that there is one kind of violence which needs no violence to precede it in order to make it justifiable, viz., the violence by which men force others ,to unite with them in one civil society for the maintenance of outward justice, i.e., a society in which the free- dom of each is restrained to the conditions in which it shall be consistent with the freedom of all. Here, however, we are met by a difficulty, the discussion of But the exist ence of the which may throw considerable light upon the defects of the state ^ seJi ** o j. seems mcon- Kantian view of the relations of persons as such. For the SesTriJhts. «very idea of the Person, as a law and an end to himself, with VOL. II. Z 354 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. which Kant starts, seems to come into collision with the con- ditions of its own realisation. We must establish an absolute power over all persons in order that their freedom may be ex- ternally realised. But in whom is this power to be lodged ? If we say, in a person, that person will no longer be related, according to the law of freedom, to the other persons who are subjected to his jurisdiction ; but, rather, in relation to him they will be slaves. This contradiction reveals itself almost naively in Eoman law, which was in the main a transcript of Stoic ideas as to the Jus Naturale, analogous to those of Kant. Eoman law was based on the idea of the independence of persons who in relation to each other were free and equal, sacred in them- selves and in their property, and therefore, in Kant's language, always to be treated as ends and never as means. Yet, in re- lation to the Emperor, the one executor of the law, these persons were no longer persons, but things, and he was their Dominus or proprietor. The law of freedom thus had slavery for its instrument, because, as a mere ideal law of men's outward re- lations to each other, it could not execute itself. SSion^ouid Now, Kant tries to escape this contradiction, at least in regard the statewere to the ideal form of the State, to which in the process of history a Republic. . . the actual State is supposed to be continually approximating. In the Eepublic, which alone realises the true idea of the State, the supreme legislative power is in the hand of representatives of the people, and thus the people is governed by itself. It is, however, obvious that, even if we overlook the fact that this form is only reached through a long process of development, Kant's solution of the contradiction above mentioned is in- sufficient. For, in the first place, the sovereignty of the State cannot be justified on the principle on which the rights of persons as against each other are based. No doubt the State is externally required (as a Deus ex machina) to secure that the freedom of each shall be exercised in a way consistent with the freedom of all. But the idea of the State as a compulsive power, which represents the universal or rational nature of man chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 355 as against the particular wills of individuals, cannot be justified from the principle on which the rights of individuals as inde- pendent persons are based. For that principle is, that the individuals, as self-conscious beings, are law and end to them- selves apart from all relation to others. In other words, they are supposed to realise, in their isolated individual life, the universal or rational nature which belongs to them as men ; and they are not conceived as having any substantial or necessary relations to each other. Law, therefore, seeks simply to keep them from collision with each other. But, if it be maintained that the united will of all persons in a society can constitute, and ought to constitute, a power in virtue of which each indi- vidual is secured in his rights at the same time that he is confined to them, then it is implied that there is a positive relation of self-conscious beings to each other prior to the negative relation which they have as individual persons. But, if this be admitted, the community of men with each other becomes the pre-condition of their independence in relation to each other ; and this means that in the individual person as such the universal or rational life is not realised ; or, in other words, that as isolated from others, the individual is not a law and an end to himself. We are therefore in a dilemma. If we adhere to the idea that the individual as such is a law and an end to himself, in the sense that in him, as an individual, the moral end is realised, or capable of being realised, then society can have no essential relation to the individual ; it is an accident that other individuals exist with whom he stands in external relation of reciprocal right and obligation ; and this accident brings with it the further result that a power, separate from these individuals, must be brought in to maintain by force their reciprocal rights. But, if the power which maintains right and obligation be thus extraneous, the subordination of per- sons to it is slavery ; or the relation of subjects to the sovereign cannot be brought under the general principle on which the k rights of persons rest. On the other hand, if we try to escape this 356 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book H. consequence by deriving the sovereign power from the will of all, as is done in the social contract theory, we imply that by an act of will, which is done by the individual person only in virtue of his personality {i.e., of his being a law and an end to himself,) he in one particular relation (in relation to the power constituted by the will of all,) gives up his personality and all its rights. But such a surrender must be illegitimate, unless there be something prior to the individual personality, i.e., unless it be denied that the individual, apart from the social relations, is a law and an end to himself, ^iew oTthe ^ ne difficulty we are now considering, is one which showed tract^Sd itself very prominently in the discussion as to the Social Con- fioation of it. tract which was started by Eousseau, and which had so much influence upon Kant. Rousseau's primary conception of man is, in a sense, individualistic, i.e., it is individualistic in the sense of the Stoics, in which the claims of the individual are based on the fact that he is in himself a universal. Thus, there is a raison commune which is or can be realised in each indi- vidual as a thinking being ; a volonU genirale which he can execute, and which he is bound to execute, apart from any social constraint or organised social relations. Hence, when extraneous circumstances, especially the increase of population in a limited area, force men together, the problem is how men are to aid without enslaving each other — " to find a form of association, which shall protect with the whole common force the person and property of each associate, and in virtue of which every one, while uniting himself to all, shall only obey himself and remain as free as before." 1 According to this view, the social power has only to reinforce and not to limit the individual will, except in so far as it is already self-limited apart from society. Society brings no obligations to the indi- vidual which he had not apart from it ; it only brings, or at least should only bring, new means whereby he may realise an end which is his already, apart from the social relation, Man 1 Du Contrat Social, I. 6. chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OP JURISPRUDENCE. 357 is not essentially social ; and the constitution of society is only an arbitrary act in which the individual avails himself of a means, which owing to external circumstances has become necessary, to realise his natural end. But it is obvious that to use such means cannot be his duty, in the same sense that it is his duty to seek the end. It must be free to him to enter or not to enter into the social contract as he sees best, and consequently the social contract can be valid only if it is agreed to by all. The volonU generate of the society must arise from the volonU de tous ; and it cannot legitimately contain anything which is not in the volonU de tous from which it arises. The volonti ginirale, in Kant's language, is constituted by an analytic judg- ment, which merely leaves out that in which the wills of the individuals differ. For, as Kant, following Eousseau, does not hesitate to say, " only the agreeing and united will of all, in so far as each determines the same for all and all for each, can be legislative." 1 But, if so, an actual social contract of all with all would seem to be necessary as the only legitimate basis of social union and social authority : nay, it would seem as if even such, a contract could not be valid, unless it were continually repeating itself ; and Beccaria's objection to penal justice — that it cannot have the assent of the criminal — would seem to be unanswerable. For, in order to answer it. we must either stretch the idea of contract so as to admit a contract which once made cannot be annulled ; or we must suppose the idea of a social contract to be nothing more than the figurative ex- pression for a law to which man is bound to submit, irrespective of his own consent to it. But if we adopt the latter alternative, the volonU ginirale once for all detaches itself from the volonU de tous, and we are forced to admit that the social unity of man is ideally prior to their individual rights. Now, this last alternative is virtually accepted by Kant. K e ™'' s t i ™ ndi . With Eousseau, indeed, the volonte' ginirale is still not dis- aSrityof 6 tinctly separated from the will of a unanimous assembly ; and 1 R. IX. 158 ; H. VI. 132. 358 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K "• his influence upon Kant is shown in the conception of the Republic as the only form of government which ultimately is legitimate. But, when Kant speaks of the entrance into civil society as obligatory, in the sense that we are entitled to force others to unite with us in forming such a society, and that it is our absolute duty to respect the order of such a society once formed, even if the form of government established be despotic, he takes up a quite different point of view. For thus the volonte ginerale is regarded as the will of reason, to which the will of the individual ought to conform. It is, as he expresses it, in speaking of Beccaria's theory, the will of the Homo Noumenon — to which the Homo Phenomenon ought to submit, whether he does so or not — that connects penalty with transgression. Hence, the social power is authorised to punish irrespective of the individual consenting, or having ever con- sented, to the law by which he is condemned ; though not irrespective of the fact that the law is his law, a law that springs from his nature as a rational being. This, however, while it shows that the punishment of the individual is just, still leaves it obscure why the social authority should be justified in punishing him, or in acting as the representative of the Homo Noumenon of the individual ; and on this point Kant gives us no explanation. ]STone, in fact, can be given, except on the assumption that the social relation is in such wise essential to the individual that, apart from it, he is not himself, i.c, apart from it he has no personality, (in the sense in which personality is the basis of right) and is not properly to be regarded as a law or end to himself. Thus civil society is the organ of the volonti ginirale, to which the individual, in his particular will, is subordinated, and it is only in and through society that the individual has a volonti gMrale developed in him. The obedience of the lower to the higher nature of man is at the same time necessarily his submission to a social law, in which that higher nature is in the first instance embodied. This is, in a sense, admitted by Kant, in so far as he maintains chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 359 that there is an ideal community of possession of the whole world prior to the adverse possession or appropriation of special objects in it by individuals, and treats the latter as only the realisation of the former. But Kant is careful to point out that this original community of property is not an actual communism, and that an actual communism can only be reached by the surrender of all individual possessions into a common stock. Now, this merely ideal character of the original community can be maintained only if we suppose that the primary relation of men to each other, as moral beings realising an end, is a negative relation. If, on the other hand, it is only through the unity of men in society, and on the presupposition of it, that they stand related to each other as persons having independent rights,' — if they are a law and an end to themselves only as social beings whose ends are identified : — then individual right can be realised only on the basis of an already realised social unity ; as, in fact, we find has been the case historically. In truth, the conception of the in- dividual as a law and an end to himself, appeared, and could only appear, historically, in the breaking up of a civil society, in which the individual had been made the organ of social ends, and thus had gained a consciousness of the individual worth. That the higher self-consciousness so developed finally became a consciousness of possibilities which could not be realised in such forms of society, nor in anything but a universal society of mankind, was the natural course of development. Thus arose the Stoic individualism which, conceiving man in his universal capacity, and abstracting from the social relations through which alone that capacity could be developed, represented the individual man as in his isolation an end and a law to himself, and reduced society into a mere extraneous con- dition of his life. And the same inversion of the relations of the individual and society which finds expression in the Stoic philosophy, was in a later time repeated by Kant on similar grounds ; though, as usual, Kant stretches his theory up to its limits, and so prepares the way for a transition to 360 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K - "• that conception of the social union which he seems to ex- clude. SloonSptiou The difficulty that lies in Kant's individualistic conceptions, $&£?*" and the pressure under which he has to put them to find room for the facts of man's social life, is further illustrated by his strange conception of a jus realiter personate, a right in a person as in a thing. Such a conception as has already been indicated is an inversion of the fundamental categories of the Jus Naturale, which divided the world into two exhaustive classes of persons and things, and refused to recognise any middle term. It is true that Eoman law, and Kant following it, recognised a jus in personam, a right as against particular persons, as distinct from the jus in rem, which was a right as against all persons. But this jus in personam, was merely a right, based upon contract, to some " thing " which was in the hands of another, or, at most, to some service — some use of the other's powers ; and such use was necessarily limited in time and kind, so that in covenanting to give it there might be no subjection of a man's personality as a whole to the will of another. If this strict' division of persons and things be maintained, a jus realiter personate will be a contradiction in terms. It is interesting to notice how Kant gets out of his difficulty by introducing the supplementary principle that a right over a person, as if he were a thing, does not involve slavery, if it is reciprocal, e.g., if the husband's right over the wife is correlative with the right of the wife over the husband. By this principle all forms of concubinage which degrade the woman into a chattel of the man, over whom she has no counterbalancing rights, are condemned, as involving the treatment of a human being merely as a means and not an end. But what Kant does not notice is, that by the introduction of this idea of a unity or community in which two persons are reciprocally means and ends to each other, he has quite risen above the idea of right with which he started. For what is involved in such a community is that the individual person CHAP. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 361 without ceasing to be free, can lose himself in the higher per- sonality of the family union, in which he becomes a con- stituent member. 1 But, if it be possible, still more if it be I * re "5?'i"5: ■*■ plies that the necessary, to the completion or full development of the indi- orgaScuntty; vidual, that he should thus lose himself as an individual to find himself again as the member of the family, then Kant's whole view of the person as an end in himself, who may not be made a means either by himself or by anyone else, must be abandoned. On the contrary, it appears that it is in heing made, and in making himself, a means to social ends, that alone he can " realise himself as an end. And when we go on to consider the' jus realiter personale of parents and children in each other, we find that to such a relation it is not even neces- sary that it should be constituted by the will of the individual person. For child and parent are by the mere fact of their natural connection put into a moral relation, in which each is reciprocally means and end to the other. Now, if this idea be once admitted in relation to the family, l^ t ^ so the we cannot well escape the necessity of extending it to the State. For the necessity of the social contract theory, accord- ing to which the volonte de tous is the only legitimate source and basis of the volonte ginerale as expressed in the State, lay in the conception of isolated personality as a law and an end to itself. In fact, it was an illogical attempt to stretch the individualistic idea, so as to cover a social unity, which is the negation of individualism. If, however, it is ad- mitted that a relation of persons may be established in which they are not as ends exclusive of each other, or in which each, as so exclusive, is only a means, the strict opposition of things 1 If we keep strictly to the category of reciprocity, and refuse to go on to the higher category of organic community, each person would have to be regarded as means to the other, and neither as end. This would answer to the case of a sensual indulgence in which each individual was a means to the pleasure of the other, and no higher end was sought on either side. But Kant really points to a higher social relation in which each individual loses himself to find himself again in the common life to which he contributes. 362 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. and persons, means and ends, disappears in a higher category. "We pass, so to speak, from the external teleology of mere design to the higher teleology of organic unity; and just because we do so, we are able to get over the abstract antag- onism of means and ends, which holds good so long as we confine ourselves to the former point of view. Under this new category, it becomes possible to understand that man can be an end, only as he is a member of a kingdom of ends to which he makes himself a means : just as a member of the physical body maintains itself by the very activity in which it subserves the whole organism. On the other hand, if such an idea be not admit- ted it is more logical to fall back upon the ordinary conceptions of the Jus Privatum, with the result that the State, as in Eome, is regarded as an external force that comes to the aid of right, and marriage is treated as an ordinary contract. Even in Kant we may see the lingering influence of this view in his some- what coarse conception of marriage. And the way in which the Eoman Jurists treat it, either as the enslavement of the wife, or, if that alternative be rejected, simply as an ordinary con- tract, shows what is the true consequence of the individualistic principle when scruples from another source do not interfere with its logic, consequences When we reach this new view of the domestic and the of this view of society as an political relation as, in the sense iust described, organic, other organism. x d ' ° ' consequences will follow, which we have now to consider. In the first place, the so-called Jus Naturale, the law determining the rights and obligations of men as individual persons, — which Kant regards as prior to the Jus Civile, — will be seen to be posterior to it in the order of thought as well as in time; and in the second place, the opposition of law and morality as dealing respectively with the actions of men as outward facts, and with the same actions as the determinations of the will by motives, will be subordinated to this unity. WThe/w. (1) What is involved in the conception that men are orsan- Cwile is prior v / x '■fci 1 *-" itaterie. s icall y related, and that, therefore, their reciprocal action and chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 363 reaction is not to be represented, as Kant suggests, on the- analogy of a mechanical reciprocity, but rather on the analogy of the connexion of the different members of the living body ? In order to interpret this analogy rightly, we must remember that the consciousness of self implies not only the consciousness of the not-self, but of the not-self in the form of other selves. For it is only what we see without that we can find within ; or, — to state the matter more accurately, — the con- sciousness of self as a rational will grows up in essential distinction from, but at the same time in essential relation to, the consciousness of others with whom we are combined in one- society. Man's self-consciousness may thus be termed, in spite of the apparent contradiction of the phrase, a social self-con- sciousness. His opposition to his fellows rests on the basis and presupposition of his unity with them, and, if it could go so far as to destroy this basis, it would at the same time be fatal to itself. As a subjective idealism which turns objects into states of the consciousness of the subject, at the same time that it withdraws reality from the object, takes away the ground of the possibility of self-consciousness ; so, in like manner, the consciousness of an antagonism to other persons, which is purely negative and not limited by a deeper community, would make the consciousness of self as a person impossible. But if so, then the conception of the person as a law and end to himself, who therefore stands only in negative relations to others, cannot be an ultimate conception. It can be so taken only from an abstract point of view, which may, indeed, have its relative justification, (just as the scientific view of objects apart from their relation to the subject has its relative justifica- tion,) but which must ultimately be subordinated to a higher truth. In other words, it may be right that, in dealing with the private relations of individual persons, Jurisprudence should at first simplify its work by abstracting from the community which binds them together as members of one political society, but this abstraction should not be regarded as more than a 364 k ant's ethical WOBKS. BOOK ii. scientific expedient ; for it is with a view to the social com- munity, that all individual rights must be regarded as subsisting. We must not, therefore, begin with the conception of individual right, and regard the State merely as a means of maintaining it. We must begin with the conception of the social unity, as that in and through which men realise the rational nature, in virtue of which they are ends to themselves and to each other ; and we must, therefore, consider the investment of individuals with private rights as part of the necessary differentiation of the members of the social unity, — which makes each individual in a sense, an end in himself, — even while we regard such differentiation ultimately as only a means through which the higher organic completeness of the social body is to be realised. When we conceive it in this way, we can understand why the conception of individual right in history has been so slowly developed ; for its development could take place only in the dawn of a deeper and wider conception of the social unity of men, and must be regarded as a step towards the realisation of that conception. Hence, also, we can understand why the assertion of individual right is always disintegrating in its effect, except in so far as it is the indication that men are becoming ripe for a wider community than they have previously realised. Thus the abstract proclamation of such right in Stoicism (from which it found its way into Eoman law) was coincident with the establishment of mere force as the only bond of the empire. But it is to be observed that the Stoic Idea of cosmopolitanism already pointed to that principle which alone could at once supply the true justification for the private rights of individuals in all their extent, and, at the same time, limit them in view of the community of all men with each other. The modem A very complex problem is suggested in modern times bv world is cos- ^ J ?rine$e nin the fact that > while the le S al and moral principles of Cosino- rworid- bemg politanism, mainly by the agency of the Eoman law and of Christianity, have become universal, the World-Republic in CHAP.iVl. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 365 which alone such principles could find their final realisation is still an ideal, and the actual national State has thus become the executor of principles which reach beyond its compass, or for which it is not the appropriate organisation and embodiment. But the discussion of this subject must be postponed till we have considered the second point to which reference has been made, viz., the relation of morality to law, and their ultimate unity. (2) Law, according to Kant's view, has to do with actions as (a)Thema- N mate unity of external manifestations of the will, which, in order to be legally j^jjjjf right, must be such that no one in the exercise of his freedom, is brought into collision with the freedom of others. Law, indeed, takes cognisance of intention (for, if hot intentional, an action cannot be attributed to an individual at all), but it does not regard the motive or end which the individual sets before himself. Morality, on the other hand, has to do with the action as a determination of the will, which, to be morally right, must not only agree with the law, but must have the law itself for its motive. This opposition is for Kant absolute; for, in his view, as in that of the Stoics, the inner is disjoined from the outer life, and has no necessary reference to it. The moral struggle between the law of the mind and the law of the members goes on entirely within the man. It is purely a straggle for harmony with himself, in which he may succeed or fail without any reference to his success or failure in bringing the outward conditions of his existence into harmony with his will. For, in his relations to nature and to other men, he is dealing with things that do not entirely depend upon him, and to which the " Thou canst because thou oughtst," does not apply. If, in this relation also, he can cherish the hope of the realisation of that which he calls the Good, if he expects to see that prevail as an external law which he recognises as the law of his own inner being, it must be on the ground of a faith of reason, which postulates a God to realise it. Even so, the realisation postu- lated is conceived, not as the realisation of universal goodness, 3 6 6 KANT'S ETHICAL WOEKS. B00K IL but merely of an order of things in which happiness is attached to goodness wherever it is found ; for goodness itself must be realised by each moral subject for himself by his own self- determination, else it would not be moral goodness at all. In this faith the individual has the duty of working towards the realisation of a well-ordered Eepublic and ultimately, of a World-Eepublic, which he must regard as possible and even necessary ; i.e., he must seek to establish a legal order of things based upon the abstract law of right, in the belief that nature will somehow conspire with his effort, and (as we shall see in considering more fully Kant's treatment of Morals), he must also, subject to the establishment and maintenance of this order, endeavour to further the happiness of all other men. But he is not called upon to endeavour to make them good, because it is not within his power, any more than it is within their power to make him good ; for no one can be or become good except through his own self-determination. From the moral point of view, therefore, we have to consider mankind as a mere collec- tive aggregate of individuals, who, indeed, in their outward fortunes are united by the unity of the natural world, as well as by the unity of that moral power which is believed to be working through the order of the natural world ; but each of whom has to work out his own moral destiny in the loneliness of an inner life, into which no other can intrude. We cannot even say that the individual is alone with God, unless God be used as another word for the moral law which is the law of his will; for God himself is not immediately present to our con- sciousness, but only inferred, in so far as the postulate of his existence is necessary to connect the outward with the inward life, to unite happiness in due proportion with goodness. ThauhlloSi We shall > in the sequel, have to consider the ways in which ST" Kant seeks to modify this conception, and to bring the reli- conscious ; . gious consciousness of union and communion with God, into connexion with the moral self-determination of the individual. Here we are directly concerned only with the relation of man chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 367 to man, which is implied in his absolute severance of Law from Morality. In order to see the defect of Kant's ethical theory in this respect, we have only to develop what has been already said of the way in which he subordinates the Jus Civile to the Jus Naturale. If individual right presupposes social unity, if the rights and obligations of persons in relation to each other, i.e., of persons who, as individuals, are conceived to be exclusive of each other, can only exist upon the basis of a common social ■or political life, it is impossible that men should be regarded as absolutely separated in their moral development any more than in their legal rights. It is true that, as each one has the con- sciousness of an exclusive self, so he lives an inner life of his own into which no other can intrude. Hence, it has been a main objection to the application of the organic idea to society that society has not an individual self-consciousness. But the question is, how has the individual such a self-consciousness developed in him ? Could it exist in him as isolated from his fellows, and if not, in what sense is it an individual .self-consciousness ? Is it other than, or separable from, a con- sciousness of relations to other selves ? Are not men as self-conscious beings so related that they recognise each other as different, only as they are, at the same time, conscious of their unity ? If it is said that, after all, a self-conscious being is alone with himself, and that, to use Schopenhauer's phrase, for each individual " the world is only his own idea," may we not answer that the world is his idea only because, and in so far as, his consciousness of it is something which does not belong to him as a mere individual ? If so, then to say that we can be conscious of a world of objects, is the same thing as to say that these objects become conscious of themselves in us. If the conception of a world which is not relative to a self is meaningless, equally so is the conception of a self-consciousness which is not consciousness of anything but its own states. When we have rejected the former conception, we must not think that we have thereby taken away the reality of the 368 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K TL world, of which we are conscious, — as if it had now become merely our idea, in the same sense in which a passing imagina- tion is contrasted as our idea with a reality outside of us. The distinction of these two things remains in all its force; only it is a distinction of which we could not be conscious, unless as knowing subjects we could apprehend something else than the self to which we refer " our ideas " ; and unless we had a thought which is not in this sense exclusively ours — a thought, therefore, to which we necessarily conceive the object as related, a thought, indeed, with which the reality of the object is essentially bound up. and that, xhe difficulty of such a consistent Idealism seems to therefore, m- <> reach its highest point when we consider the relations of self- dividuals are life. conscious beings. For here we have, as it would seem, inner lives on both sides, which are reciprocally manifested only through an external medium, and which are not, therefore, in any direct contact with each other. How can we say that in any sense there is in such lives a unity which transcends and subordinates their difference ? Do we not doubtfully infer the inner life of another from what he lets us see outwardly, which may be more or less deceptive, and which we may more or less skilfully interpret ? And how can our communion in such circumstances be so intimate as to constitute a common moral life ? Is it not the case that we get knowledge of the life of others by interpreting the outward manifestations of that life on the analogy of our own ? And, if so, must we not first experience in ourselves all that we can discover in them ? we know Now, in a sense it is true that the inner life is the only key spirit on the wrkno e w ms as to tne outer - We cannot find without us, that to which we "' :,tu '' have not the key within us. But it is not true that we discern our own thoughts and feelings prior to our knowledge of the thoughts and feelings of others. The supposition that we look outward to see matter, and inward to see mind, and that, if we see mind without, it is only by an inference, in which we interpret the material expression of the thoughts and feelings CHAP. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 369 of others on the analogy of our own, looks at first very plaus- ible ; but it is based upon a fundamental mistake. For, in the first place, the process by which the feelings of the sensitive self are referred to a material object, is not essentially distin- guished from the process by which they are referred to an object which is also a self-conscious subject. In both cases equally, there must be a process of interpretation, in which, in Kant's language, we go beyond what is given, and bind together passing data of sense under the conception of an object. In both cases, the elements given in sense are by an act of thought taken out of their immediate existence in feeling, and connected together in a relation which is independent of time. In this view, it is as untrue to say that a permanent material object is given to us without a process of interpretation, as that a spiritual object is so given ; all that can be said is that, in the latter case, the process is much more complex than in the former. It is altogether an illusion by which we take the body of a man as at once given in perception, and his soul as reached by inference from that body. Such an illusion may naturally arise from our habitual dualistic way of conceiving soul and body as two quite independent existences, which is apt to obliterate or conceal the continuity of the process of interpretation, by which all objects come to be known to us. In this respect the advance of scientific thought, which Bariy oonfu- F o > S10 n of spirit- teaches men to distinguish one form of reality from another, is mtteSai, and apt to make them lose hold of a truth which was contained in abstract divi- sion of them, their primitive anthropomorphic view of the world. Tor, in that view, every thing and being was taken as at once material and spiritual, at once as an object in space and time, and as a being gifted with life and will. Or, perhaps, we should rather say that man's earliest consciousness confuses all the grades of being together, and that it is a later development of thought which distinguishes these grades from each other, and even hardens the distinction between them till the sense of ' their relationship is almost lost. In so far, then, as any object VOL. II. 2 A In one senae we interpret both by the consciousness of self. 370 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book n. is known by a process of interpretation or inference, all objects are so known ; and from this point of view, it may be said (though with an inaccuracy which we shall presently notice) that in all our knowledge that which is inward is used as a key to that which is outward. For the categories are just elements in the. idea of self-consciousness, which we use to unlock the secrets of the world ; and we are quite as much going beyond our inner self and using the analogy of what is within to interpret that which is without, when we refer our perceptions to inorganic substances acting on each other in space and time, as when we see in them the manifestation of the thought and will of self-conscious beings like ourselves. In both cases, we are equally unconscious of inference ; for certain perceptions seem to be as immediately and intuitively referred to objects which are living or conscious, as certain others are interpreted as referring to objects which are neither living nor conscious : indeed, as already indicated, it is only by reflexion that we learn to distinguish the two cases, and to separate the inorganic from the organic, and, again, the merely sentient from the self-conscious. In truth, whenever we dis- cern that the categories of substance or cause are but fragments of the idea of self-consciousness, we can easily see how the mind should in the first instance find it easier to give its whole nature to the object, than to give a part of it. But that con- But this leads me further to say that the very idea of sciousness ^ " for"°inttoe interpretation or inference, as it is employed in the above state- consciousness ment, involves an inaccuracy. It supposes consciousness to be of material and spiritual i n complete possession of itself, and then, by aid of what it finds in itself, to proceed to interpret the object. But, when- ever we analyse this idea, whenever we consider that what is to be interpreted is not, in the first instance, an object given as such, but can only be a sensation ; and further that it is the interpretation itself which first makes the object exist for us, we see that the very word interpretation has a false suggestion in it, the suggestion, viz., that the subject chap. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 3.7 1 is already conscious of an object, as possessing certain definite .characteristics, and that it merely seeks to discover a further meaning in it. But a sensation as such is not something separate from the feeling subject, for the feeling subject has not yet separated itself from it. The beginning of such separa- tion is the transition from a feeling into the consciousness of an object felt; and this transition is, on the other side, the beginning of the existence of the subject, as a subject which in distinction from and relation to such an object has become conscious of itself. From this it follows that self-consciousness, though in its dawn it cannot be separated from consciousness of the object, is ideally posterior to that consciousness ;. and, further, that it can only grow with the consciousness of the object, and is always a return into self from' it. . Thus, though an object can only exist for a subject, yet self-consciousness is limited by the consciousness of the. object. Hence it may .be truly said that we find ourselves in others before we find, our- selves in ourselves, and that the full consciousness of self comes only through the consciousness of beings without us who are also selves. Self-consciousness in one is kindled by self-con- sciousness in another, and a social community of life is presup- posed in our first consciousness of ourselves as individual persons. It is true, indeed, that in his first return upon self, the indi- vidual is conscious rather of opposition to, than of community with, the other selves to whom he finds himself in relation. Social community is the presupposition of the individuality of the self-conscious being, but just for that reason it is not at first present to him as an object of thought. Hence the inde- pendence of the individual, though rooted in his dependence, takes, in the first instance, a form which seems to exclude de- pendence. But we should not be misled by the self-seeking and self-will, which are the first manifestations of selfhood, so as to forget that the individual's consciousness of himself as an independent self is essentially a return upon self from the consciousness of other selves which it implies ; or to lose sight 372 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book n. of the fact that, in denying the social unity with others out of which it springs, self-consciousness becomes self-contradictory. For, that consciousness of independence of other beings and things, which comes with the rise of self-consciousness, is a con- sequence of the' fact, not that the self really has an existence in itself apart from the object, but rather contrariwise that the self has found itself in the object, and, therefore, is not really limited by it. This fact, however, is naturally misinterpreted in the first instance by the subject, who is conscious of himself in his distinction from the world, and especially from other self-conscious beings with whom he is socially united, but does not reflect on the relativity by which this independent selfhood is mediated, and especially on the social unity which it pre- supposes ; and who, therefore, can see no claim which other beings and things have upon him to be used otherwise than as means to his own ends. Three ways of Now there are three different points of view, which arise from conceiving the sSaHmity to a mor e or less perfect comprehension of the idea thus suggested, nature°of as to the relation of self-conscious beings as such. There is man. the point of view which Hobbes takes up in describing the state of nature, in which the social unity of men as self- conscious is entirely left out of consideration ; a point of view which involves the negation of both law and morality, or allows them to come in merely as the result of an external power which suppresses the egoism of individuals. There is, secondly, the point of view adopted by Kant, in which society appears as an aggregate of independent moral beings, who have rights and obligations towards each other — in which, therefore, both law and morality are recognised, but are kept entirely apart from each other as the separate spheres of the inner and the outer life. And there is, finally, the point of view of what the Germans call Sittlichheit, in which the social unity is recognised as prior to the independent personality of its members, and in which, therefore, morality and law are regarded as springing from a common root, and capable only of a relative distinction. chap. VI. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 373 Hobbes, in his conception of the state of nature, accurately The views ° f x •" Hobbes and of represents the first of these points of view. His description of Kant ' the . natural " right to all things," which springs out of the infinite character of the ' desire for gain and glory,' and which, in a finite world, can only produce a helium omnium in omnes, corresponds to the account given above * of the natural egoism which marks the earliest stage of man's consciousness of social relations. The theory of Hobbes, in fact, shows the essential contradiction which lies in the very nature of egoism ; for the ego, in its return upon self from the objective world, is at first negatively related to that from which the return is made. Hence it is at once absolute in its sense of independence, and universal in its claims. The " war of all against all " is thus just the expression of the contradiction of the natural selfism of man as in his finitude directly claiming the infinite for himself, i.e., claiming the infinite for himself as negatively related to that, in unity with which alone he can escape his finitude. From the point of view of Kant, as we have seen, this purely negative relation of individuals passes into a reciprocity of limitation, which at the same time is regarded as self -limitation, and therefore as recon- cileable with the freedom or unlimited self-determination of each individual. Each, as unlimited, as homo noumenon, is thus regarded as laying down the limits for himself and for all others as phenomena. Or, each in his inner life is purely self- determined, and in his outer life determines himself as limited by others. Thus, in the outer life the principle of self-determina- tion shows itself only in a negative way, for these individuals are conceived as standing in external relation to each other. But, in the inner life, the principle of self-determination can show itself positively, for there each one is alone with him- self. In the inner life men cannot come into conflict, because they do not come into contact at all ; each, therefore, can by his own activity establish a perfect harmony of his particular * 1 Cf. p. 230 seq. 374 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book ii. with his universal nature. But, in the outer life, such conflict is inevitable, and no one can secure even his rights as an individual, except by uniting with other individuals to establish a power armed with force to protect them from each other. The thM We have seen the difficulties which arise when we think of view. rf n the a mo U raf y this power as established either without the. will, or by the- me. ""' will, of the individuals who are submitted to it. In the former case, we are obliged to have recourse to political slavery as our only security for freedom ; in the latter case, we are obliged to regard as the only rightful source of government, a unity of individual wills which could only bean empirical coin- cidence, and which is practically impossible. We are driven, therefore, of necessity to view the State as the manifestation of a volontt gbnkrale, which is not, and never can be, the conscious volontt de tous, but which determines the limits of the conscious will of each and all. But to admit this, is to admit that, by virtue of their consciousness of themselves as individual persons' responsible to themselves, or even as the very condition of the possibility of such a self-consciousness, men stand in a social relation to each other ; it is to admit that the consciousness of being a law to themselves can be developed in them only on the basis of their consciousness of a social law, to which as indi- vidual's they are all subjected. In this point of view, therefore, the inward and the outward life can no longer be separated ; but rather the former grows up in relation to the latter, and must speedily empty itself of all meaning, if it is not kept in continual connection therewith. The individual is a law to himself, just because he is conscious of himself as a member of a society whose law is his law ; and, if he withdraws into him-, self so as to lose consciousness of this relation, his inner life and its inner law are emptied of their meaning. Beason, as the law of a merely individual or subjective life, rules in an empty house ; for, with the separation of the subjective from the objective, the former sinks into the bare tautology of self- 1 See above, p. 356. GHAP. vi. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 3V5 consciousness, a pure analytic judgment ; and even that, as Kant himself admits, is possible only in relation to the syn- thetic judgment of the objective consciousness. Now, this does not mean that the movement of reflexion, by ^JjjjjJ"^ a which subjective morality arises, has no value. If the inward SansMon'to' , . n • , , . . a higher social law springs irom the outward and returns to it, yet it does not morality. return without change. The simple self-identification of the citizen with his State, which was characteristic of ancient patriotism,— a self-identification in which there was no thought of the difference of inner and outer law, — involved a confusion of the accidental with the necessary in morality. But these dif- ferent elements had to be separated, when it was recognised that the law to which man is subjected derives its authority from his own reason. It was, therefore, by this reflexion that the special ties of family and nation were separated from, and subordinated to, the universal bond of humanity. At the same time, though morality may draw back to its source in the self- consciousness which constitutes our nature as men, this regress of thought can be conceived only as a movement of transition : nor can we see the full meaning of the transition, unless we follow it to the point where a higher social life springs out of the self-abnegation of the individual as such. For the emptiness of a purely inner moral life, which asserts itself as absolutely self-determined and complete in itself against all external law and all social constraint, contains a contradiction, which cannot be solved till what was con- demned as external, — the external world and especially the external organism of society, — are seen to be not external to our inner life, but rather to be that in which the principle of it can alone be realised. The Christian doctrine of self-sacri- fice and devotion to humanity is but the necessary comple- ment and completion of the Stoic self-sufficiency and self- determination. The result then is, that the Legal and the Moral, like the. ™£fj™: •outward and the inward, cannot be abstractly separated from and morality - ^ 76 KANT'S ETHICAL WOEKS. book n. each other. Their separation is only a part of that differentia- tion of the ethical life of man into various spheres of activity, which, however, both presuppose as their basis, and anticipate as their end, their organic unity as manifestations of a life which is determined by one principle. Thus, while the separation of right and duty holds good in the system of what is called the Jus Privatum, so that one man's private rights correspond to the duties or obligations of another, and vice, versa ; and while therefore, in this sphere, both right and duty are the result of the reciprocal limitation of persons, who, within these limits, live an independent life ; the case is quite different when we come to the substantial relations of the State or the Family, wherein the individual is made the organ of a social principle which is above his individual will, as well as above the will of the others to whom he stands in relation. Here right and duty become coincident, as, e.g., the magistrate's right is to administer the law, which he is bound to administer, and the citizen's duty is to serve the State, which therefore pro- tects his right to all the liberties or privileges of his special office. Here, therefore, we may say that the right of the individual is only to his sphere of duty ; and the right of the community over the individual is to have from him a service which is the whole content of his individual life. In fact, just in so far as either the State or the Family is that form of the union of men which is presupposed in their differences and relations as individual persons, — i.e., just in so far as either of these forms is the ultimate social universal, — it is that as against which the individuals have no right, but rather that from which all their rights are derived; because it is the source of all the duties in view of which alone they have rights. In modern times, however, neither the State nor the Family any longer represents the highest moral unity of which we can conceive; although, as a matter of fact, no higher unity has yet taken an organised form. But the very anticipation of such a unity, however vague, leads to a CHAP. VI. PRINCIPLES OF JURISPRUDENCE. 377 kind of emancipation of the individual from the State and the Family, and so causes an apparent separation of Law from Morals. Connected with this separation in Kant is the way in which 3f e t ] ivee , x ** theories of penal justice is represented as pure retribution, without refer- mTyU^eoOT ence either to the improvement of the culprit or the well-being of the society. Kant's rejection of the preventative and educa- tional theories of punishment directly connects itself with his abstract opposition of right, as the -manifestation of the universal principle in man, to happiness as the satisfaction of his particulur desires. Penalty is viewed as the recoil of wrong upon the transgressor, the manifestation of the contra- diction that lies in a wrong as the action of a rational being ; and thus it is absolutely dissociated from any end except the vindication of right. But, if we conceive that the right of individuals as persons springs from their relation to the social unity of which they are organs, we cannot separate the vindica- tion of right from the maintenance of the social unity against the caprice of individuals, or the maintenance of the social unity from the education ' of the individual members of it. Such an educative punishment is not, indeed, to be conceived as consisting in the mere check upon the inclination to do certain illegal acts which is produced by terror of the conse- quences. For the highest educational result of , punishment is to awake a consciousness, not simply that the crime gets or will get punishment, but that it is worthy of punishment. It is to make men fear the guilt, and not the penalty. On the other hand, when we regard individuals, in the particular life for which their special capacities and desires fit them, as organs of the ethical principle which expresses itself in society, we can no longer dissociate their happiness — which lies just in the realisation of themselves as beings with these capacities and desires — from their realisation of the ethical end. The abstract rigour of Kant is the effect of his dualism, and must share the fgpte of that dualism. If we cannot divide man into an 3*78" KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II.- animal and a rational self-consciousness, neither can we ab- solutely separate the gratification of the desires from the attainment of the moral end. This subject, however, cannot be fully discussed until we have considered Kant's Doctrine of Virtue. 379 K CHAPTEE VII. APPLIED ETHICS. THE SYSTEM OF MORAL VIRTUES. ANT'S conception of Morals, like his conception of Law virtue and involves constraint or compulsion, but it is a compulsion exercised not upon others, but upon one's self; i.e., a compul- sion of one's own inclinations and desires as a natural being, which is rendered possible by the consciousness of law derived from our rational nature. Such self- compulsion involves an effort and struggle which is expressed in the word virtue or moral fortitude ; though when we regard the absoluteness of the law, and the fact that it is laid upon us by no foreign power but only by our own reason, we are inclined rather to use the word duty. Now, in considering legal obligations, we saw that they were Morality im- plies only self- obligations of which, because they concern outward acts, it is compulsion, possible to compel the fulfilment. Moral obligations, on the other hand, we cannot be compelled by others to fulfil, for they concern the motives or ends of our action. No one can make me have an end except myself, but I can compel myself to have certain ends ; and, indeed, I am under obligation so to compel myself, because these ends are fixed for me by my own reason. Such self-compulsion, therefore, is consistent with freedom, and we may say that " the less a man is capable of physical compulsion and the more he is capable of moral compulsion, the more free is he." 1 »B. IX. 225 note; H. VII. 185. 380 KANT'S ETHICAL WOEKS. book n. Iwauetfon * can compel myself to have an end, and I am bound so to from the duoed compel myself, i.e., there is an end or ends which it is my duty •determSing to have, — this is the conception on which the whole doctrine the maxims. ' . of Virtue is based. To see what. this conception involves, we must observe that ends are always self-chosen. " Every act has its end, and as no one can have an end without himself choosing it, so it is always by an act of freedom, and never by a result of nature, that we have any end in our actions." At the same time there are objects, which are set before us by our sensuous nature, and which, therefore, as natural beings all men are inclined to choose as their ends ; but these are not ends which we are bound to choose, not ends which are duties. How, then, do we reach the conceptions of those latter ends ? It is obvious, according to the principles already laid down, that such ends cannot be directly and immediately presented to us as objects. For, 'when the maxim of our conduct is determined by any object, we have not the autonomy but the heteronomy of the will. In Law, indeed, where we have to do only with the outward aspect of action, the ends of action are supposed to be left to every one to choose as he pleases, and the law only binds him to realise these ends in such a way as is consistent with the freedom of others ; but -in Morals, not merely the action, but the motive, must be consistent with the law. We must, therefore, in this case, determine what the objective ends are to be from a consideration of the maxims or subjective principles of action, according to which the law binds us to act. We must develop the ideas of the ends, which it is a duty to pursue, from the idea of duty itself : or, if this be impossible, we must at least determine the ends we ought to pursue in accordance with that idea. S b ht and n ob° £ There is, therefore, one principle of duty, though there may 1 rtrtue° na ° f De many obligations or " duties of virtue," corresponding to the different objects which as ends can be brought under the moral principle ; as also there are many " obligations or duties of !R. IX. 229; H. VII. 188. chap. vii. the SYSTEM OF MOEAL VIRTUES. 381 right" which correspond to the different relations into which persons may be brought to each other. What, then, are the ends which it is a duty to have ? These, The two mora! J ' ends. Kant answers, are our own perfection and the happiness of others. "We may not say, our own happiness or the perfection of others. Not our own happiness, for happiness is an end which all men have by reason of the impulse of nature within them ; and " what everyone inevitably wills of himself cannot be brought under the idea of duty ; for duty involves a necessity laid upon us to choose an end which we do not immediately wish for." And not the perfection of others ; for " the perfection of another man, as a person, consists in this, that he is able to select his ends for himself according to his own ideas of duty; and it is a contradiction to demand or require of me as a duty that I should do something for him which none but himself can do." 1 Now, perfection is an ambiguous word, which is sometimes T f he e S^ g ' used for the unity of all the elements implied in the constitution m^ case ° of a thing, and sometimes for the agreement of all the qualities of a thing with an end. In the former sense, there can be only one perfection in a thing : in the latter, there may be more than one, as a thing may be regarded in relation to more than one end. It is with the latter kind of perfection that we have especially to do here, though in a sense the former comes into connexion with it ; for man's characteristic is not to abide by what is given to him by nature, but to set ends to himself, and further to be subject as regards all these ends, to the limiting conditions of the moral law, the realisation of which is the highest, end of all. His duty to himself, to strive after his own perfection, implies therefore, first, the development of all his faculties ; so that, as far as may be, he may " rise above the rudeness of nature and at the expense of the animal in him develop the humanity, whereby alone he is capable of choosing ends for himself " ; z and, secondly, the cultivation of the purity of his will, till he arrives at a purely virtuous temper of mind, * iR. IX. 230 ; H. VII. 189. 2 E. IX. 232; H. VII. 190. 382 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II. i.e., till he attains the power of making the law itself the motive as well as the guide of his conduct. This is sometimes spoken of with doubtful propriety as the culture of the moral sense ; for the word " sense " would rather suggest a feeling that precedes and gives rise to the consciousness of moral law, than one that follows from it. in what sense Our duty to others, on the other hand, is to seek their we nave to « ' h e a pp r 4ess e of happiness, nor can we balance against that any duty to seek end. 8 aB ° u our own happiness ; though indirectly it may be our duty to do what furthers our own happiness, in so far as the elements of well-being are necessary to us in order to enable us to do our duty. On the other hand, our duty to others does not always mean that we are to do for them what they think for their happiness ; often it may be our duty to refuse them what they desire, if we think it would do them harm. Not, indeed, that we are to make their perfection an end ; for, as already said, no one can secure that for another. In a negative way, however, we are bound to aim not only at their physical but at their moral well-being, in so far as to avoid everything that might put a stumbling-block in their way, or, in other words, every- thing that would be likely, " the nature of man being what it is, to mislead them into actions for which their conscience might afterwards give them pain." x In both these cases, we have an end which is a duty, and which is set before us by the law itself, which commands us, on the one hand, to do for ourselves all that we would will that others should do for themselves ; and, on the other hand, to do for others all that we would wish them to do for us. Duties of We have, however, to observe, here a special distinction narrower and L witoobiiga- between tne "obligations of right" and. the "obligations of virtue." The former are obligations to do, or refrain from, certain definite actions, while the latter are only obligations to be guided in our actions by certain maxims. , Hence the former are said to be of narrower or stricter obligation, and the latter iR.IX. 240; H. VII. 197. tions. .chap. vii. THE. SYSTEM OF MORAL VIRTUES. 3' 8 3 of wider or less strict obligation. By this is meant that, in the latter case, there is more room left for the play of freewill ; for, while we lay down absolutely a priori that it is our duty to have a certain end in view, we cannot definitely determine in what way we should seek that end, and how far we should go in action with reference to it. We cannot, indeed, allow ourselves to make exceptions to the law, or to regard the end as one which we need not always have in view ; but it may often be a question how far, in the pursuit of one of the ends which it is our duty to pursue, we should be limited by the others, how far, e.g., philan- thropy should take precedence of domestic duties.. Hence, it is here that there is a place for Casuistry to weigh one, duty against another, and determine which is the more important. In general, we can only say that " the more indeterminate the duty and the more imperfect the obligation of a man to an action, and the nearer, nevertheless, he brings the measure of its observance (in his temper of mind) to the strict obligation (of Law), the more perfectly virtuous is his action." 1 It follows from this that we can speak of merit as a positive Merit is pos- sible only as quantity, only in relation to the imperfect duties or obligations ^** e of virtue. Begarding them in this light, " the fulfilment of them Sons': ° bUga ~ is merit — + a ; but the transgression of them is not demerit, or guilt = — a, but merely absence of merit = 0, — unless, indeed, the subject has adopted it as a principle to disregard such duties." 2 Between virtue and vice we thus have moral weakness. To fulfil the obligations which correspond to the legal rights of others in- volves in itself no merit ; but, if they are fulfilled from. reverence from the law, there is merit in such reverence. We may add that in the case of meritorious acts there is " a subjectvie principle of ethical reward ;" since the pleasure we have in doing them is something over and above the self-contentment which comes of doing our strict duty. This feeling of pleasure, however, is weakened when, in seeking for the well-being of others, we have to disregard their wishes, while it is enhanced * IR. IX. 236 ; H. VII. 194. 2 R. IX. 236 ; H. VII. 194. 384 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK ii- when we seek their happiness according to their own views of what it is. 1 remlrf s e on ral Kant calls attention to three general principles of the meta- Lto h o/duty.' physic of Ethics, which may be laid down for our guidance in the treatment of the doctrine of virtue. 2 The first is that for each duty there cannot be more than one ground of obligation. This follows from the fact that moral proofs are based on con- ceptions, and not on a priori perceptions, which, as we see in the case of Mathematics, enable us to approach the conclusion we seek in many ways. To enforce the moral duty of truth by arguing, first, from the injury the lie does to others, and then, again, from the worthlessness of the liar and his loss of self- respect, is to confuse the duty of truth with the duty of beneficence. To add bad reasons to good, is only to weaken the latter. In the second place, the difference of virtue and vice must never be treated as one of degree, but always as one of kind. To say that virtue is the mean between two vices, e.g., that good husbandry or thrift is the mean between avarice and prodigality, is to make it appear as if by a gradual lessen- ing or increase of expense, we could always change our conduct from virtuous to vicious or from vicious to virtuous. But the guilt of prodigality is that all the means of well-being are sought with a view to the mere enjoyment which is found in the use of them ; and the guilt of avarice is that they are sought and retained with a view to the mere enjoyment which is found in the possession of them ; whereas the virtue of good husbandry is that we use, or refrain from using, them with reference to the ends of our life as natural and also moral beings. Lastly, we must not estimate our ethical duties by our capacity to satisfy the law, but our capacity by our duties. We must not look to our empirical knowledge of ourselves or of men in general, and say " this is all that can be expected of us " : we must look to the idea of Humanity and the Categorical Imperative of duty, as fixing the standard below which we ought not to fall i R. IX. 237 ; H. VII. 194. * R , IX , 251 ; H. VII. 206. CHAP. VII. THE SYSTEM OP MOEAL VIRTUES. 385 Virtue may be described as a habit of action, but we must Virtue i9 n , ot habit simply, be careful to note that it is a " free habit." For the word but /™ habit - habit by itself rather suggests the idea of a tendency to act in a certain definite way, which is the mere product of repeti- tion, and which as such would have no moral character. Virtue, on the contrary, is a " habit of determining ourselves in action by the idea of the law." x Hence, we may say that " virtue is always advancing, and yet always beginning again from the beginning ; the former because, objectively considered, it is an unattainable ideal, to which nevertheless it is always our duty to be approximating : the latter because, subjectively considered, its basis is found in the nature of man, which is subject to desires and impulses, and which cannot, so long as it is in- fluenced by them, be brought to the perfect rest and equilibrium of a virtue which adheres steadfully to the maxims it has once adopted. For when human nature is not rising, it is sinking, because moral maxims cannot, like technical maxims, become grounded in habit ; indeed, if the acts of virtue ever did become habitual, the subject would lose all freedom in the choice of his maxims, and thus his actions would cease to have the character of duty." Duties, as we have already seen, are divided into duties to Duties to God and to beings ■ ourselves and to other men. Duties to God and to beings ^^eiSed. lower than men, are excluded ; for, as we shall see more fully in the sequel, all duties are, in a certain sense, duties to God, regarded as the Legislator whose will is one with the moral law ; but, for the same reason, there are no special duties toward Him. On the other hand, what are called our duties toward the animals are really duties toward ourselves. For, " cruel treatment of animals deadens our sympathy in their suffering, and weakens and gradually destroys a natural pre- disposition which is very serviceable to morality in our relations to other men. On the other hand, the swift painless slaughter of animals, or the exaction from them of labours which are not IE. IX. 256; H. VII. 211. VOL. II. 2 B 386 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK n. beyond their capacity, is quite within the rights of man over them ; though not their subjection to painful experiments, for mere behoof of speculation." 1 In a similar spirit Kant answers that it is part of our duty to ourselves not to destroy beautiful objects ; because to do so " weakens or destroys a feeling in man which, though not for itself moral, yet does much to pro- mote a feeling of sensibility in harmony with morality." 2 now there j n considering our duties to ourselves, Kant comes again can be duties ° ' ° to ourselves. U p 0n £ ne difficulty of conceiving how the same thing can be subject and object of obligation : and, as before, he solves it by pointing out that man contemplates himself in two characters, as a being whose nature is sense, an animal among the other animals ; and, again, " as a being whose nature is reason, (i.e., not merely a rational being ; for the theoretical faculty of reason might be the property of a mere animal), a being, therefore, whose nature cannot be measured by sense, but can be under- stood only when we look at it in its morally practical relations, in which the incomprehensible property of freedom reveals itself by the influence of reason upon the inner legislation of the will." 3 Man, therefore, as a natural being or phenomenon, is subjected to obligations towards humanity in his own person, towards the homo noumenon in him, which we may divide into negative and positive obligations. The former are confined to the preserva- tion of moral health (ad esse), while the latter point to moral improvement (ad melius esse). "We may further divide these according to another principle, into duties of man towards him- self as an animal who is also a moral being, and duties to himself purely as a moral being. feivefas ° ur ' Kant nrst treats of man ' s negative (or perfect) duties to anSfafSure. himself as an animal. These correspond to the three impulses, which lead to self-preservation, to the maintenance of the species, and to the maintenance of his faculty for the purposeful use of his powers, and for the animal enjoyment of life : to which are i R. IX. 300 ; H. VII. 250. 2 R _ id _ 3 R. IX. 268 ; H. VII. 222. CHAP. Vli. THE SYSTEM OP MORAL VIRTUES. 387 opposed the vices of suicide, unnatural sensual indulgence, and inordinate enjoyment of the pleasures of the table. In the treatment of these virtues and vices, Kant simply follows out the principle that man must regard his physical life as a means to his existence as a person. The Stoic assumption of a right of suicide, or withdrawal from existence, was based on a true principle ; " but that very courage and strength of soul which made them rise superior to the fear of death in the conscious- ness that there is something in man which he must esteem higher than life, should have been a motive to refrain from destroying a being endowed with such power of surmounting even the strongest sensuous impulses.'' For, " to extinguish the subject of morality in our own person is as good as to extinguish, so far as in us lies, the existence of morality itself." 1 In like manner, an excess in eating and drinking, which deadens our faculties, is to be regarded as subjection of the man in us to the animal. The negative duties of man to himself as a moral being, are Negative o *-* duties to our- the opposites of the three vices of lying, avarice, and false ? ) ^^ amoral humility. The first of these is the greatest outrage upon the dignity of man in our own person. " A man who does not believe what he himself says to another, (even if it were a mere ideal person) has even less worth than if he were a mere thing ; for a good use can be made of the qualities of a thing ; but to communicate one's thoughts to another through words which (intentionally) contain the opposite of that which the speaker thinks, is to make language realise an end directly opposed to the natural design of our faculty of communication, and so to cast contempt upon our own personality : for the liar exhibits himself as a mere semblance of humanity, and not as a true man at all." 2 In like manner, avarice is not merely mistaken thrift, but the slavish subjection of ourselves to the goods of fortune. And false humility is a forgetfulness of the truth that, however humble a man ought to be when he compares * ' R. IX. 274 ; H. VII. 228. 2 R. IX. 283 ; H. VII. 235. 388 KANT'S ETHICAL "WORKS. BOOK II. The value of self- himself with the moral law, he is yet as a person above all price, and, therefore, ought not to crouch before his fellows as if he were only fit to be their instrument, and had no self- centred life of his own. " He who makes himself into a worm, cannot complain if others trample. upon him." Even extreme demonstrations of religious awe, such as the prostrations of Eastern devotees, involve a sacrifice of human dignity ; and the same is true of the invocation of the divine in images set before our eyes. " Eor in such a worship we humiliate ourselves, not before an ideal which our reason sets up for us, but before an idol which we have made for ourselves." 1 Finally, under this division of his subject, Kant remarks that the duties of man all rest on his being the " born judge of him- self," a conception which he may help out by the conception of God as an ideal judge who speaks within him, and so by regard- ing his duties as divine commands. The first of all duties towards ourselves is, therefore, that which is expressed in the Socratic maxim " Know thyself," which is to be understood morally in the sense of a command to search our hearts, and listen to the voice of conscience. For only " descent into the hell of self-knowledge is the way to the heaven of divine ex- cellence." Nur die Hollen-fahrt der Selbsterkenntniss bahnt den Weg zur Vergotterung). 2 positive The positive duties of man to himself are simply the duties duties to our- x x •* selves as moral £ developing his bodily and mental powers, and, above all, seeking to increase the purity of his moral consciousness — obligations to which we have already referred. 3 Duties to Our duties to others may be divided into those the discharge others. Re- & spectandiove. f w hi c h gives rise to an obligation on the part of others, and those the discharge of which gives rise to no such obligation. The former are accompanied by the feeling of love, the latter by that of respect. These feelings may be separated : we may love without respecting, or respect without loving; but "normally J R. IX. 292; H. VII. 243. 'K. IX. 297; H. VII. 248. 3 See above, p. 381 seq. CHAP. vil. THE SYSTEM OF MORAL VIRTUES. 389 they are essentially united as in one duty, though in such a way that sometimes the one and sometimes the other may con- stitute the subjective principle to which the other is- attached as accessory." 1 Using a physical analogy we may regard our- selves as the denizens of a -moral- world, in which the due com- bination of rational beings is produced by the combined action of attractive and repulsive forces. " By means of the principle of mutual love, men are called on reciprocally to approach each other, while by the principle of the respect which they owe to each other, they are called on to preserve a certain distance from each other." If either of these great moral forces were to fail, then, to use the words of Heller, " the void (of immorality) would be opened wide, to swallow up the whole kingdom of (moral) beings like a drop of water." 2 We cannot, however, say that love or respect as mere feel-- They are not duties as mere ings are duties ; it is the maxim of benevolence, of which well- ^"g;^ doing is the consequence, that is obligatory, and in like ewl ' manner it is the maxim of respect, i.e., of limiting our self- estimation by regard to the dignity of humanity in another person, which we are bound to act upon. The latter is a negative duty, and so has something of that strict character which belongs to the " duties of right " ; for it simply bids us not to treat others as means, while the former has rather the character of an imperfect obligation, seeing it commands us positively to regard them as ends, and to adopt their aims as as our own, so far as they are not immoral. The maxim of benevolence is based on the moral principle Duties of love x x or bene- of universality, which permits us practically to wish well to volence - ourselves, only on the condition that we wish well to every other ; for " so alone is our maxim qualified for a place in a universal legislation." The duties that fall under it are the duties of beneficence, of gratitude, and of sympathy. Of these, Kant dwells with special force on the duty of gratitude. ' Thankfulness," he says, " is specially to be called a holy duty, » E. IX. 307 ; H. VII. 257. 2 K. IX. 308 ; H. VII. 257. 390 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. B00K ll - i.e., one the violation of which (as by a scandalous example) may annihilate the moral motive to beneficence in its very principle. For ' holy ' is a term applied to that moral object in respect of which our obligation can never be fully satisfied by any act proportioned to it. . . . But we can never by any return fully acquit ourselves of the obligation of a bene- volent act of which we have been the object ; for the receiver of a benefit in such a case cannot take away the advantage which the giver has, as having made the first step in bene- ficence." 1 On the duty of sympathy Kant again calls our attention to the fact that it is a practical sympathy which is required of us ; since a mere passive sympathy with the woes of others felt by one who could do nothing to relieve them, would simply double the evil suffered. In this view, Kant expresses approval of the Stoic who sought to have a friend rather that he might give than that he might receive help from him, but who, nevertheless, when he found that friend suffering under a calamity, from which nothing could be done to relieve him, said, " "What does it matter to me ? " respeot°or After a few remarks which have no special importance, as to other™ 06 £or the vices opposed to these virtues, i.e., the vices of envy, unthank- fulness, and delight in the suffering of another, {Schadenfreude) Kant goes on to the duties of Eespect, which arise from " the recognition in other men of a worth for which there is no price or equivalent." ' We are bound to respect the dignity of Humanity even in the degraded and vicious ; and, therefore, we must condemn all punishment by mutilations which " not only dishonour the criminal, but make the spectator also to blush for the shame of belonging to a species which one can venture to treat in such a fashion." 2 We are bound for the same reason to show respect for the understanding of others, and to take care, even in correcting their errors, to bring to light the element of truth in that which misled them. The vices opposed to due respect for humanity are pride, evil-speaking, and readiness to i R, IX. 316 ; H. VII. 263. » R. IX. 326 ; H. VII. 272. CHAP. Til. the SYSTEM OE MORAL VIRTUES. 391 mock and insult. Pride desires from others an honour it refuses to them, and shows, therefore, a spirit which is really- abject and mean ; " for the proud man would not claim that others should hold themselves cheap before himself, if he had not a secret feeling that, if fortune reversed their relations, he Would not find it hard to crouch before others, and to expect no respect from them." Evil-speaking, as a persistent tendency to invent or spread calumnious reports, is a lowering of the respect for humanity ; " for he who practices it must finally cast a shadow of unworthiness upon the species itself." In like manner, a tendency to scoff bitterly at others, and to rejoice over their error or calamity, has something devilish about it, and betrays an extreme want of respect for the dignity of man. Kant then refers to the duties which are obligatory, not by The ideal of ° J J friendship reason of the general relations of man to man, but by reason of thropy ilan " special relations of individuals, as determined by age, sex, or circumstances ; but they are beyond the scope of a science that deals with the metaphysical basis of morals, since they cannot be determined upon a priori principles. At the utmost they can be brought into such a science only "as an application of the pure principles of duty to empirical cases, which are em- ployed as it were to schematise these principles, and so to fit them for practical usefulness." 2 He confines himself, therefore, to a few remarks upon friendship, as "a union of two persons by reciprocal love and esteem, in which each is equally, loved and esteemed by the other." "A perfect friendship is a mere Idea through a practically necessary Idea"; 3 for, how can we expect an exact equipoise of the two feelings which are the indispen- sable elements of such a relation, to be attained or preserved in all the varied circumstances of human life ; or, in other words, that the two friends should never either repel each other into coldness, or make themselves too common to each other ? i R. IX. 329 ; H. VII. 274. 2 R. IX. 332 ; 3. VII. 276. 3R. IX. 334 ; H. VII. 279. 392 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. Man is a "being destined for Society, but yet an unsocial being": he feels the need to open himself to others " so that he may not be left alone, as in a prison, with his own thoughts" ; yet he is driven to shut himself up in himself, for fear of the advan- tage which might be taken of his openness. Hence a moral friendship, in which there is a perfect trust of two persons in the reciprocal communication of their secret judgments and feelings, so far as that is possible consistently with reciprocal esteem, is an immense gain; though, on account of the difficulty of mutual understanding and trust between men, it is a rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno : but the black swan is sometimes found. Apart, however, from such special ties, "it is the duty of man, both to himself and to others, to carry on a kind of commerce in moral perfection with them (officium commercii, sociabilitas), i.e., not to isolate himself (separistam agere) ; but, while he makes for the sphere of his life an inviolable centre of principle, yet to regard the sphere which he thus draws round himself as part of an all- embracing circle of cosmopolitan sympathy ; and that not only with the view of furthering the good of the world as an. end, but of cultivating all the means that indirectly lead to it, the pleasures and social charities which manifest themselves in courtesy and propriety of manners, in reciprocal love and respect, and so of associating virtue with the Graces." i In the Methodology of Ethics, Kant dwells on the necessity of inculcating ethical lessons in such a way as to develop the pure morality of principle apart from any mixture of lower motives ; and he also speaks of the relation of Religion to Ethics. The value of Eeligion arises from our inability imaginatively to represent or envisage moral obligation without thinking of another Being than ourselves, whose will is expressed by the legislative reason within us ; i.e., of a divine Being. Its danger is that we should represent this divine Being as a will, to which we stand in a relation similar to those in which we stand to i K. IX. 339 ; H. VII. 284. CHAP. VII. THE SYSTEM OE MORAL VIRTUES. 893 other men ; for with this comes the idea that we have obliga- tions to Him, which are not included in the moral law, and which even take the precedence of the moral law. The full consideration of this idea must, however, be postponed till we come to deal with Kant's special treatise on the subject of ■Beligion. ' Our criticism of Kant's Doctrine of Virtue must follow T . he P"*Jem J of morality as substantially the same lines which guided our criticism of the Kant. lved by Doctrine of Law. The moral subject is conceived by Kant as, primarily at least, alone with himself; but as so isolated, he is yet, as it were, two beings in one. As Kant phrases it, he is at once a Sinnenwesen and •Vernunftwesen, a homo phenomenon and a homo noumenon; and the problem of his life is that he is called to make the former conformable to the latter. More simply, he is bound to bring his passions into harmony with his reason. Ebw, as his passions attach him to beings and things without him, or make him open to influences from them, while his reason or self-consciousness is one with itself to the exclusion of all foreign influences, the subjection of passion to reason means the negation of all determination from without, in favour of a pure self-determination from within. In other words, it means the attainment of moral freedom. But here we are met by a difficulty. If we rigidly hold ^noe" 17 to the conception of morality as the pure self-determination of avism £- reason, either we must suppose that passion is to be altogether excluded by reason, or we must suppose that the opposition of reason and passion is merely a relative opposition, and that there is some point of view in which reason over-reaches it ; i.e., some point of view from which passion can be seen to be itself implicitly rational and capable of becoming so explicitly. And to say that passion is rational or capable of becoming so, is to say also that the objects to which passion points are capable of being considered, not as external objects, to seek - which is to make reason a means to something else than itself, 394 KANT'S ethical works. BOOK II. Objection to the Stoic doc miuation of reason but as objects which are themselves already manifestations of reason, or which at least are presupposed by reason as means of its realisation. Now, the former of these solutions is that which is adopted sew e deter- pure by Stoicism, which, therefore, regards the passions as irrational and makes it a duty to seek apathy by asceticism. Asceticism, indeed, is not regarded by the Stoics as an end in itself; it is conceived as the means whereby the reason is to be delivered from a foreign yoke, and made capable of acting freely by its own self-determination. Unfortunately, the freedom so attained is the freedom of the void. The reason that abstracts from the contents of the passions has no contents of its own to supply its place. On Kant's own view, the analytic self-consciousness is possible- only in relation to the synthetic consciousness of the self as the unity to which all objects as objects in one world are re- ferred ; and, in like manner, pure self-determination or self- realisation is possible, only if the determination of the self can be regarded as the principle of unity in an ideal system, in which all the aims of desire are embraced. Apart from such reference, the duality-in-unity of the self-determining will, like the duality-in-unity of self-consciousness, would disappear in simple identity. Now, Kant accepts the Stoic idea of apathy as essential to virtue, and tells that " affections always belong to the sen- sibility, whatever be the objects by which they are excited," 1 and that the "true strength of virtue implies that the mind should be in perfect peace, so that, by a well considered and fixed resolve, it may act according to its own law." But he does not regard the passions as in themselves immoral. On the contrary, he holds that in themselves they have no moral character, but get such a character only as they are " taken up into the max- ims of the will." Further, he holds that the contents of passion may be taken up into the maxims in such a way as to be in 1 R. IX. 258 ; H. VII. 213. Kant's attitude to ward it. chap. vii. the SYSTEM OF MORAL VIRTUES. 395 harmony with the law of reason ; though he admits that, as passion, it always retains an element of antagonism to the law, and that consequently we are obliged to conceive the pro- cess of combining its gratification with the realisation of the law as a "progressus in infinitum." Hence, in the end he has to fall back upon the postulate that the conformity of passion to reason must be realisable, because it ought to be realised. But further, as the passions or desires have necessary relation how the pas- sions can be to objects as ends, the conformity of the passions to the moral |? ken ,l l P lntl> law necessarily involves, on the one hand, a new determination of2J stiOB of the immediate ends of passion by which they become ends of reason, and, on the other hand, a development of the principle of morality from the mere abstract form of a law into that of an end, or rather a system of ends. Reason must by a syn- thetic process go beyond itself to produce a synthetic idea of an objective world of ends ; and on the other hand, the objects of the passions, which immediately are ends indifferent to reason, — ends in seeking which reason is heteronomous, — must be so transformed by being brought under the conception of such a system of ends, that in willing them, reason is only willing it. In a former chapter, it was explained how Kant, by the aid of How far Kant £ ' r ' J accepts this the different formulas for the moral law (which he regards view- simply as different expressions of the same idea), found himself able to pass from the conception of self-consistency to that of consistency with the self, and from that again to the conception of a kingdom of ends. In the treatise we are now examining, we have the same transition in a slightly different form. The individual subject finds himself existing in a world in which there are other rational subjects, as well as irrational beings and things ; and in relation to such a world the abstract law of acting always on maxims that can be universalised, develops into the principle that we should treat every other rational being as an end, just as we are bound to treat ourselves as » an end. In so far, therefore, it would appear that there is 396 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book II. an object different from ourselves, in seeking which we are not enslaving ourselves to something external ; for in making ourselves the instruments of the life of others, we are still supposed, to be realising our own end as rational beings. No sooner, however, has Kant admitted this than he is checked by the thought that each individual, as a moral or rational being, is alone with himself, and that it is only through his sensuous or outward life that he comes in con- tact with others. The recognition which each rational subject gives to the others, therefore, cannot go so far as that their moral life should become a common life, or that each should bear the burden of the moral destiny of the others. The assistance each can give to the others is outward, and therefore it can affect the lower end of happiness, but not the higher end of perfection. Or, in other words, each can have, as part of the moral end of his own life, only the natural end of his brother's life ; while, as regards the properly moral end of his own life, each must achieve it entirely for himself. Hence the social organism necessarily falls short of being in the highest sense organic. For, though in society every member is means and end to all the others, each is an end to the life of others in another respect from that in which he is an end to himself, and the common life of all is not the highest life of each mem- ber. The moral life is withdrawn from that community which is possible to men only as regards their natural life. Each may seek the happiness of all: but it is not in respect of happiness that each is an end in himself, but in respect of perfection, and especially of moral perfection. Aristotle tells us that the good man is the true self-lover; he keeps the best for himself, even when he gives every outward advantage to others ; for he keeps to himself the noble action of which they receive the passive profit. 1 So with Kant, the ' better part ' is. incommunicable, for in moral excellence each individual must win and lose everything for himself without aid from any 1 Ethics, IX. CHAP. VII. THE SYSTEM OF MORAL VIRTUES. 397 other ; and what he can give to others is only that worser part, happiness, which for himself he is bound to contemn and sacrifice, whenever it stands in the way of his moral improve- ment. Can we thus separate moral and natural good, or admit the Are n ea ° isolated in communicableness of the latter, but not of the former ? Are *J| lr moral we unable to give our best to others or to receive of their best from them ? Are men shut up in themselves, so that they must each fight his own battle alone, like the separate duels of the amphitheatre ; and are there no common charges and retreats, common victories and defeats, as in regular warfare ? Does freedom necessarily mean isolation, and can we not receive help from each other in the highest things ? Or must such help, so far as it is given, immediately take away the moral value of the end which we are aided by it to secure ? Now, we find that Kant himself is obliged somewhat to Kant's answer is ambiguous. modify his first statement, when he comes to speak of the ways in which we can contribute to the happiness of others. We may, he then says, not only give to others that immediate happiness which comes of the satisfaction of their desires, but we may even contribute to their having that kind of happiness which arises from a good conscience, or, what comes to the same thing, we may prevent their having that kind of misery which arises from a bad conscience. This we may do in so far as we avoid doing anything, which, "the nature of man being what it is, might be a temptation to another to do that which would afterwards cause his conscience to give him pain." 1 When we come to discuss Kant's view of the Church as a Tugendbund, or society for mutual aid in the moral life, without the establishment of which we may be regarded as morally in a " state of nature," we shall find that Kant does not very strictly confine his conception of men's moral aid to each other within the negative limits here laid down. But, even accord- ing to the statements already quoted, he only escapes self-con- iR. IX. 240; H. VII. 197. The social nature of the moral conscious- ness. 398 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. BOOK II, tradiction by a very illusive distinction. It is, it appears, each man's " own business to take care that he should not deserve the inner reproof of conscience " ; but we know by experience that certain conduct on our part will put a temptation in the way of other men, to which, " human nature being what it is," it is likely that they will succumb, and which will thus entail upon them the pain of remorse. We also, it may be added, know by experience that certain conduct on our part will give to others a certain stimulus to good by which " human nature, being what it is," they will be likely moved to actions which their conscience will give them pleasure by approving. How can we distinguish such aid to others from helping them in their moral life ? And, if we cannot, is it not our duty to give such help ? That the help we give must be mediated by freedom and cannot be simply communicated to them as a gift, without an act of spiritual appropriation of it on their own part, does not alter the case, unless we introduce into our con- ception of the free subject, as such, the idea of an isolated self-sufficiency ; i.e., unless we conceive that a self-determining being must be one who has no necessary relations to others, no social relations which form part of his consciousness of himself. In the passage just quoted, Kant< acknowledges that, empiric- ally viewed, the moral life of man is no isolated self-realisation of each apart from the others, any more than his physical life ; but that, on the contrary, there is a constant reciprocal influ- ence between the different members of society. And he could escape from the necessary inference, only by falling back upon the idea that the consciousness we have of ourselves as bound to act in accordance with an absolute moral law, must be regarded as a consciousness of ourselves as noumena, and, therefore, as a consciousness against which the empirical consciousness of our- selves as objects has no weight. To this, however, it has to be answered, that conscience, as is perhaps indicated by the word itself, is in its primary form a consciousness of one self as standing CHAP. VII. THE SYSTEM OF MORAL VIRTUES. 399 in social relations to others. We are knowing subjects only as we transcend our own individual existence, and regard it as an object among others in the one world, an object which, therefore, we are able to regard from a universal point of view, and to measure by the same standards which we apply to other objects. In like manner, we are practical or Trior al subjects only as we are con- scious of ourselves as members along with others of one society, and are able, therefore, to view ourselves like them, impartially, with reference to the ends of the society. Nay, as our relation to the society is given along with the consciousness of our- selves in distinction from other members of it, we cannot hut measure ourselves by the standard of the society to which we belong. This does not mean that we necessarily measure our- selves by the expressed opinion of our neighbours ; it means rather that we necessarily measure ourselves by the unex- pressed presuppositions on which their and our common life rests, by the social standard which has been forming in us from the earliest years. Morality, in fact, springs out of the inevitable mediation of the consciousness of self by the con- sciousness of our relations to others, and the consequent necessity of judging ourselves from a social point of view, whether it be the point of view of the family, or of the nation, or whatever be the society to which we thus relate ourselves. And if, subsequently, the moral law can be conceived in its abstraction as a law resting on the consciousness of the indi- vidual of an inner life, in which he is alone with himself, yet this conception can only be the result of an individualistic return upon the self, which involves a reaction against social forms that have become insufficient, and is a step in the transi- tion towards the development of a higher social consciousness. Kant, however, elevating this transitional divorce of the inner from the outer law into a permanent fact of human nature, and ignoring the relation of the consciousness of self as a moral being to the consciousness of social unity, is obliged to •regard the social tie as something extraneous, and the moral 400 KANT'S ETHICAL "WORKS. BOOK II. Kant's com- bination of Egoism and Altruism. Its defects. influence of individuals upon each other as something indirect, or even impossible, in consistency with the unconditional supremacy of the moral law. Hence, a community of moral life seems to him to be irreconcilable with the moral freedom and responsibility of the individual. In truth, however, moral freedom rests on the consciousness that the law to which we are subjected is no foreign yoke, but our own law — the law that we become conscious of by the same process by which we become conscious of ourselves as subjects ; and, therefore, the fact that it comes to us at first as a social law, revealing itself in an external order of common life, in no way affects our freedom under it. Kant's curious combination of Egoism and Altruism, accord- ing to which we are bound to seek our own perfection and the happiness of others, our own spiritual Good and the natural Good of others, suggests another criticism. According to Kant's principle, we are bound to be purely altruistic as regards happi- ness, but purely egoistic as respects goodness ; or, in other words, we are bound to sacrifice our happiness to the happiness of others, except so far as such sacrifice may interfere indirectly with our moral perfection. Kant, indeed, rather says that we are bound to seek the happiness of others so far as is consistent with the moral law. But strictly speaking we cannot under- stand this as meaning that we are not to seek their happiness when such happiness might impair their moral character, but, only that we are not to seek it when it involves an act that might injure our own moral character. Thus the egoistic motive is the ultimate one. Yet, Kant sees that in itself the egoistic pursuit of perfection, especially of moral perfection, is a contradiction ; it is to pursue egoistically the negation of egoism. If, however, this negation of egoism is in view of an abstract law, and not of a social consciousness, it still retains a tinge of egoism about it. It is only when we see that the universal law is not abstract, but must be conceived as a prin- ciple of community ; or, when — what comes to the same thins chap. VII. THE SYSTEM OF MOKAL VIRTUES. 401 we shall see that the self-conscious subject can realise itself only by giving up its separate life to a life which it has in unity with others, that this tinge of egoism disappears. The law is not a law with which I am alone in my inner life, even though it is true that I must sacrifice my immediate self to it. It is a law by which the shell of self-hood is, as it were, broken ; and, it takes the form of a law that speaks to me from without, only because it is through the negation of the separate self that the consciousness of community is developed. It is the miracle of the dissolution of the limits of individuality, which yet is not a miracle, because the force and power of the individuality of a self is based on universality, and can grow only by continual return to it. The secret of the possibility of knowledge, as involving that we go beyond our own sensations to objects, still more the secret of the possibility of moral life, as involving the continual surrender of immediate desire to social ends, lies in the principle that a self-conscious individuality only exists and maintains itself by a continual self-abnegation, and so by a continual return to the universal life. In this respect we might say that morality is " Altruism " ; but the word Altruism rather suggests the merging of our life in the life of other individuals as such, the giving up of our own happiness in order to secure on their part a happiness of exactly the same nature as that which we give up for ourselves. If morality were merely Al- truism, the perfect moral society would be one in which there was a struggle of all and each to surrender to each other the finite goods of life, instead of a struggle to retain them. 1 But neither a struggle to give, nor a struggle to take, such finite goods, would really lift us out of the sphere of the finite. It would only substitute an effort to satisfy each other's selfish- ness for an effort to gratify our own; it would not take us beyond the negation of our immediate selves to the conception of a higher common, self in which we are really united. We see as a fact, sometimes in the relations of men to men, and 1 Cf. Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics, p. 225 (Third Edition). VOL. II. 2 C 402 kant's ethical works. book n - oftener in the relations of women to men, that an unreasoning ■eagerness to surrender all to the will of another, tends to manufacture a gigantic self in the individual to whom the •surrender is made. Now, when Kant tells us that we should seek the happiness of others, and not their perfection, he is giving countenance to this error : an error which in practice makes the self-sacrifice of the individual unavailing, just in so far as it is only a self-sacrifice of individual to individual, and not at the same time the sacrifice of the individual to the universal. For in such sacrifice there is no real deliverance from the prison of individuality. To Kant, indeed, there is no such escape possible, at least so far as the relations of individuals in society are concerned. Each remains permanently external to the other ; and though all may surrender themselves to the law, this only produces a similar life in each, but not a com- munity of the same life in all. But the true moral self-sur- render is not simply the surrender of one self to another, but of all to the universal principle which, working in society, gives back to each his own individual life transformed into an organ of itself. What gives its moral value to the social life, is that it not merely limits the self-seeking of each in reference to the self-seeking of the rest, nor even that it involves a re- ciprocal sacrifice of each to the others ; but that a higher spirit takes possession of each and all, and makes them its organs, turning the natural tendencies and powers of each of the members of the society into the means of realising some special function necessary to the organic completeness of its life. A social relation, say the relation of husband and wife, would be an unsanctified unity of repellent atoms through desires which turn them into external means of each other's life, if those who participate in it were not, by the fact of their union, brought into the conscious presence of something higher than their individuality. In fact, in this most direct union of individuals, nature generally takes care of this, by awaking affections, which make the interests of the children (who represent the continued chap. vil. THE SYSTEM OF MORAL VIRTUES. 403 unity of the family), predominant over the separate interests of the heads of the family. Hence, we need not wonder that the first worships of men concentrated round the family sacra, and that the desire to keep up the continuity of these sacra, as a worship of the family god, became the great determining ideal influence of early morality. The surrender of the individual as a natural being, and his recovery of his life as an organ dedicated to a special social function, is the essential dialectic of morals, which repeats itself in every form of society. It is the "logic of facts," which redeems man's life from egoism by giving him a higher alter ego, which yet is not the ego of another in- dividual as such. Holding by this logic, we can see what is the value and defect of both Hedonistic and anti-Hedonistic theories. Hedonism fails, because it either treats the indi- vidual as an end to himself, or if it goes beyond this, and becomes universalistic Hedonism, still the universal is to it merely a sum of individuals. To this Nominalism, which puts an aggregate of atoms instead of an organic unity, Stoicism opposes a Eealism whose universal is the mere negation of the individuals, a will which, in emptying itself of particular im- pulses, has become an absolute void, a "will that wills nothing." Kant avoids this extreme by thinking of the universal as a common element in the particulars to be subsumed under it. He thus makes a kind of combination of universalistic Hedon- ism with the abstract universalism of the Stoics. But the result is no real unity of the two principles, but a syncretism which is logically less reasonable than either. The separation of moral and natural good makes the former empty of content, and the latter an incoherent mass of particulars without unity For the natural desires can be brought to a unity, only if the separate gratification of each of them ceases to be conceived as an end in itself, and if it is sought as an end only in so far as in it the principle of our rational life can reveal itself. Thus the immediate satisfaction of the desires cannot be the realisa- tion of the self, which can realise itself only as it makes itself 404 KANT'S ETHICAL WORKS. book n. the organ of social ends. Yet, on the other hand, the Hedonist may point out that the social aim is realised only through the individual to whom it gives special functions ; and that the ordering of the life of the individual in relation to his special function involves the recognition of his desires as having a special satisfaction, in attaining which he, at the same time, contributes to the realisation of the end. 5g'ttmateiy 0t This consideration enables us also to criticise Kant's division into 'duties to of duties into duties to ourselves, and duties to others. All ourselves and * _ - . toothers. duties are, in fact, both at once. Self-realisation and realisa- tion of the common good are not separated or separable, unless we conceive the common good as directly consisting in pleas- ures, which as such cannot be had in common. But, according to the organic view of the social union, the distribution of special pleasures or gains to individuals, is dependent on the distribution to them of special functions in the one life which is the common good. In truth, Kant admits (what is obvious on his principles) that all duties are duties to ourselves, when he argues that, if there are no duties to ourselves, there can be no duties to others, since the law, in virtue of which we are bound to such duties, is derived from our own practical reason. 1 The converse of this, that all duties to ourselves are duties to others, he is hindered from admitting by the great defect of his. theory, the divorce of the universal or rational from the social nature of men. casuistry— The other peculiarities of Kant's theory, the rigour with how it arises J ° with Kant, which he maintains the separation of the moral motive from the motives of desire, which he always regards as desire of pleasure, have been sufficiently commented on in previous chapters. Eor need I do more than mention the casuistical questions which he appends to the discussion of each virtue. Casuistry, as has been shown above, 1 is the necessary result of Kant's conception of morality as consisting in a number of laws, each of which is universally valid. In this view, Kant 1 R. IX. 268 ; H. VII. 222. 2 Cf. p. 189. chap. vii. THE SYSTEM OE MORAL VIRTUES. 405 maintains that each duty flows from one principle with which no other must be mingled, and he complains of those who would connect the duty of speaking the truth with the harm done to society by lying, and not merely with the duty of treating ourselves as ends. In truth, in so far as our moral life is organic, each action touches nearly or remotely every one of its interests or functions, and may therefore be subsumed under many different rules. Such rules cannot, however, be regarded as unlimited or universal. Either, one rule of duty must be made predominant over all the others, or, if not, every moral decision becomes a " case of con- science," which we may decide in any way we please, accord- ing to the rule we choose to bring into operation. Nor, from Kant's point of view, can any higher principle be brought in to decide which rule is to give way, seeing it is assumed that there is never a real but only an apparent collision of rules. In truth, under the hand of the Casuist, the moral rules become absolutely pliant, just because they are assumed in the beginning to be absolutely fixed and without exception. Their infiexibleness allows him to do what he pleases with them ; or if it is not so, it is because the arbitrary application of them is checked by the social consciousness of a particular nation or time, which fixes the place of each function of the social life in its connection with, and yet in its distinction from, the other functions. 406 Judgment. BOOK III. THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. CHAPTER I. kant's general introduction. Gradual do- 77" ANT'S Critique of Judgment cannot be said, in the same Critkiwof*' sense as his Critique of Practical Reason, to be part of the original plan of his critical investigations. This is evident from a note in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, where he speaks of Baumgarten's attempt to " base the critical judgment of the Beautiful on principles of reason," and declares that such an attempt must be fruitless because " the rules or criteria in question are, in their source, purely empirical, and can never be taken for a priori principles, by which our judg- ments of taste may be guided." In the second edition of the Critique, significant alterations were introduced into the wording of this passage, 1 and in the same year in which that edition of the Critique was published, Kant, in writing to Reinhold, tells him that in the course of his inquiries he has been led to recognise the existence of a new department of Critical Philo- sophy, of which he had before taken no notice, but which has brought to him a fresh confirmation of the truth of his funda- mental principles. " I may now assert, without making myself 1 There we read that these rules " are in their main sources empirical and cannot be taken for definite a priori principles." Kr. A. 21 ; B. 36. CHAP. I. KANT's GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 407 liable to the charge of conceit, that the further I proceed in my course, the less apprehensive do I become that I shall be obliged to renounce, or, to any important extent, to modify my system. This is an inward conviction, which grows upon me as, in my progress to new investigations, I find it not only maintaining its harmony with itself, but also suggesting ways of dealing with any difficulty that may arise. For, when at times I am in doubt as to the method of enquiry in regard to an object, I only need to cast back a glance upon my general list of the elements of knowledge, and of the faculties of mind implied therein, in order to get new light upon my procedure. Thus, I am at present engaged in a Critique of Taste, and have been in this way led to the discovery of another kind of a priori principles than I had formerly recognised. For the faculties of the mind are three ; the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the will. I have discovered a priori principles for the first of these in the Critique of Pure Season, and for the third, in the Critique of Practical Reason; but my search for similar principles for the second seemed at first fruitless. Finally, however, the systematic connexion, which the analysis of the theoretical and practical reason has enabled me to dis- cover in the human mind, — a systematic connexion which it will be sufficient employment for the rest of my days to admire, and where possible, to explain, — put me on the right track ; so that now I recognise three parts of Philosophy, each of which has its own a priori principles. We can now, there- fore, securely determine the compass of knowledge, which is possible in this way, as including the three departments of Theoretical Philosophy, Teleology, and Practical Philosophy, of which, it is true, the second will be found the poorest in a priori grounds of determination. I hope by Easter to be ready with this part of Philosophy, under the name of the Critique of Taste, which is already in writing, but not quite prepared for the press." 1 1 R. XI. 86 ; H. VIII. 738. 408 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. B00K IIL Division of it it was no t till three years after this letter that Kant actually into two ^ » p!Vrts - issued the treatise in question, which meantime had extended much beyond the scope which he here gives it, and had become not merely a Critique of Taste, but a Critique of Judgment. The reason of this change it is not difficult to discern, and it is implied in the two words which he uses in the above letter to designate the same part of Philosophy, viz., " Critique of Taste" and " Teleology." It was in the idea of a final cause or end, that Kant had found the key to the consciousness of the Beautiful and the Sublime ; but it was impossible for him to recognise its presence in that consciousness without being led to consider other applications of the same principle. The Critique of Pure Reason had, in fact, already pointed to the use of the idea of final cause as a means of guiding our general investigations into nature ; but the aims of that Critique had not permitted a full treatment of the subject. 1 And there were especially two considerations which might lead Kant to think that further discussion was necessary. In the first place, the facts of animal and vegetable life seemed to require a " constitu- tive " use of the category of final cause, different from that " regulative " employment of it which had been vindicated in the Critique of Pure Reason.. And in the second place, the Critique of Practical Reason had led him to the conception of a Summum Bonum or objective end, which man is bound to seek to realise, and which he is entitled to postulate as capable of realisation ; nay, which he must conceive as necessary to be realised through the mediation of God. But this Summum, Bonum, which is the combination of goodness with proportionate happiness, involves a conformity of nature to the law of reason, which nothing in the conception of nature enables us to antici- pate ; it involves, in fact, that nature must ultimately be thought of as a teleological system, for which the final cause is determined by the same practical reason which determines the ends of human action. In this way the regulative use of the 1 Cf. above, p. 137 seq. •CHAP. I. kant's general introduction. 409 idea of design, which was admitted for theoretical reason, has •connected with it a practical use of the same idea, in which, moreover, the end is no longer left undetermined, but fixed by reason itself. And though it is thus fixed only for faith and not for knowledge, yet the new view of the world, and especially of the relation of nature to freedom which is thus suggested, would seem to call for a reconsideration of the results of the Critique of Pure Reason. In this way, then, Kant was led to enlarge the scope of his SJ a S of inquiry, so as to cover the whole field of Teleology ; and to g"K£ make the third Critique, which had at first been designed liques ' merely as an explanation of the sources of our pleasure in the Beautiful and the Sublime, into a final exposition of his theory which should bind together the Critiques of Pure and Practical Meason into one great whole or systematic unity. In truth, we ' find in the Critique of Judgment a certain return of Kant's system upon itself, for which the way had been prepared by his previous works, but which yet was, in a sense, a reversal of the line of thought followed out in them. For Kant, as it may be remembered, had begun his critical inquiries in the effort to separate the apparent from the real, the element in our ideas or knowledge which is peculiar to us as finite subjects whose reason works through sense, from that element which we appre- hend in virtue of pure reason itself. He had endeavoured, in short, to get down by abstraction to the pure residuum of truth, which is left when we take away all that is relative to our peculiar nature as men. It was in this view that he was led, first, to treat the forms of space and time as subjective, and then to apply the same measure to those conceptions of the understanding under which in experience the matter given under these forms is brought. By this regress of abstraction he was finally brought back to the pure consciousness of self, as containing in its empty analytic unity the only residuum of absolute truth that remains to us. This analytic consciousness, , hadeed, in relation to the imperfect synthetic unity of know- 410 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. B00K nI - ledge, gave rise only to an ideal which knowledge cannot realise ; but in relation to practice, it took on a new meaning as a moral law, which we are imperatively called upon to realise, because it is the inmost reality of our being, or the only mirror in which that reality is presented to us. Thus, at the ultimate point of abstraction the movement of thought was reversed. The abstract unity, in which everything had seemed to be lost, began itself to show signs of life, and to develop out of itself a. fresh content. Nature, which had been rejected as phenomenal, got a new meaning as the material in which the law of reason is to be realised ; and the broad gulf opened up between self- consciousness and the consciousness of objects as such, began to be bridged over by the ' Primacy of Practical Eeason ' ; which, as we have seen, means that self-consciousness includes and subordinates the consciousness of objects. We have sufficiently shown in previous chapters into what difficulties Kant was brought, even in the Critique of Practical Eeason, by this necessary return upon himself: for, what he was attempt- ing to do was to subsume nature under the Idea of freedom, an Idea which, in the first instance, presented itself as the simple negation of nature. Thus, he could not treat nature as real without changing the point of view from which he had regarded it as phenomenal ; and the oSos ava> could not be a simple ; reversal of the 6§6s /carco. Hence, the distinctions of knowledge and faith, of the speculative and the practical consciousness, ■ had to be emphasized, till the unity of the intelligence seemed t to be lost ; «*«k* °f " ° d ,j the Judgment beautiful ? Like all judgments, we may regard this one from of Ta8te - the four points of view of quality, quantity, relation, and modality. (1) Its quality we may see, if we consider, in the first place, that it is not a judgment about objects in their relation to each other, but about objects in relation to our feelings of pleasure and pain. We pronounce the object beautiful, because, when it is brought in relation to our minds, the consciousness of ourselves as having the idea of it is a source of satisfaction. Further, this subjective satisfaction is disinterested, and so is distinguished from the satisfaction which we find either in the pleasant, or in the good. The Pleasant is what satisfies us as sensuous beings by the immediate feeling it excites, an affection in which we are passive and dependent on the object ; it is, therefore, immediately connected with an interest in the existence of that object, and a desire for it. A beautiful object, on the contrary, is one the mere idea of which is accompanied with satisfaction, apart altogether from a desire for it ; because, " in so naming it, I am thinking not of that in which I depend on the existence of the object, but of what in myself I make out of it." 1 Our satisfaction arises from a reflexion which makes us dwell upon the idea of the object once excited in our mind, not with a view to make efforts after the possession of it, but rather to penetrate into its meaning. We must also distinguish the Beautiful from the Good. The Good is that which satisfies us as rational beings, because it is determined either as an end in itself, or as a means to that end. We must, therefore, already have a definite * i K. IV. 47 ; H. V. 209, § 2. 422 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. B00K m - conception of the object, which we subsume under the concep- tion of the good. " With the Beautiful, this is not necessary- Flowers, free drawings, outlines woven with each other into a network without any design, have no definite meaning, and are brought under no definite conception ; yet they please us as beautiful objects," x because the mind dwells upon them, seeking for some conception, it knows not what, which " half reveals and half conceals '' itself. Only in such contemplative delight is the mind free and disinterested in respect of its object, because busied only with itself; whereas, both in respect to the Pleasant and the Good, it is interested, and in some way under constraint ; for pleasure subjects us as rational to an object which appeals to sense, and the Good subjects us as sensuous to an object which appeals to reason. The Quantity (2) Quantitatively, the Judgment of Taste is universal, in oftheJudg- x ' "' & mento£Taste - the sense that it puts forth a claim to universal acceptance; but its universality is not based on any conception, to which we can appeal as a reason for calling upon others to agree with us. What is pleasant is, we say, a matter of taste, and de gustibus non est disputandum; but what we declare beauti- ful, we at the same time call upon everyone to recognise as such ; though, if any one refuses to do so, we are not able to give him any reason why he should agree with us. We speak of the beautiful as if it had some objective quality which was the same for all, and on which our pleasure was based ; yet, when we are asked to say why we call a thing beautiful, we can only say that it pleases us, and that with our pleasure, in this case, goes a judgment that it should please everyone. Hence, also, the judgment of taste is always logically singular, i.e., it is always an individual object that we pronounce beautiful; though, of course, we may generalise such judgments in an empirical way, as when we say that " all roses are beautiful." Such generalised judgments, however, are never universal ; for, as we cannot tell what it is in the particular rose that makes 1 E, IV. 51 ; H. V. 211, § 4. chap. II. the FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 423 us call it beautiful, we cannot properly attach the predicate of beauty to the genus, or combine it with the definition of that genus : we can only pronounce upon each individual rose as it presents itself. Our satisfaction in the object, therefore, must be conceived not as preceding our consciousness of the univer- sality of that satisfaction, but rather as consequent upon it. But how is this possible ? How can the consciousness of our satisfaction in the object be attached to it like a universal predicate, while yet it is not a quality of the object apart from its relation to our subjective capacity of pleasure and pain. The only explanation possible is that the object is pronounced beautiful on subjective grounds which yet are universal. "As the subject in judging a thing to be beautiful, does not rest on any inclination or interest of his own, but feels himself quite free in regard to the approval he gives to it, so he cannot find the grounds of his approval in any private conditions con- nected with his own subjectivity, but must regard his judgment as based upon something which he may equally presuppose as existing in other minds." x But the only subjective grounds which are universal are those which lie in the harmony of the different faculties of man, which are brought into play in the contemplation of the object. " If the ground of our judgment as to the universal communicableness of our feelings of pleasure in the object is subjective in the sense that it does not lie in any conception of the object, it can be nothing but the state of mind, which goes along with the relation of our faculties to each other, when we refer our consciousness of an object to knowledge in general. The powers exercised in knowing, which are set in motion by such a consciousness, will be in free play with each other, because no definite conception limits them down to a special rule of knowledge. Hence, along with the consciousness of the object, we will have a feeling of the free play of the faculties which points to knowledge in general. Now, in order to get knowledge out of the idea of a given i R. IV. 55 ; H. V. 215, § 6. 424 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. BOOK III. object, we require, on the one side, imagination to put together the manifold of its perception, and, on the other side, under- standing to supply the unity of the conception which connects the elements of the idea. If, therefore, the idea of a given object gives rise to this free play of the faculties out of which knowledge arises, the state of feeling thereby produced must be as universally communicable " 1 as is the knowledge which is its result. It appears, then, that the judgment as to the agreement of the idea of an object with the conditions of know- ledge goes before our pleasure in it, and is the ground of it, and in that judgment is involved the consciousness of its universal communicableness. At the same time, we must not suppose that this means that we are " intellectually conscious of the purposive activity of our faculties " ; for this would imply that we had a definite conception of the end to which they are tending ; i.e., a definite conception of what the object is. What we have in our minds is only a feeling, in connection with the consciousness of the object, of " the excitement of our imagina- tion and our understanding to indeterminate, but yet harmonious activity ; viz., that kind of activity which leads to knowledge." "An idea which, as individual and independent of all com- parison with others, yet has an agreement with the conditions of universality which it is the business of the understanding to apply, brings our faculties of knowledge into that accord with each other (proportionirte Stimmung) which is required for knowledge, and which, therefore, we expect to be produced by it in every being who requires the combination of understand- ing and sense in order to make judgments regarding objects ; i.e., in every man." 2 In short, Kant holds that we have a consciousness, apart from any definite knowledge of the object, of the agreement of the idea of the object with the conditions of knowledge because, and in so far as, we have an immediate feeling of pleasure in the harmonious movement of the faculties produced by the idea of the object. The judgment that a thing is beautiful 1 R. IV. 63 ; H. V. 222, § 9. »K. IV. 65 ; H. V. 223, § 9. chap. II. THE FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 425 expresses this feeling, i.e., it expresses merely a relation of the subject to the object, and not any relation of the object to other objects, or of the manifold elements of an object to each other. And it takes the form of a judgment about the object, only because it is the consciousness of that relation of the object to the subject out of which the consciousness of the re- lation of objects (or of the elements of an object) to each other is wont to spring. We must here remember that objectivity with Kant depends upon universality, i.e., the consciousness of objects as such is the consciousness of relations which hold good for all subjects or " for consciousness in general." Hence the consciousness of universal communicableness and the con- sciousness of objectivity are, for Kant, closely akin, and, indeed, except in this one instance, identical. (3) The relation 1 expressed in such judgments, it follows J» «*&* of^_ from what has just been said, is one of adaptation to an end, yet of Taste - without reference to any definite design. " Purposiveness without purpose" (if, in order to bring out Kant's antithesis, we may so translate it) is what we attribute to an object when we are not obliged to suppose that the conception of an end has been the cause of it, though we find it impossible to make the object intelligible to ourselves in any other way. Now, we do not call an object beautiful, because it subserves any end, either sub- jective or objective : not the former, for we do not judge the object beautiful because it pleases us, but it pleases us because we judge it beautiful ; yet not the latter, for the predicate ' beau- tiful ' is not the conception of any quality in the object by reason of which we might subsume it under the idea of the Good as an end in itself or as a means to that end, but merely an expression of our consciousness that our faculties work harmoniously in regard to it. For the object we contemplate is in harmony with our intelligence, and therefore it puts us in harmony with ourselves, without our being able to say why it does so, i.e., without our being able to assign the conception * 'Which we take np next in the order of the categories. 426 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book ill. of the object, by reason of which we thus find ourselves at home with it. " The relation of our faculties which is implied in the determination of an object as beautiful, is bound up with a feeling of pleasure, and this pleasure by the judgment of taste is declared to be valid for every one ; hence neither the plea- sure that accompanies the consciousness of the object, nor our satisfaction with the perfection of the object as falling under the conception of the Good, can be the ground of that judgment. It can, therefore, only be a subjective adaptation in the idea of an object without any purpose or end, either objective or subjective, i.e., it can only be the mere form of purpose in the idea by which the object is given, which constitutes that satisfaction which, in the judgment of taste and pleasure, we determine, without a conception, to be universally communicable." 1 themoraiwMi ^ we com P are the moral with the aesthetic judgment, we judgment.' 10 nn d that, in both cases, a feeling of pleasure is the result, and that, in both cases, that feeling is determined by a priori grounds. In the former case, we have the idea of the moral law determining the will, and "the state of mind which 'accom- panies any determination of the will, is in itself a feeling of pleasure," 2 i.e., we do not begin with the conception of the moral end as a good which therefore is pleasant, (for how could we infer that a priori, before experience of the object ? ) but we assert that, because the law determines the will to seek an object, a pleasure is necessarily involved in the attainment of the object and even in the very consciousness of the determination of the will in view of it. In the same way, the consciousness of a merely formal adaptation of the faculties • to each other, as stirred to action by the idea of an object, carries with it, or is itself a pleasure — as it " determines the activity of the subject by stirring up his faculties in view of knowledge in general." The pleasure, however, in this case is not practical, though "it has a causality in itself to maintain the * E, IV 68 ; H. V. 226, § 11. 2 R IV . 69 . H . y. 226, § 12. chap. ii. THE FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 427 state of contemplation in the subject, i.e., to keep the faculties engaged upon the object without any further end. We linger over the contemplation of the beautiful, because this contempla- tion strengthens and reproduces itself : " and this is analogous to, though not identical with, the way in which a feeling of pleasure excited by the idea of an object repeatedly calls our attention to it. We are pleased with the beautiful because it is beautiful, just as with the good because it is good ; but in the latter case the pleasure is the result of self-determination to realise an object, while in the former case the self-deter- mination is merely to maintain the idea. , The purely formal or subjective adaptation of the object Refund termed beautiful may easily be lost sight of, if we confuse with its beauty either, on the one hand, its power to excite and move us, or, on the other hand, its objective perfection as a specimen of its kind. These different qualities are, however, so often associated with beauty, that it seems necessary to call special attention to the distinction. As to the former, Kant remarks that " it is a barbaric taste which requires a mixture of what charms our senses or stirs our emotions (Reiz und Buhrung) with the Beautiful in order to satisfy it ; still more if it makes these the measure of its satisfaction." 1 Thus a mere colour or sound, the green of the grass, a musical tone as dis- tinguished from a noise, e.g., the tone of a violin, are generally called beautiful; though they have for their basis merely the matter of ideas, and the pleasure we have in them is due to mere sensation. But strictly speaking, isolated sensations of colour and tone "can be regarded as beautiful only in respect of their purity, which is a kind of formal determination of them. This, besides, is the sole element in them which is universally communicable ; for we cannot assume that the quality of the sensations is for all subjects the same, or that preference is adjudged to one colour before another, or to the tone of one musical instrument before that of another, in the 1 E. IV. 70 ; H. V. 228, § 13. 428 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. B00K IIL same way by every one." 1 If, indeed, we adopt the theory that colours and tones are constituted by successive vibrations or pulsations of ether, and that we not only perceive by sense their effect in stirring the organs to activity but also appre- hend by reflexion the regular play of our impressions," then we should be obliged to recognise in colour or tone, "not merely sensations, but the formal determination of the unity of a manifold of sensations," and on this ground we might regard them as in themselves beautiful. Otherwise, we should be obliged to find beauty only " in the form of objects of sense ; i.e., in their figure, or in their play with each other, which again may be either play of figures, as in dancing, or play of feelings, as in music." On this view, pleasant colours or tones furnish merely the matter brought under the form of beauty, which may be part of the charm or attractiveness (Reiz) of objects, but strictly speaking, has nothing to do with their beauty. Again the power of objects to move us (Mulirung) is often confused with beauty. But emotion, as a pleasure produced by a " momentary check upon the forces of life succeeded by a more powerful outflow of them," is something quite distinct from beauty ; though it is, as we shall see, closely connected with the Sublime. Beauty and Equally careful must we be not to confuse beauty with perfec- tion, or, according to the ideas of Wolff, with perfection thought indistinctly. Perfection implies always objective adaptation to an end ; either to an outward end (when the object is merely useful, and not properly called perfect), or to an inward end, i.e., an end determined by the nature of the object which is called perfect. In this latter case, we must know what kind of thing it is we are dealing with, i.e., we must have the con- ception of it, ere we can say whether it is perfect or not. A judgment, therefore, in which an object is said to be beautiful under the condition of a definite conception, is not a pure judgment of taste. Hence, we cannot make such pure judg- 1 R. IV. 71 ; H. V. 229, § 14. CHAP. II. THE FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 429 ments, except in cases where we can escape the necessity of referring the object to a definite class, as is the case with the free beauties of nature. We do not need, e.g., to think of the ends of nature in flowers and birds ; still less do we need to think of any definite end in the designs of wall papers and carpets ; hence, in these cases, we can make pure judgments of taste. Our imagination plays about such objects with a consciousness of multiplicity in unity, but without binding itself by any definite conception. But the beauty of a man, a woman, a child, cannot be thus treated ; nor again the beauty of a house, or a church. In these cases we begin by thinking of the object as one of a kind, and our judgment as to its perfec- tion, with reference to the needs or uses of its kind, anticipates our judgment as to its beauty. Here, therefore, beauty must be a secondary consideration (pulchritudo adhcerens), something that is bound up with perfection, but does not constitute it. "Now, it is true that taste wins by this combination of aesthetic with intellectual satisfaction, inasmuch as it becomes fixed ; and though it be not universal, yet in reference to certain pur- posively determined objects it becomes possible to lay down rules for it. These, however, are not rules of taste,- but rules for the combination of taste with reason, i.e., of the Beautiful with the Good, by which the former is turned into an instrument of the latter. Thus, that tone of feeling which is self-maintaining and subjectively universal in its validity, is subordinated to that way of thinking which can be maintained only by painful resolve, but which is objectively universal in its validity. It is true that, strictly speaking, perfection gains nothing by beauty, nor beauty by perfection ; but, when we compare an idea by which an object is given with the conception of the object as it should be, we cannot avoid bringing it at the same time into relation with the feeling of the subject ; and by this relation, when the two states of mind are in harmony, our whole faculty for ideas gains." 1 1 R. IV. 80 ; H. V. 236, § 16. 430 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT, book in. The ideal of This combination of the idea of the Good with that of the Beauty is not lerfhetie. Beautiful is especially important in the ease of what is called the Ideal of Beauty. An ideal is the realisation of an Idea in all the fulness of individual reality. But the mere conscious- ness of beauty cannot realise itself in this way, except in refer- ence to an object determined by a conception. "We must have an object perfect in its kind to supply a centre to which beauty may attach itself. Nay, further, we must have for this pur- pose an object which is an end in itself, and which in no sense is means to a further end. Now, the only being who has the end of his existence in himself is man ; he only can determine his ends by reason, or, where he is obliged to receive them from external perception, yet can bring them into relation to essential and universal ends ; and he only can make aesthetic judgments as to such agreement of particular with universal ends. Hence, it is only man of all objects in the world who is capable of an ideal of leauty, as it is only humanity in his person which is capable of the ideal of perfection." 1 The normal To reach this ideal of beauty, we must first ascertain the idea as a basis ^ for the ideal. norma i i(j ea f man by an empirical process of imagination, in which the forms of many men are combined, and the average result selected. Then, having got this normal idea, we must so mould and modify it, as to make it the expression of the highest in man, i.e., his moral nature. " The visible expression of moral ideas which rule man inwardly, can indeed only be got from experience ; but to connect it in the Idea of the highest design with everything that our reason recognises as morally good, with benevolence, purity, strength, and peace, and to make all this, as it were, visible in bodily manifestation, requires a union of the pure Ideas of reason with the greatest force of imagination, even in him who would discern, still more in him who would express it, in artistic form." 2 Moa •> J ' truth of the the purpose manifested in it, may be better seen if we consider Beautiful - from what point of view the Beautiful is a fiction and an illusion, and from what point of view it is truth. The beautiful object, as it is necessarily present to sense or the sensuous imagina- tion, is always a partial or finite object, which, for ordinary knowledge working according to the categories of causality and reciprocity, is only a link or series of links in the manifold connexion of experience; yet it is not taken as such a link or a series of links. Bather, it is taken as complete in itself apart from all relation to other objects. We rest in it with joy as an end in itself, just because for us it is neither a part of a greater whole, which we have to explain through its connexions with the other parts, nor an externally connected system of parts, which the mind therefore opposes to itself, as an object in which it does not find its own unity. The object as beautiful is complete in itself; it has its dependency and modality, as it were, erased ; it is as a microcosm which has VOL. II. 2 G 466 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. B00K m - absorbed the macrocosm. Thus, the Greek Gods as objects of art are fixed in immortal youth. They are what Aristotle called Plato's ideas, dl'Sia ala-QriTa, sensuous presences from which, nevertheless, all traces of time and change and mortality or decay are removed. And, as they have thus no dependency to limit them from without, so they have no conflict of antagon- istic powers within, which, by their contradiction, could bring them to an end. The beautiful object as such is one with itself, in the sense that its differences are only the necessary expression of its harmony with itself. Now all this, from the point of view of the ordinary understanding and of ordinary knowledge, is an illusion; for the finite object as it really exists is essentially dependent : it is essentially re- lated to other objects without it, and it has within it a struggle of forces which will in the end be fatal to it. Or if, from a higher point of view, it may he recognised that individual objects are in a sense microcosms, in so far as they are organic, or even have something analogous to the organic in them ; . yet this does not entitle them to be recognised as having the conir pleteness with which imagination invests them ; for they are always, after all, parts of a greater organism. Art and Science, imagination and reason, may thus be contrasted as subjective and objective : though in so far as Science always exists for us in a more or less abstract form, the poetic consciousness of the whole as present in the part must be regarded as an anticipative grasp of a truth which is beyond ordinary knowledge, and of which philosophy is a continual but never completed verification. In this sense it is more than a jest to say that Science is a fiction which looks like truth, while Art is a truth that looks like fiction. If in one place Kant asserts that in recognising beauty in the object the mind is conscious only of its own subjective harmony with itself, we must remember that in another place he speaks of it as involving a reference of the phenomenal object to its noumenal reality. But the nou- menal reality of the individual phenomenal object lies just in CHAP. III. THE FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 467 the fact' that potentially it involves the whole world, and so is a kind of world in itself. And the illusion lies only in this, ,that to Art it seems complete in itself without regard to these relations. Its mere subjectivity could be asserted, only if the judgments of ordinary knowledge or of science were taken as absolute truth. Kant goes on in this section to speak of pure and impure The judgment ° r r r f taste as judgments of taste. Such judgments may be impure in two {J"^^!^ ways ; in so far as the beauty of the object is connected with its f u \ its°perfeo- sensuous charms, i.e., with the adaptation of the object to our sensibility, or in so far as it presupposes a definite conception of the object as of a particular kind or species. In the latter case, the judgment that a thing is more or less perfect of its kind becomes the primary determinant of our satisfaction or dissatisfaction with it, and the judgment of taste becomes secondary. The perfection of an object may lie either, as in the case of an house, in its relation to an external purpose, or, as with organic beings and men, in its relation to an ideal deter- mined by its own inner nature ; but, in either case, the' thought of such perfection, whenever it comes into view, becomes para- mount over the consciousness of beauty ; so that we cannot well regard the object as beautiful unless it fulfils its end; though it may fulfil its end without being beautiful. Hence a pure judgment of beauty can hardly be made, except in relation to inorganic things which have no special use, or in relation to organisms of a lower kind such as plants, where our conception of the design of the parts is not predominant. On the other hand, it is scarcely possible to call a man beautiful by reason of his appearance, without thinking whether that appearance expresses his agreement with the higher ends of his life. But, just for that reason, we can speak of an ideal of beauty in reference to man ; for the conception of man, as a being who proposes ends to himself and who ultimately refers all particular ends to an end determined by his own reason, gives a point of attachment to*the perception of beauty of form, and brings the disinter- 468 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in estedness characteristic of the aesthetic judgment, into subor- dination to the highest of all interests. ffir^iw In ^ s coimex i 0I1 > Kant dwells especially on the possibility nextono? the of uniting moral expressiveness with beauty, in a way that pro- Beautifui hably suggested the leading thought of Schiller's Essay On the Aesthetic Education of Man. For what Schiller attempts in that Essay is to carry out the idea that it is the function of the Beautiful to mediate between nature and freedom — an idea which is derived from Kant, but which he could not fully develop without breaking down the dualism with which he started. In truth, the sense of the harmony of the subject with himself va contemplation of the object, to which Kant reduces the idea of heauty, and the consciousness of the realisation of the self in the object, which alone can give to it the character of goodness, axe different forms of one consciousness. Kant, however, is limited in his recognition of this by the necessity of his theory, according to which the object as such must be conceived as subjected to the law of necessity, and therefore, as foreign to the self which is under the law of freedom. For this pre- supposition, while it prevents him from admitting that the outward effect of our action in the objective world can ever, in the strict sense of the word, be recognised as good, — i.e., as the realisation of freedom, — makes it still less possible for him to regard the outward object, as it is immediately given inde- pendent of our moral activity, as already containing such realisation. In the former case, he allows us to typify the realised good as a natural world subjected to moral laws, but bids us regard this type merely as a device of practical reason to give objective meaning to the Idea of its end, an Idea for which we can never find an adequate object. And it is only consistent with this, that, in the latter case, he should look upon the ' purpose ' manifested in the beautiful object, as con- sisting merely in the subjective harmony of our faculties of which it makes us conscious. 'If, however, we reject the absolute opposition of the consciousness of objects to self- chap. III. THE FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 469 consciousness, i.e., if we work out the consequences of that relativity of the object to the subject which Kant was the first to show, and free it from the inconsistencies that still cling to his statement of it, we are led to correct his view both of the Good and the Beautiful. To say that the objective as such is under the law of necessity, can mean for us only that it is so when we take it in abstraction from the unity of the self to which it is relative ; but that, when we regard it as essentially related to that unity, we see in it the natural or necessary means for the realisation of freedom. The self to which the object is relative, cannot find in the object an absolute resist- ance but only a necessary precondition of its own activity. Thus, we must regard the unity of the self as itself determining that nature of the object in which it seems to find resistance ; or, looking at it on the other side, we must regard the object as coming to self-consciousness in the self that seems at first to come to it from without. In this way, the realisation of spirit and freedom is only the culmination of the realisation of nature and necessity. It is as the instrument of self- conscious will, determined by its own law or by the idea of self-consciousness, that the object first reveals its true character. The subjective Good may and must be realised, because it is only in its realisation that the inner principle of the objective world in which it is realised can become manifest. Now, on this view, the Beautiful will be simply the revelation to sense and in a particular object, of that which is the inmost reality or meaning of things. It will be partly an illusion : for that meaning can be seen in its fulness only in the whole world as it exists for an intelligence, which apprehends the universal as such and sees the particular through it. But, on the other hand, in so far as the world is organic, not only as a whole but in all its parts, i.e., in so far as the universal is not merely a common element in things or a law of their relation, but a principle that realises itself in each and all of them, the illusion will lift us to a higher level of truth than that science 470 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. BOOK III which regards the part merely as a part, or as a finite thing externally related to other finite things. And Art, when it frees the particular object from the entanglements of ordinary reality, will not thereby be carrying us away from the truth, but rather for the first time revealing it ; though it may do so at the expense of the immediate truth of appearance. This, it is true, is a defect ; indeed, it is the essential defect in Art ; for the higher truth itself suffers loss when it is realised at the expense of the lower, and when it does not do justice to such lower truth, even in overcoming it. Kantwewof ^ i s not necessary to dwell on Kant's last characteristic ofthTjudg? of beauty — that "without a conception, it is recognised as the ment of Taste. object of a necessary satisfaction," as it merely repeats in a dif- ferent form what has been said under the second characteristic. The universality and the necessity of the judgment of beauty are the same thing in slightly different aspects. For the necessity referred to is but the compulsion under which he who admits the universal has placed himself in regard to the particular. In so far, however, as we have here no mere external subsump- tion, but a unity of the universal and particular as different aspects of the same identity, — which is really the relation implied in the category of " inner adaptation," — necessity and freedom are not distinguished. To put it less technically, necessity properly is a relation of things which, though bound together, are essentially different ; while freedom implies that that which determines is one with that which is deter- mined. Now, the harmony with itself in difference- which characterises the beautiful object, or, according to Kant's way of expressing it, characterises our state of mind in reflecting on it, is a form of freedom in the sense above described. For it lies in this, that in the particular object all external relativity is lost sight of and it is seen as simply one with the universal ; or, putting it subjectively, that in the special perception of sense the reason, or faculty of Ideas, is satisfied. Through the particular object the pure consciousness returns upon itself CHAP. III. THE FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 471 without hindrance, and enjoys its subjective unity with itself. After the Beautiful, Kant proceeds to treat of the Sublime, ^TsuMrZ. ' which he contrasts with it as negative with positive. The beautiful acts by its form, the Sublime by its want or negation of form. In contemplating the Beautiful, the mind is conscious of unity with its immediate self; while in Contemplating the Sublime, the mind is put into disunion with the immediate self, and only recovers unity by rising above the object to a higher consciousness of self. In the one case, the objec- tive world seems to meet and favour the essential effort of intelligence, which is always seeking to find its own unity in the object ; whereas, in the other case, the objective world seems to repel the effort of the mind to find itself in things, and to force it to fall back upon that subjective unity, which it thinks through the Ideas of reason as in itself objective and real. Or, if we take the other form of the Sublime which is related to the will, the overpowering forces of nature, in rela- tion to which we are made conscious of our dependence, by their very negation of any consciousness of ourselves as free in our objective physical existence, make us fall back on that consciousness of ourselves as free which we have through the moral law. In all this there is little to object to. But some of Kant's msway of contrasting it ways of expressing the contrast bring again before us a certain ^^^i as inconsistency in his view of beauty, to which we have already reason and not to under- referred. In passing from the Beautiful to the Sublime, he standing takes the former as that in contemplating which we are con- scious of the harmony of the imagination with the under- standing, not with the reason ; while it is the Sublime that is supposed to carry us up into the region of reason. Thus, we are supposed to become conscious of the mind's pure unity with itself, only by negation of that consciousness of objects which we have through the working of the understanding. This view is, no doubt, in close agreement with Kant's general 472 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. B00K m - doctrine as to the relation of the understanding and the reason, of the consciousness of objects and the consciousness of self. For, according to that view, the accord of things to the under- standing to which beautypoints, is merely that imperfect harmony which is achieved in ordinary knowledge, in which they are linked together as forming one context of experience. The consciousness of the Beautiful thus does not reach beyond the consciousness of phenomenal objects as such, but is rather a preparation for it. It is true that when the knowledge of phenomenal objects, under the law of their necessary connexion, has been reached, it is no final satisfaction of the mind ; because the unity of objects as so connected does not correspond to the pure unity of self-consciousness. But the consciousness of that pure unity can only arise through the negation or condemnation of the objective consciousness as unsatisfactory ; and a sensuous anticipation of that unity must take the form of a. feeling of the Sublime. In this point of view, the Sublime, just because of its negative character, stands higher than the Beautiful. hokUojT not A different view however, is, as we have seen, suggested by Siiscontrast. the Dialectic, where beauty itself is regarded as an " aesthetic Idea," as a presentation of sense or imagination which cannot be brought under a conception of the understanding, and so is in harmony with an Idea of the reason. If this view be taken, the consciousness of beauty must be regarded as an aesthetic anticipation, not of that lower kind of connexion among objects to which Kant confines the name of knowledge, but of a con- sciousness of the perfect unity of the object with itself, which at the same time is a consciousness of its unity with self-con- sciousness. It is an indication of the direction in which Kant was continually, though with hesitating steps, advancing, that this new idea should appear towards the end of his treatment of the aesthetic judgments. If he had fully realised what it meant, he would have been carried altogether beyond the distinctions of his earlier philosophy ; and he would have recog- nised . the possibility of a rational consciousness which should chap. ill. THE FACULTY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 473 have been also a consciousness of objects. Beauty would have taken its place above the Sublime, and the " faculty of aesthetic Ideas " would have been recognised as a form of " perceptive understanding." As it is, we have to observe how nearly Kant has come to an absolute emancipation from the limits of his own theories. For, if in the Beautiful the intelligence finds the positive counterpart of its unity with itself, and so enjoys the realisation of its own ideal unity in the object and not in the negation of the object, it is obvious that the absolute oppo- sition of the consciousness of self to the consciousness of objects, and with it the absolute opposition of the noumenal to the pheno- menal disappears. It is indeed only in this point of view that the Critique of Judgment can be regarded as revealing to us a principle which mediates between nature and freedom. "With this is closely connected .Kant's view of genius as a Kant's view of ''"' genius as the "faculty for the expression of aesthetic Ideas," which uses p£^°*™- nature itself as a symbol of something higher than Sensible ' nature ; which in its creations pays respect to the general laws of the natural world as a connected order of experience, but yet works " according to principles that have a higher place in our reason " than these laws. It thus produces imaginative forms which " give us more to think of than can be gathered into one ■conception," and which therefore can only be taken as the embodiments of the Ideas of reason. As it does not work by conception, this faculty is, of course, above rules ; and that which guides it is not conscious plan but nature, which here means reason showing itself in the form of sense. " For, as the Beautiful cannot be judged by conceptions, but only by the purposive attuning of imagination to agreement with the faculty of conception, so it is not rules and prescriptions that can guide the man of genius in producing works of art, but only that in him which is nature, and cannot be brought under rules or conceptions ; i.e., the supersensible substratum of all his faculties. In other words, only that to which it is the last aim of our intelligence to harmonise all our powers of knowledge 474 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. B00K IIL can furnish the subjective standard of that aesthetic but unconditioned adaptation in fine Art, which can rightly claim to satisfy every one." 1 It is, in fact, the " supersensible " in man, which in genius shows itself capable of expressing itself in sensible forms, that can claim to be recognised intuitively by all whose nature rests on the same supersensible basis. It is reason speaking the language of sense, which appeals to the sensuous feeling of all who are rational. Such an appeal, and the response to it, however, are intelligible, only if we suppose that reason is not merely negatively related to sense, but from a higher point of view over-reaches or includes it. Relation of K&nt has some interesting reflexions on the degree to the feeling of ° nataeLndin which the feeling for the Beautiful is connected with moral morality. goodness. He contends that where there is a keen feeling for the beauties of Mature we may safely conclude to a certain moral elevation of mind, if not to goodness of character ; but that the same cannot be said of a taste for the Fine Arts.. The reason he gives is, that in the former case, besides the dis- interested feeling of beauty, there is an interest of reason in the existence of an object. For, in a beautiful object in nature we find a trace or indication that nature is not merely external and indifferent to the ends of our spirits, but that it is itself " an objective realisation of ideas,' 1 i.e., of that same unity of self-consciousness with itself which otherwise expresses itself in the moral law. Such an interest cannot accompan the Beautiful in Art ; for the work of art is not a found, but an arbitrarily produced harmony of the object with the spirit of man. To this it may fairly be answered that if, as Kant him- self contends, it is reason, working as nature in man, that- produces the objects of fine art, it should interest reason at least as much to find a sensuous expression of itself in the natural world as remoulded by the spirit, as to find it in mere nature. In Kant's view we may see an evidence of his- tendency to hold apart the spheres of nature and freedom, even. R. IV. 220 ; H. V. 355. CHAP. III. THE FACULTY OP AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. 475 while he seeks to find a harmony "between them. For, if the principle of nature is that which more fully manifests itself in human life, the art which " mends nature " will be recognised as itself a higher nature. Indeed, Kant seems to acknow- ledge this in that account of genius which we have just referred to. We may here discern a trace of the influence of Eousseau, who first fully expressed that interest in natural beauty for itself, which has been, the theme of so much of modem poetry. In truth, the love of beauty in nature is only more closely associated with moral goodness in so far as such beauty appeals less to human passion, and the joy in it is, therefore, necessarily a pure delight in beauty for itself. The moral dangers of the love of beauty which is satisfied in Art, lie mainly in the fact that the Beautiful is essentially sensuous, but also to some extent in that very disinterestedness, which makes it shrink from that which is directly moral. But, on the other hand, the higher the Art, the greater must be the converse of the mind with elevating ideas, which are only not moral in a narrower sense, because, like Beligion, they lift us beyond the region of the moral antagonism of flesh and spirit. It is, therefore, a question which confines us to a somewhat inadequate point of view, when we ask whether the effect of the Beautiful is favourable, or not favourable, to morality. It is favourable to it, just in so far as it carries us into a region where the question becomes unnecessary. If it does not carry us into that region, it is or may easily become immoral, just in proportion to the importance of the interest with which it meddles. The great, the infinite value of the Beautiful, and especially The aesthetic . consciousness of the beautiful Art, lies m this, that it appeals to the whole as ak ™ to -*■ *- Religion or man, and, so to speak, keeps him whole. It produces, in the p^ 080 ? 1 ^- form of immediate feeling, the consciousness of the accord of the outward world with our spirits, and of our spirits with themselves ; and so frees us from the sense of being limited and straitened in ourselves and in our circumstances. It 476 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book ill. liberates us from the narrowing consciousness of the antagonism of the inner to the outer life, and of the antagonism of the inner life with itself ; or at least it gives us such a foretaste of freedom as prevents that antagonism from becoming fixed. For the prosaic consciousness, each finite object stands apart from the others and is limited by them ; or if it be connected with them, still the connexion remains outward. For Art, the lines of limitation vanish, and the differences speak only of unity. For, in it, thought and feeling are joined together, nature and spirit "kiss each other." Hence Schiller says that "life is earnest, art is bright and gladsome." {Ernst ist das Zeben, heiter ist die Kunst) The earnestness of life he is speaking of is that which comes of devotion to extraneous ends, of the effort to bind together one finite with another by external bonds of connexion, of the endless struggle to satisfy ever- recurring wants. And the " brightness " of Art is just that it takes us out of this region of labour into the region of an activity which is its own end. The value of Art cannot, there- fore, be exhausted by reference to a moral or any other outward standard ; we can only compare it with the other forms of our consciousness of that ultimate unity of man's life which is presupposed in all its differences, i.e., with Religion and Philosophy. 47^ CHAPTEE IV. THE CEITIQUE 01? TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT : APPLICATION OF THE IDEA OF DESIGN OR,FINAL CAUSE TO NATUKE. TTOW far are we authorised to apply the Idea of Final Cause Z r ?} ls ™ of { tbe to Nature ? This is the question which Kant asks in the J^ff Critique, of Teleological Judgment. In the Introduction he had spoken of a formal adaptation to the intelligence, which we as- sume in nature in so far as we take it to be an intelligible system, and a system intelligible to us. For this implies not only that it is a system in which particular phenomena are determined and connected according to necessary principles of the under- standing, but that, further, these particular phenomena are so limited in the manifoldness of their nature and of their relations to each other, that we can find our way among them by aid of the said principles. So far, therefore, we must regard the world as if it were determined by a rational designer to suit the requirements of our intelligence. And we may quite fairly use this conception as a help to our investigations into nature. It is, however, one thing to guide our reflexion in this way by an Idea of the intelligible unity of nature, and quite a different thing to say that nature is a teleological system, the possibility of which must be explained by a designing cause, i.e., a cause which works according to a pre-conception of the effect, and adopts means to secure it, just as we do ourselves when we seek to secure any end. We cannot prove that this 478 THE CRITIQUE' OF JUDGMENT. BOOK III. is so a 'priori ; for our a priori conception of nature is the con- ception of an order of connexion according to efficient, and not according to final, causes. Nay, rather, in applying the idea of final cause, we always begin by showing that the result attained, say in an organised being, — the unity of its co- operating parts as the organs of one life, — is not necessary but accidental, so far as the mechanism of nature is concerned. We point out that " nature, viewed as mere mechanism, might have shaped and connected the parts in a thousand other ways, without stumbling upon the unity which such a principle demands '' j 1 and, therefore, that we can find the explanation of such a unity only outside of the conception of nature. Only a unity of elements which is accidental according to the order of nature, can require design to account for it. On what ground, then, whether a priori or a posteriori, can we introduce such a principle, not merely as a principle of investigation and reflexion, but of the objective determination of things ? Appearance it is obvious that such a ground cannot be found merely in of design ^ " theumty of the f ac t that we are able to solve many mathematical problems conditions of by one and the same principle ; though the discovery that we phenomena. can do so often gives us a kind of satisfaction, like that which comes from the discovery that things which have no necessary relation to an end, conspire to secure it. Such an adaptation mathematicians are continually discovering, e.g., in the pro- perties of certain geometrical figures. " In so simple a figure as a circle there lies the key to a multitude of problems, each of which taken by itself would be very complex and difficult ; whereas their solution offers itself at once, and as it were of its own accord, as flowing from one of the many inter- esting properties of that figure. Thus, if we wish to con- struct a triangle for which the base and an angle opposite to it are given, the problem is indeterminate, i.e., it may be solved in an infinite number of ways. But the circle embraces them all, as the geometrical locus for all triangles which agree 'R. IV. 240; H. V. 372; §61. CHAP. IV. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 479 with this condition." 1 Hence the delight with which the ancient Greeks followed out the properties of Conic Sections, rejoicing in the adaptation they thus discovered in the nature of things; though they could not anticipate the physical, and especially the astronomical, applications which later science was to give to their discovery of the properties, e.g., of the Ellipse and the Parabola. It was this also that led Plato to attach such value to Geometry as a propaedeutic to philosophy. "Por in the necessity of that which is purposive and is endowed with such properties that it seems as if it were intentionally so arranged for our use, while it nevertheless belongs to the original essence of things without reference to that use," he found a confirmation of his view as to a " community between our intelligence and the origin of all things." 2 This adaptation we explain by the fact that such figures are it is merely . , formal. constructions m space, which is the one a prion form of external perception. Here, therefore, we have not a material adaptation of things independent of us, which yet conspire to subserve our ends, but merely the formal adaptation which must belong to things as perceived by us. Our wonder at the harmony of things with the a priori determination of them in Geometry, is justified ; but what it should lead us to recognise is that space is not " a property of things outside of me, but a way of repre- senting them in me." It is true that this still leaves an inexplicable difficulty as to the union of that form of sensuous perceptions which we call space, with the faculty of conceptions ; " and this widens our views to suspect that there is something lying beyond these sensible ideas, in which, unknown as it is to us, the last ground of that agreement is to be found." 3 But we do not need to know anything about this ground, in order to recognise the formally purposive character of geo- metrical ideas. "What kind of experience, then, will legitimately give occa- External adaptation 1 R. IV. 242 ; H. V. 374 ; § 62. 2 R. IV. 244 ; H. V. 375. the pS * 3 R. IV. 246 : H. V, 377. determination ' of an end. 480 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. BOOK in. sion to the application of the idea of a purpose which is not formal and subjective, but material and objective ? "We cannot call a thing purposive in this latter sense because its conception is possible under the conditions of our perception ; but only because its existence cannot be explained except on the suppo- sition that the idea of the effect is already present in the cause. Such a view of outward objects is adopted when we take them immediately asprodticts of Art, and, again, when we regard them as material provided by one Being for the use of other beings with a view to certain ends. In the latter point of view, we might regard all the natural objects for which man finds a use as " purposive," if we supposed that God or nature had produced them with a view to such use. If man was to exist, a place and means of existence had to be provided for him ; and starting with his existence as an end, we might follow events backwards through the whole succession of phenomena, to the first beginning of the world, regarding them all as means to his existence. But if we begin with the things as given, we can find nothing in their nature which should lead us to reason forwards, or to connect them with man as their end. " Such external adaptation (instrumentality of one thing to others) can be regarded as an external end of nature, only under the con- dition that the existence of that being, to which the others are more or less directly instrumental, is itself independently deter- mined to be an end of nature." x To say that such and such things must be, if man is to live, can have no meaning unless it is shown that man himself must live. But how can we show that ? Sd^whteh ^° sa y ^at a thing is possible only as as an end, involves, to 6 rogarda Ced to begin with, that "its form is not possible according to mere ena.° natural laws, i.e., laws which can be known by us through the understanding alone as applied to objects of sense, but that even the empirical knowledge of it as regards its cause and effect, presupposes conceptions of reason. For, when a knowledge of iE. IV. 250; H.V. 381, §61. CHAP IV. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 481 all the natural laws that determine an object leaves its form unexplained and therefore accidental, then reason, which must regard every form of a product of nature as necessary, in order to the comprehension even of the conditions of its genesis, is driven by the absence of natural necessity to regard the object as if it were possible only through the causality of reason itself. In other words, it is driven to refer the production of the object to a cause that acts by ends, i.e., a will." 1 A geometrical figure found inscribed on the sand of the They are found realised shore, may be taken as an example of cases, in which the impos- in organised ' J £ > r beings. sibility of accounting for the result by mechanical or natural causes, would instantly lead to the reference of the result to design, i.e., to the working of a will. In such a case, the purposive activity is not in the object, but in another being who acts upon it. There is, however, a case in which we are led to refer the purposive activity to the object itself or to nature, viz., where the thing presents itself as at once cause and effect of itself. In this sense all organised beings are ends of nature. To take an example, a tree may, in three different ways be recognised as an end to itself : " For, in the first place, it produces another tree accord- ing to known laws ; but the tree produced is of the same genus. The tree, therefore, produces itself generically : for in the genus it, as effect, is continually produced by itself ; and as cause, it continually maintains its generic existence by repeated self- production. In the second place, a tree produces itself indi- vidually. It is true that we call this kind of production growth ; but growth is quite distinct from every kind of increase according to mechanical laws, and is just generation under another name. In adding to its bulk, the tree first communi- cates to the new matter, which it absorbs, a characteristic qual- ity which cannot be bestowed by the mechanism of nature without it ; and thus the tree develops itself by aid of a material which, as to its mode of composition, is its own 1 R. IV. 252 ; H. V. 382 ; § 64. VOL. II. 2 PI 482 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in. product. For though, as respects the constituents got from nature without, such material must be regarded as having merely a derived existence, yet the division and re-combina- tion of it is carried on in an original way, which art cannot attempt to cope with. ... In the third place, the parts of the tree produce each other in such a way, that . the main- tenance of the one depends reciprocally on the maintenance of the others. The bud or scion of one tree grafted on another, produces in the alien stock a plant of its own kind. Hence, we may regard every twig or leaf in a tree as merely grafted on it, and so as an independent tree which attaches itself to another, and periodically nourishes itself therefrom. At the same time, while the leaves are products of the tree, they like- wise in turn give support to it ; for the repeated defoliation of a tree would kill it, and its growth thus depends on the reaction of the leaves upon the stem. I shall only mention in passing the self-help of nature, by which, after the injury or removal of a part of an organism that is necessary for the maintenance of the rest, it is restored or its place is supplied by them ; and the abortions or malformations in growth, in which certain parts, on account of casual defects or bindrances, form them- selves in a new way to maintain what exists, and so produce an anomalous creature ; though these are phenomena which exhibit the most wonderful properties of organised beings." 1 An end of In view of the characteristics "just stated, we say that the nature — its ° " anldtffermce organised being is cause and effect of itself. This, indeed, is a from a work f , • • r i pp j n of art. somewhat improper expression, for causes and effects form a linear series which is always directed forward from the former to the latter, and never returns upon itself. But "we can think a casual connexion of phenomena according to a conception of rea- son (of ends) which, regarded as a series, would lead both for- wards and backwards," in so far as the conception of the effect must itself be regarded as the cause. Now in an " end of nature" such as we have described, there are the following characteristics. 1 E. IV. 252 ; H. V. 383. CHAP. IV. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 483 First, as in a work of Art, the parts are in their existence and their form conditioned by their relation to the whole, a thing which we can think as possible only by supposing that the organised being is the product of a rational cause, whose causality, in bringing the parts together and connecting them, is determined by the idea of the whole. But, in the second place, in an " end of nature," in distinction from a work of Art, the parts are so united in the whole, that they are reciprocally causes and effects of each other's form, and that each part is, in relation to the other parts, a productive organ. An " end of nature " is, therefore, an " organised and self-organising being," whereas in a work of Art each part is there because of the others, but not by means of them. But, though in this case the idea of the whole determines for us the form and connexion of the parts, it determines them not as their cause, but merely as their ground of knowledge. On the other hand, in order to think an end of nature, we are obliged to represent the idea of the whole as prior to the parts, and as determining them to be what they are ; yet the object does not send us beyond itself to seek for its unity, but seems to contain it in itself and to manifest it in the relation of its parts, as at once causes and effects, means and ends of each other. Hence, we seem to be suspended be- tween the alternatives of a Hylozoism which assigns to matter a property that contradicts its very nature as inert and lifeless, and a Dualism, which, on the analogy of Art, refers the phenomena of organisation to an alien principle, a soul which is externally combined with the body, — a hypothesis which explains nothing. " In truth, the organisation of nature has in it nothing analogous to any causality we know " (except perhaps that which reveals itself in the organisation of human society). While, therefore, we are obliged to use the idea of the purposive activity of Art, as a guide to our reflexions on these phenomena of life which we are not able to explain by mechanical laws, we must be careful to remember that, in doing so, we are not determining objectively what is the real cause of the phenomena. " The 484 THE CRITIQUE OE JUDGMENT. B00K IIL conception of a thing, as in itself an end of nature, is no con- stitutive conception of reason or of understanding ; but it can furnish a regulative conception for reflective judgment. In other words, we may use it to guide our investigations into the nature of objects of this kind by a distant analogy with our own causality according to ends, and also to enable us to reflect upon their ultimate ground. As to the latter use, however, we must remember that its value is not in reference to the know- ledge of nature or of its ultimate ground of existence, but rather to the exercise of that practical faculty of reason in us, by the analogy of which we are guided in thinking of the cause of the design manifested in nature." x nocJssitToJ I n us i n g tn i s principle of judgment then, we regard "an SSoaiprin- organised product of nature as one in which all parts are explanation* reciprocally ends and means of each other." We assume that of the organic. ..... there is "nothing in vain," nothing purposeless in it, %.e., nothing which is not determined by the idea of the whole. This is a way of regarding nature which is forced upon us by an a priori necessity, as a principle, not indeed of determination, but of investigation. And we " can as little free ourselves from this special teleological principle as from the universal physical principle ; for as, without the latter, we could have no experience, so, without the former, we could have no guiding thread for the observation of a particular species of natural objects." This conception, however, we have to observe, carries us into "quite a different order of things from that of the mere mechanism of nature ; " for it makes us treat the unity of the conception of the object as prior to the difference of those parts or elements, which, according to the mechanism of nature, we should regard as determining each other externally. It follows that we must not mix the two disparate principles, or regard the one as limited by the other, which would only lead to confusion ; but, when we think by the teleological principle, we must regard everything as determined by it. " It may be that, e.g., in an 1 E. IV. 259 ; H. V. 388 ; § 65. CHAr. IV. THE FACULTY OE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 485 animal body many parts can be understood as combined to- gether according to merely mechanical laws (as the hide, the bones, the hair) ; yet the cause which brings together the required matter, modifies and forms it, and puts it in its appropriate place, must always be estimated teleologically. In the organ- ised being, everything must be regarded as organised and everything again, in a certain relation to the thing itself, as an organ." But in what relation shall we regard these " ends of nature " is there ajsnai ° end of nature? as standing to - other things ? It has ■ been already said that ^sei^or'sB 16 the " external adaptation " or relative usefulness of an object, naturaiMng. gives no ground for the application of the idea of an end of nature to it, or the explanation of it by that idea. " If we have no reason to regard a thing as in itself an end, we can only hypothetical! y judge its external relations to be purposive ; " i.e., only on the hypothesis that something else is independently determined as an end. But, then, are not organised beings as " ends of nature " so determined ? To this question Kant answers that " to judge a thing by reason of its inner form as an end of nature, is not to hold that it is an end of nature, that that thing should exist," z and that, therefore, other things are to be explained as determined purposively with a view to its existence. Whenever we go beyond the relation of the parts of the organism to each other, and consider the relation of the organism to the environment, we raise the question as to the final end of nature ; a question which reaches beyond all our teleological knowledge of nature, since the end of nature cannot be found in nature itself. When we look at a blade of grass in itself, we are forced to bring it under the conception of an end of nature; but, when we ask whether it was made for the cow to eat it, we are obliged to ask, Is then the cow the ultimate end of nature ? If we say : No ; the cow is intended for the subsistence of man, we only raise the further question, Why should man exist ? — a * ' E. IV. 261 ; H. V. 389. 2 R. IV. 262 ; H. V. 390 ; § 67. 486 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. BOOK ill. question which we cannot answer without going beyond the system of nature in which man is merely an externally con- ditioned, externally conditioning, member, like the other animals. In this way, therefore, " we reach no categorical end ; but rather, all such teleological reference of one existence to another rests on a further condition, which, as unconditioned, lies entirely outside of the range of a physical teleology." 1 Te e koio£y°to It; is > therefore, only the inner organisation of a living being Theology. that giveg ug tIie idea of an end of nature _ _a. t the same time, this conception being once suggested, we are necessarily led to apply it to the whole of nature, and to think of nature as a teleological system, to which all the mechanism of efficient causation is subordinated. " By the example that nature gives us in its organic products, we are justified, nay called upon, to expect of it and its laws nothing that is not purposive." Tor " the former idea carries us already far beyond the world of sense ; and the unity of the supersensible principle must be regarded as holding good, not merely for a certain species of natural beings, but for the system of nature as a whole." In taking such a view however, we find ourselves obliged to look leyond the system of nature, and not merely into it, in order to find the final end to which we may refer it ; and, even when we have got the idea of such a final end of nature, we have to regard it as a mere guide to our reflexions upon nature, and not as a determining principle ; for nature as a whole is not given as an organism, but rather its phenomena present themselves as an endless series in which there is neither finality nor even any return upon itself, such as we find in the case of a living being. For similar reasons we have to keep our natural teleology separate from Theology, and to remember always that the idea of God as a designer is excluded from our reflexion upon nature, except as a way of expressing to ourselves the fact that there are existences in the world which we cannot explain except under the idea of an end. Even in 1 JR. IV. 266; H. V. 293. chap. IV. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 487 regard to organised beings, however, we must use the idea without any attempt to decide whether the ends of nature are really intended or unintended, i.e., whether they are - results of a principle which works with a consciousness of ends, or not. We are now in a position to understand the nature of the 1iT&^s^ Y antmomy which arises m connexion with the application oi the turn. idea of final causation, and to anticipate its solution. On the one side, we have the doctrine that the production of material things is possible only according to mechanical laws, seeing that such laws alone agree with the principles on which experience is possible. On the other side, we have the doctrine, that certain products of nature are not possible according to mechanical laws, but require a principle that works according to ends for their production. This antinomy is due to a confusion . of the different points of view, from which we are obliged to consider things and make judgments regarding them, with different objective determinations of their nature. If we say that everything can be completely ex- plained on mechanical principles, we contradict the doctrine that there are existences which require another kind of explanation. But, if we say that we are obliged to seek to explain all phenomena of nature according to mechanical laws, and that this is the only way in which scientific knowledge of them is possible, this does not contradict the assertion that there are certain of these phenomena which, in this way, we can never fully explain, but which we are obliged to account for on teleological principles. For, however far we go in following out the series of mechanical causes, we get no light on the ultimate reason for the specific form of an organ- ism as an end of nature. But in asserting our need for this additional mode of explanation, we do not pretend to settle the question whether " in the unknown inner ground of nature, the physico-mechanical connexion of things and the organic con- nexion of their nature as ends, may be united in one principle ; 488 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. B0OK - ln - we only say that our reason is unable so to unite them." For " we cannot see into the first inner ground of the infinite multiplicity of the particular laws of nature which are only empirically known to us, so as to detect the inner all-sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature, a principle which lies in the supersensible. Whether, therefore, the productive power of nature is sufficient also for that which we judge to be formed and connected according to the idea of ends, as well as for that which we conceive to require only mechanical causes to account for it ; or, whether for things which we necessarily regard as ends of nature, there is needed a quite different kind of original causality, which cannot be contained in material nature or in its intelligible substratum, viz., an architectonic understanding, — this is a question to which, owing to the narrow limitations of our reason in the a priori determination of objects as causes, we can give no answer whatever." 2 But this does not alter the fact that we need another principle to supplement the deficiency of mechanical causes, though only as a principle of reflexion and not of determination. Pour ™wa as This view of the matter enables us to throw new light upon to final causes u x " ture - The the controversies which have taken place in relation to the existence of final causes in nature. On this subject four views have been maintained by dogmatic philosophy. Two of these involve what we may call the Ideality of Design in nature, i.e., they maintain that the purposive form of certain natural pro- ducts is to be explained away as due to a subjective illusion ; while two of them hold to the Reality of Design in nature, but suggest different conceptions of it. As Idealists in this sense, we have first Democritus and the Epicureans, maintain- ing the system of Causality, which entirely denies that there is anything in nature which is not mechanically caused. This system reduces all our teleological judgments to illusion, but it omits to give any explanation whatever of the illusion, or of the facts which give rise to it. Next comes Spinoza, who maintains 1 R. IV. 275; H. V. 400; § 69. 2 Id. 70. Idealists of Design. CHAP. IV. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 489 the system of Fatality, and points to the unity of the subject or substratum of all natural things as the ground of their apparent adaptation to each other. But though unity of ground is required to explain adaptation, it is not in itself sufficient to explain it. For the unity of purpose is different from the unity of blind necessity, and requires not only one cause, but a designing, that is, an intelligent cause. The Realists are either Hylozoists, who find the ground of p^f 1 ' 8 ' 30 ' design in nature in the conception of matter as living, i.e., as animated by what is called a world-soul, or Theists who believe in a rational being, a God, as the cause of all things. The explanation of the former involves an obvious circle, for they seek to deduce the purpose which seems to belong to the nature of organised beings from the life of matter, which life we know only in organised beings. Theism, on the other hand, supplies us with an adequate cause for the appearance of design in nature ; but it errs in dogmatically asserting that, be- cause we cannot account for that appearance of design by mechanical causes, it is therefore objectively impossible to do so ; and, on the other hand, in maintaining that, because we are forced to use the idea of a designing reason to account for organised beings, there is no other way of explaining them. But we cannot prove the objective reality of our conception of an end of nature, much less of an understanding acting according to ends as the cause of nature. For the idea of an end of nature requires us to regard an object as the product of nature, and therefore as subject to the necessity of nature ; and yet, at the same time, to view its purposive form as accidental in view of the laws of nature. To make this intelligible, we should require to discover, not only '' a ground for the possibility of the object in nature, but also a ground for the possibility of nature itself, which would enable us to refer it to something which is beyond nature, and therefore unknowable." Now, " the conception of a causality through ends (of Art) has objective reality, and also the conception of a causality 490 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in. according to the mechanism of nature. But the conception of a causality of nature according to the rule of ends, still more of a Being, such as cannot be given in experience — a Being who according to the rule of ends is cause of nature, — though it is thinkable without contradiction, is not to be dogma- tically asserted, for it is neither derived from experience, nor necessary to the possibility of experience. Hence its objective reality cannot be securely established by any evidence. Even if it could, however, how can I number among the products of nature, things which are definitely viewed as products of divine art, when it is just the incapacity of nature according to its own laws to produce such things, which made it necessary to call in the aid of a different cause V 1 In short, the conception of an end of nature seems at once to confine us to nature and to force us to go beyond it. It confines us to nature, because it is in the case of organised beings which are objects of experience that we find ourselves ■ constrained to apply the idea of design or purpose ; yet it carries us beyond nature, because we cannot conceive of such things as produced by mechanical action and reaction, but only by a cause that works according to ends, i.e., a rational cause. No Newton, we can say with certainty, will ever arise to make intelligible to us, according to mechanical causes, the germination of one blade of grass. Hence we are driven to guide our reflexion upon such an organism according to the idea of purpose. But how can we be sure " that in nature, if we could only penetrate to the principle by which it specifies the universal laws, known to us through the pure understanding, there may not lie a sufficient ground of the possibility of organised beings, without any necessity for attributing their production to any purpose whatever ? " 2 opposition of This last remark really brings us to the ultimate source of the possible tatoeoreticli 1 ^ e difficulty in the inmost nature of our faculties. Our Rei s P on. otical reason is a faculty of principles, which proceeds in its ultimate 1 R. IV. 286 ; H. V. 409 ; § 74. 2 R. IV. 290 ; H. V. 413 ; § 75. CHAP. IV. THE FACULTY OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 491 demands to the unconditioned. But our understanding cannot keep pace with our reason ; for it always acts under a certain condition which must be given. In other words, our under- standing is not perceptive, but requires perceptions to be supplied to it through sense. Hence, there is for us a neces- sary distinction between the possible and the actual, and " the former only expresses the position of the idea of a thing in relation to our conception and our faculty of thinking, while the latter implies the position of the thing in itself." But, though the proposition that things may be possible without being actual, holds good for our intelligence, we are not to assume that there is any such distinction in things in them- selves. That there need be none, is clear " from the inevitable demand of reason, that we should assume something (viz., the ultimate ground of all) as necessarily existing, — a something in which possibility and actuality are no longer distinguishable." For this idea, indeed, our understanding has no conception, i.e., it can discover no way of determining such a thing, or its manner of existence. For when we think an object, we repre- sent it merely as possible ; and it is only when the object is given in perception that we are conscious of it as actual. Hence the idea of an absolutely Necessary Being is for the human understanding an unattainable problematic Idea. It is, in fact, one with the Idea of a perceptive understanding, that is, an understanding for which the distinction of thinking and perceiving does not exist, and for which, therefore, all objects of consciousness are actual. In other words, such an understand- ing could have no conception of a possibility of objects which do not exist, or of anything accidental in the existence of those that do exist; nor could it have any idea of the kind of necessity which contrasts with such accidental existence. Again, turning to the practical reason, we find another conse- quence of the same defect. For " as in our theoretic contem- plation of nature, reason obliges us to assume the unconditioned necessity of its ground, so, in our practical contemplation of it, we 492 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book ill. are obliged by our consciousness of tbe moral law to presuppose our own unconditioned causality, i.e., our freedom. But, as the objective necessity of the act as duty is opposed to that necessity, which as an event it would have, if its ground lay in nature and not in freedom, and as, therefore, the act which is morally neces- sary, is viewed as physically accidental (i.e., so that that which necessarily ought to happen, does often not happen) it is clear that it is entirely due to the subjective character of our practical faculty that the moral laws have to be represented as commands. This necessity, therefore, is represented by us not by an " is " but by an " ought to be," which would not be the case, if reason were regarded as in its causality independent of sensibility (as that in which lies the subjective condition of its application to objects of nature) and so as cause in an intelligible world which was entirely conformed to the moral law. Though, therefore, the idea of an intelligible world in which everything would be actual because (as something good) it is possible, along with the idea of freedom as its formal con- dition, is a transcendent conception, which cannot be taken as a constitutive principle to determine objects and their reality ; yet, as is required by our sensuous nature, it takes the place of a universal regulative principle, and, though it does not deter- mine freedom objectively as a form of causality, yet it makes the rule of action according to that idea, as obligatory as if it did." 1 it is due to These distinctions have an important bearing on the present the conditions ox intemSnce. case > ^ or ^ ne reason wnv we distinguish between mechanism of nature and design in nature is, that our understanding proceeds from the universal to the particular in determining objects. For the particulars as such have in them something which is accidental in relation to the universal, while yet our reason requires unity and law in the combination of the particular laws of nature. Now, the conformity of the accidental to law is its adaptation to an end ; hence the idea of a design of nature in its products is necessary to us, not as a conception 1 R IV. 294 ; H. V. 416. Cf. Vol. I. 592 seq. chap. IV. THE FACULTY OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 493 which determines objects, but as a principle to regulate our reflexion upon them. Our reason thus makes us conscious of the defect of our understanding, which is merely discursive and, therefore, obliged to proceed in knowledge from the analytic universal to the particular ; and it gives rise to the Idea of an understanding altogether different from ours, which should proceed to the particular from a synthetic universal, and for which, therefore, there would be no accidental character in the particulars. While, therefore, our understanding is obliged to conceive a real whole as the effect of concurrently working forces of its parts, an intuitive understanding would see the possi- bility of the parts as dependent on the whole. The only way, however, in which we can realise for ourselves such an Idea, is by thinking of the form and connexion of the parts as dependent on the conception of the whole. Looking at it in this way, we can understand how it is that our reason compels us to use the idea of design to bridge over the gulf between the particular and the universal ; while at the same time we recognise that in doing so it is acting on a subjective principle, a principle which need not hold good for all intelligence, but only for an intelligence similar to ours. From this it is obvious that the two principles cannot be T -* solution united as both objectively determining nature or any natural ^imJrSiL object ; for the one way of explaining excludes the other. But, prmcip e ' when we regard them subjectively, both ways have a relative value ; though the idea that would make it possible to combine them, carries us to something that is beyond both, i.e. to the supersensible. To this, however, we can only point ; we can- not make it an object of definite knowledge. Hence we must be careful not to confuse the two principles. We must regard the working of efficient causes as subordinate to that of the final cause ; yet we must recognise that this subordination can- not authorise a transition from the one to the other ; for the two aspects or points of view absolutely refuse to coalesce for us ; their point of union lies in the supersensible substratum of 494 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. B00K; IIL nature, which is beyond our reach. All that we can do is to use the principle that everything has an end or purpose, as suggesting continual inquiries into the relations of the parts of organisms to each other ; and, in a secondary way, into the relations of different organisms to each other, and of the organic world to the inorganic. But the answers to such questions cannot be reached by developing the principle of design, but only by discovering new relations of things as efficient causes which may be subsumed under it. The con- ception of design is thus only a "heuristic" principle, a principle by aid of which we put questions to nature. But the answers that we reach are never complete answers to the question we ask ; for to give an adequate answer to that question, we should need to bring together two ways of contemplating things, the mechanical and the teleological way, which for us are quite incommensurable. Relation of J n the Methodology of the Critique of Teleological Judgment N,,im-,L ^ Kant g es on to determine the place of teleological conceptions with reference to Natural Science on the one hand, and Theology on the other, in conformity with the results already arrived at. The idea of design in nature may be of use to Theology, and we shall afterwards see of what use it is ; but immediately, it is a conception which is forced upon us by certain products of nature, which we cannot sufficiently explain by mechanical causes, and in considering which we are there- fore obliged to employ another principle, — not, indeed, to deter- mine the object, but to guide our reflexions upon it. Yet, we cannot say that Theology is a part of Natural Science ; for Natural Science means the determination of phenomena accord- ing to the laws of their mechanical or physical connexion, and to this the idea of design contributes nothing. Its value is only that it furnishes a principle which directs us in looking for efficient causes. " Teleology, therefore, belongs to no doctrine, but only to criticism, and indeed to the criticism of the one special faculty of judgment." In other words, the Science and t Theology. CHAP IV. THE FACULTY OE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 495 especial question of teleology is not one as to the objective determination of things, but as to the uses of the principle of design, either as supplying a regulative principle for Natural Science, or as shewing us how the consideration of nature may prepare the way for Theology. 1 To see this double relation of the idea of design we need only ISS^aruie follow out the considerations already suggested. "We are dS?^? 16 °' authorised and bound in natural science to aim at and endeavour after the mechanical explanation of all products of nature ; but our power of attaining such explanation is limited by the nature of our understanding, not only in the sense that we can never complete the explanation of things by physical causes, but in the sense that its completion would involve an impossibility. For the idea of an organic unity, a unity in which the whole is ) prior to the parts, is incommensurable with the idea of a mechanical whole which is constituted by the action and reaction of the parts. However far, therefore, we may carry . our mechanical explanations, we cannot by means of them explain such a unity. Hence, "if the naturalist would not waste his labour, in his examination into the nature of objects which have to be conceived as ends of nature or organisms, he will be obliged always to start with the presupposition of an original organic principle, which uses the mechanism of nature to produce new organised forms, or to develop the organic forms already attained into new shapes." " It is praiseworthy when Comparative Anatomy goes through f^^%^ all the great kingdom of organised beings, searching whether apid^ there is discoverable in it any trace of system, which points to a common principle of production. For, otherwise, we should be obliged to be content to use the idea of design merely as a principle of reflective judgment, and to abandon all hope of in- sight into the productive processes of nature. "When we consider the agreement of so many genera of animals in a certain common schema of structure, which seems to manifest itself not only ♦ i K. IV. 310; H. V. 430, § 79. 496 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. book in. in their skeletons but in the disposition of all their parts, so that, while there is a wonderful simplicity in the original plan, an immense variety of species are produced by the shortening of one member and the lengthening of another, by the involution of one part and the evolution of another, we cannot but be visited with some, though it may be faint beams of hope that, by the aid of the principle of the mechanism of nature (which is the sole basis of natural science) we may do something to explain the origin of species. This analogy of forms, which in all their differences seem to be produced according to a common type, strengthens our suspicion that there is here a real rela- tion due to descent from a common parent, when we consider the gradual approximation of one species of animals to another, from that in which the principle of design seems to be most decisively exhibited, i.e., from man, down to the polyp, and again from this down to mosses and algae and finally to the lowest stage of nature which we can observe, viz., to crude matter. If we follow such indications, we will be inclined to regard the whole purposive order of nature (the difficulty of understanding which in the case of organic beings, made us set up the hypothesis that they are due to another principle of production,) as nevertheless developed out of matter and its forms according to mechanical laws, (like those which produce the forms of chrystals). In this way it becomes the task of the Archaeologist of Nature to go back to the remaining traces of its earliest revolutions, and, according to known or supposed mechanical laws, to trace the genesis of that great family of creatures. Thus, he can suppose that the bosom of mother earth as she first passed out of her chaotic state (like a great animal) gave birth to creatures of less purposive form, and that these again became the parents of others which were formed in greater adaptation to their place of birth and their relations to each other ; until her all-productive womb becoming fixed and ossified, she at last restricted her birth to definite species incapable of any farther modification, and the manifoldness of chap. IV. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 497 nature became permanent in the shape it had taken when the operation of her free formative power came to an end." 1 But all this does not enable us to explain away the Jij^ohani ' difference between organic and inorganic, or to reduce design Sm oFtS?" to mechanism ; for, " ultimately, we are still obliged to attribute species, to this universal mother an organisation which is adapted for the production and maintenance of all these creatures ; other- wise we should be unable to explain the possibility of the purposive form of the products of the animal and vegetable kingdom. "We have, therefore, only pushed back the ground of explanation a stage further ; nor can we pretend to have made the genesis of these two kingdoms intelligible without resorting to final causes. Even as respects the alterations to which certain individuals of the organised genera have acci- dentally been subjected, and which we find to have been taken up into the process of generation and to have become hereditary, we cannot judge otherwise than that they are the occasional development of purposive possibilities, that were originally present in the species with a view to the preservation of the race. For, considering the complete inner adaptation of an organic being, the generation of its like is clearly bound up with the condition that nothing shall be taken up into the generating forces which does not belong, in such a system of ends, to one or other of their undeveloped original capacities." 2 Indeed, if we do not suppose the design in organic beings to be universal, we altogether lose our guiding principle of judgment, viz., that nothing in the organised being is to be regarded as purposeless. Thus however far we stretch the series of mechanical causa- The need for 5 teleological tion, we are obliged, ultimately, to regard it as subordinated to p™ c XJ to* the service of final causes, or as limited in all its actions by such ^nd"^ 1 " causes, — if we are to explain the existence of organised beings. And we cannot think of any existence determined by final causes, except by referring it to an understanding as its cause. 1 R. IV. 314 ; H. V. 433. 2 Id, VOL. II. 2 I 498 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book ill. Against this, Hume has brought the objection that, if the presence of design in the world makes it necessary to refer it to an architectonic understanding, the various powers which are implied in such an understanding would seem to require another understanding as the cause of their combination. But this objection is really meaningless ; for the necessity which drives us to explain the organised being by a creative under- standing lies in the fact that, while that being has manifold parts outside of each other, it yet has a unity that cannot be explained by their reciprocal action and reaction. It is the accidental nature of the unity as referred to mere mechanical laws, which forces us to look beyond it for a cause different from itself; but no such necessity exists in reference to an under- standing, which is one with itself in all its action, and does not need something else to make it one. The inadequate attempt of Spinoza to get over this difficulty, by supposing a mere unity of substance in all natural objects, has already been referred to. Diflerentways The teleological point of view, then, is necessary. On the of explaining o j. ^ of mechanical 1 otGer hand, we must conceive design as realising itself through causes" mechanical causes as its means, otherwise we could not regard the organised being as the product of nature. Different systems have been suggested to unite the two. There is first the system of Occasional Causes, which supposes a constantly repeated miracle at every birth. " If we assume the occasionalism of the pro- duction of organised beings, all nature is lost, and all exercise of reason in judging of the possibility of such products becomes vain ; hence we may assume that no one will adopt this system who has any interest in philosophy." * The other system, that of Pre-established Harmony, presents itself in two forms ; as the sys- tem of Evolution or Individual Preformation, and the system of JSpigenesis, or, as it might be called, of Generic Preforma- tion. The former only differs from Occasionalism so far as it supposes the embryos of all individuals to exist 1 E. IV. 317 ; H. V. 436. CHAP. iv. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL .JUDGMENT. 499 in the first parents; and the hyperphysical explanations to which its supporters are reduced to account for the existence of abortions and hybrids, as well as for the preservation of the germs of individual life through all the successive generations up to the time of their development, are sufficient grounds for rejecting it. Much more reasonable is the system of Hpigenesis, which permits us to hold that the ultimate possibility of organised beings implies final causes, but, nevertheless, regards nature as itself productive in the descent of these beings from each other ; and " so, with the least expense of the supernatural, leaves to nature all that follows after the first beginning (without determining anything about that beginning itself, which physical theory necessarily fails to explain, however it may lengthen the chain of its causes)." 1 We have already seen that there is a great difference The jbuu end of nature, is between external and internal design or adaptation. It is only !* to b « / 0Ulld in relation to beings which are ends in themselves, that things which can be accounted for by mechanical causes can be regarded as outwardly purposive. The question of purpose would not arise in regard to such things taken by themselves. But, when an organised being has suggested to us the idea of an under- standing as its cause, we naturally go on to ask whether this being is itself a final end, or whether it is to be regarded as a means to a further end. There is, indeed, " one external adaptation which is so connected with the inner purpose of organisation " that it is at once subsirmed under it, viz., the adaptation of the two sexes with regard to the continuance of the species by means of each other. Here the question, to what end ? is at once answered by saying that " the two sexes together first constitute an organised whole, though not an organised whole in one body." 2 When we go beyond this, and ask for a final end of all organisms, we find that nature gives us no answer. Nature, as such, has no last end. Man, » * K, IV. 319; H. V. 437. 2 R. IV. 321; H. V. 439, §. 82. 500 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book III. indeed, might claim to be the final end of nature, for whose use all things are made in so far as he is " the sole being upon earth who has a conception of an end, and who can by his reason make out of an aggregate of purposively framed things a system of ends." But nature does not subordinate other things and beings to man, or exempt him from its own destruc- tive forces. If he is able to use other beings for his purposes, his existence often becomes an instrument to theirs. In truth, nature is in itself an endless series in which there is no last link ; and all that we can say is that certain of its creatures cannot be accounted for as mere links in the chain, and point, therefore, to a supersensible principle, as the necessary explana- tion of their existence. As to man, we can only add that, when the question as to & final end is suggested by the nature of organic beings, he is the being who alone seems capable of filling the place of such an end ; but that nature does not appear, on the first aspect of it, to treat him as filling it. Not as regards "We have, however, to distinguish two points of view his happiness, his* c a l dtu?e ards fr° m which man might be considered as end to nature, in discipline. reference to his happiness and in reference to his culture ; for, it may be that that which in nature appears at first as not pur- posive in relation to the former, may be purposive in relation to the latter. Now, that the system of nature is not adapted to secure man's happiness may easily be shown. Happiness is, indeed, a very vague idea, which can afford no fixed law to determine man's efforts. " Man projects his ideal of happi- ness in such different ways, according to the bias his under- standing gets from imagination and sense, and he changes it so often, that nature, even if it were entirely subjected to his will, could nevertheless receive from that will no definite, fixed and universal law" 1 to which it could be accommodated. And, if we try to get over this difficulty by reducing happiness to the true wants of nature in which all agree, or by supposing his power of reaching his 'ends to be indefinitely increased, yet we could not 1 R. IV. 327 ; H. V. 443, § 83. chap. iv. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 501 suppose it possible that this ultimate natural aim of his life should be attained by him ; for " he is not so constituted as to rest and be satisfied in any possession or enjoyment whatever." Finally, nature, as we have already said, does not treat him as a favourite, and, if she did, his own passions would have spoiled her work. In fact, looking to nature both within and without us, we find ourselves only links in a chain of conditioned beings, none of which can be regarded as an absolute end. It is only when we look upon man in another point of view, and ask how he represents himself as an unconditioned end to himself, that we can regard him as an end to other beings. In this point of view, we may ask what nature " can do for man, to prepare him for that which he must do for himself in order to be a final end." 1 When we put it in this way, we find that there are only two ways in which nature can help man : — in so far as it increases his power of setting ends to himself, and his capacity to make out of his life an ordered whole; or, again, in so far as it favours the development in him of that highest principle with reference to which his powers and capacity should be directed. These two aims may be expressed as culture and moral discipline. Now nature can only indirectly aid him to attain the latter of these two ends ; for morality is essentially a matter of self-determination. At the same time, it may be shown that the very natural condi- tions, which are unfavourable to man's happiness, contribute to the culture of his powers and the discipline of his passions. Nothing can be more pessimistic than Kant's view of man's life from the point of view of happiness, and nothing more decided than his reversion to a kind of optimism from the point of view of culture and morality. " The abilities of the human species cannot be developed except by means of their inequality, an inequality which condemns the great majority of men to a life of mechanical drudgery, and makes them subservient to the comfort and leisure of others, who attend to the less neces- 1 R. IV. 328 ; H. V. 444. 502 THE CRITIQUE OE JUDGMENT. B00K IIL sary elements of culture, science, and art " ; so that it is only after many ages of servile labour and sparing enjoyment, that the culture of the higher class spreads to the lower. Hence it is that we see the extreme of want on one side balanced by the extreme of luxury on the other ; and suffering from the unjust violence on the one part, compensated only by inner discontent with self on the other. Yet " this splendid misery is bound up with the development of the natural capacities of mankind, and the end of nature, though not our end, is thereby attained." Men are driven by their continual conflicts to establish a civil society, and finally by the conflicts of States, to establish " a complete civil community of the world, or a system of all States," and the whole process of the struggle is a continual education of man's powers. In like manner, as regards the discipline of our passions, there is an evident " purposive striving of nature towards a development of humanity, which may make us receptive of higher ends than nature herself can reach." 1 It is true that even the refinement of taste and the. advance of science tend to awaken a host of new needs and greeds in us, but the rudeness and violence of passion gets tamed. The improvement in manners, even when it is not also an improvement in morals, yet breaks the tyranny of sense, and prepares men for the rule of reason. In this way, the very pressure of nature, which destroys man's happiness, and seems to rouse to the utmost the evil passions within him, becomes subservient to the realisation of his higher destiny ; and the very absence of adaptation from the point of view of happi- ness, proves to be a wise adaptation when we measure man's life by the standard of culture and moral discipline. " The value of life for us, if we estimate it by that which we enjoy, (by the natural end of all our desires which is happiness) is easy to reckon. It is less than nothing (Er sinkt unter Null) ; for who would accept a repetition of life under the same conditions ? who even would accept its repetition according to a self-chosen 1 E. IV. 331 ; H. V. 455, § 83. chap. IV. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 503 plan, (which should keep within the ordinary course of nature) if it was directed merely to enjoyment ? " The true value of life is " that which we give to it by that which we do, and which we do with a purpose so independent of nature, that it is only under condition of its subserving that purpose that we can consider the existence of nature itself to be desirable." 1 It is, then, in this point of view, and in this point of view alone, that man can be considered as end to himself and to all things. He is such an end only because it is in him alone that there is a " teleological causality/' i.e., he alone sets ends before him, and he alone "represents the law according to which he has to determine ends, as independent of all natural conditions." " Without him there would be no ultimate point in nature, to which the chain of subordinate ends could be attached. At the same time, it is not as a natural, but as a moral being that they are attached even to him." 2 How, then, do these conceptions affect Theology ? To see that, The limit of we have to distinguish Physico- Theology from Moral-Theology, logy - the first of which prepares the way for the second, in so far as it is the existence of ends in nature that makes it reasonable for us to seek for a final end or principle, with a view to which all nature is produced or determined. Physico-theology, how- ever, can tell us nothing about the final end of creation, and would not even of itself suggest the enquiry about one. It is true that we cannot account for an organism or end of nature, except by an intelligent cause ; but nothing in nature would enable us to say that such a cause must be absolutely 'perfect, or even that it must be one. So far, Polytheism is not less rational than Monotheism. Still less can we derive from nature the idea of a moral Being, determined by the idea of a highest end ; or find any grounds in it to prefer that conception of God to the idea of "an understanding determined by the mere necessity of its nature to the production of certain forms 1 R. IV. 332 ; H. V. 447. 2 R. IV. 334 ; H. V 449. 504 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book ill. (according to the analogy of what we call the art-instincts in animals"). 1 ^Zio rM ° ml 0n the other hand ' as the Critique of Practical Reason proves, fmilhi be " the principle of moral determination in man carries with it the, Idea of a highest end, after which he should strive: in other words, the Idea of a system in which all rational beings realise 1 their happiness through their moral perfection, and in proportion to it. But such realisation of happiness through morality, is no natural sequence of effect on cause ; for there is nothing in the connexion of physical causes that has any relation to such an end. We are forced, therefore, by the same moral necessity which makes us set before us such an end, to postulate outside of nature a Cause that determines nature so as finally to secure this result ; and from this follows necessarily the idea of an all- wise, all-powerful, all-righteous, all-merciful God. We have a " pure moral need " for the existence of such a Being ; and our moral needs differ from physical needs in that they have an absolute claim to satisfaction. We must, however, be careful to maintain the proper order of our ideas, and to reach the assertion of God's existence entirely through its moral necessity, otherwise our religion will be fatal to our morality. We must not say that it is necessary to assume the existence of God, in order to the validity of the moral law, and that, therefore, he who can- not convince himself of the former, may exempt himself from the obligation of the latter. All that would flow from a denial of the existence of God would be, that we should be deprived of the faith in the final attainment of the happiness of the world through moral action. Our morality would become hopeless, for we would not see any possibility of securing that which in it we necessarily make our objective aim. We would see in such action an effort not favoured by the nature of things; and we should regard man as a being who, after all his efforts to raise himself above nature, is finally subjected to its necessity, and thus thrown back like the other animals into the '" aimless chaos of matter." 'E. IV. 341; H. V. 455. CHAP. iv. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 505 Furthermore, we are to remember that the principle which ^J^^f 1 leads us to postulate God is a practical principle, which does not SS deS?-" give us, strictly speaking, a knowledge of God, hut only of a nature, but special relation in which he stands to us and to nature. While, ^j™^ the therefore, in order to find in God the principle which realises the highest good, we are obliged to represent him as a rational Being, who is guided by the idea of an end and who uses nature as means to it, we are to remember that, this conception is based on an imperfect analogy. For such a separation of means and ends holds good only from a human point of view. "Though in us the morally -practical reason is essentially different from the technically-practical reason, we cannot assume that it must be likewise in the highest world-cause, or that the divine intelligence, in subordinating nature to the final end, needs to exert a special kind of causality, different from that which it exerts in producing those natural things which are ends to themselves. While, therefore, we have a moral ground to assume an end of the creation as an effect of moral action, we have not in the same sense a ground to assume a moral Being as the source of creation. All we can say is, that, consistently with the nature of our intelligence, we cannot make intelligible to ourselves the possibility of such an adaptation of nature to the moral law and its object, as is involved in the final end which the moral law commands us to aim at, except by assuming the existence of a Creator and Governor of the world, who is also its moral Legislator." l It is essential for us, therefore, to remember that there are p^cSoaifeith no proofs of God's being which give us even the faintest m theoretical grasp of his existence as a moral Governor of the world. We cannot logically prove the infinite from the finite, as if the latter were the more comprehensive idea ; nor can we construe the relation of God to the world by the analogy of Art, an analogy which fails just in the very point where it should help . us. We cannot speak even of grounds of proba- * 1 R. IV. 358 ; H. V. 469, § 88. 506 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. B00K ni - bility in such a case ; for the empirical cannot take its even a step in the direction of proving that which is quite beyond ex- perience. Nor can we say that the existence of God is a legitimate hypothesis that will explain the facts ; for of a scientific hypothesis we must be able at least to show the possibility. We are reduced, therefore, to a practical faith, which is based on the fact of the moral law, our necessary sub- jection to which enables us to postulate all conditions for its realisation, however little we may be able to determine them as objects of knowledge. Such a faith is a "free accept- ance of something as true" not because we are compelled by theoretical proof, or because we hold ourselves bound to accept it, but because it is grounded in reason, as necessary for its self-determined ends. For, without such a faith, our moral consciousness and the requirement of our theoretical reason for proof, would make us " waver between a practical imperative and a theoretic doubt." 1 At the same time, while we must thus hold to the distinction of the practical and the theoretical, it is allowable to point out that the great effectiveness of the argument from design, really arises from the way in which it brings the moral idea of God into connexion with the general suggestion of purpose received from nature. J R. IV. 380; H. V. 487, §91. 507 CHAPTER V. CRITICISM OS THE CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. " T^THEN I was seeking, if not to penetrate into the Kantian ^jjjjj 6 ^ 6 ^ doctrine, at least to make the best use of it possible to «f **&*«<*■ me, I was often inclined to think that that excellent man had woven a certain element of sly irony into his method. For, while at one time he seemed to be bent on limiting our faculties of knowledge in the narrowest way, at another time, he pointed, as it were with a side gesture, beyond the limits which he himself had drawn. He may probably have remarked the presumptuous way in which men, armed with little experi- ence, proceed to lay out their unconsidered reflexions and prematurely to fasten upon objects any whim that passes through their heads. Hence it is that our master limits us to a reflective discursive judgment, and entirely refuses to us a judgment that determines its object. But, after he has thus driven us into a corner, yea, reduced us to despair, we suddenly find him employing the most liberal expressions, and conceding to us a freedom of which he leaves us to make what use we please. In this sense the following passage was very significant to me : — ' We can think of an understanding, which, because it is not, like ours, discursive but intuitive, proceeds from the synthetic universal, the intuition of a whole as such, to the parti- cular; i.e., from the whole to the parts. ... In this reference it is not necessary to prove that such an archetypal intelligence 508 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. B00K m - is possible, but only that, when we bring before our minds the conditions of our own discursive understanding, which requires images to be supplied to it from without (intettectus ectypus), and consider that this characteristic of its action is not a necessary one, we are led to that idea of an intcllectus archer typus, and that there is no contradiction in such an idea.' " Now, it is true that Kant seems here to be speaking of the divine understanding, but if in morality it is our duty to elevate ourselves, through belief in God, Freedom and Immor- tality, to a higher region, surely it may be presumed that in the intellectual life also we can make ourselves worthy, by the intuition of an ever-creative nature, to participate spiritually in its products. Now, as, at first, by an unconscious inward impulse, I had unceasingly sought for that in nature which is archetypal, and as I had soon succeeded in finding for myself a fitting expression of it, nothing could hinder me any longer from boldly undertaking what our patriarch of Konigsberg calls the adventure of reason." 1 The strain There are obvious objections to this as an exact interpreta- upon Kant's ° ScwigM. ^ on °f Kant ; and, indeed, Goethe does not present it to us as such. At the same time, we cannot wonder that the thought that Kant restores, as it were at a higher level, the liberty which at a lower level he refuses to the spirit of man, should suggest itself to Goethe in connection with the Critique of Judgment. Kant, indeed, never accepted the idea of such a restoration ; he is always careful in all he says of the arche- typal intelligence, which we can " think," but of which we cannot " form a conception " to preserve a retreat for himself within the limits he had set up in the Critique of Pure Reason. He never forgets the opposition of regulative and constitutive Ideas, or, what answers to it in the Critique of Judgment, the opposition of reflective and determinant judgment, i.e., the opposition between a judgment which is subjectively valid, — 1 Goethe's Werke, Zur Naturwissenschaft im Allgemeinen : Anschauende UrtheilaJcraft. CHAP. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 509 though, as conforming perfectly to the unity of self-conscious- ness (the pure unity of thought with itself), it points to an absolute or supersensible reality, and a judgment which is objectively valid, — though, as based on a synthesis of a given manifold, it relates only to the sensible or phenomenal. Yet, these oppositions are nowhere put under so severe a strain as in the Critique of Judgment. Nowhere, in fact, does it become so evident that Kant's negative conceals a higher positive, and that the removal of the logical scaffolding of his work must show a new Idealism rising in the place of the old dogmatic philosophy. In discussing the Introduction to the Critique of Judqment The mediating ° x J " principles I have already indicated the general conception of mediation upon which it turns, a conception which is expressed in different ways. Thus, the idea of adaptation or design appears as a principle of mediation between the idea of a final end and the idea of conformity to law ; and, in like manner, the process of judgment is regarded as mediating between understanding and reason. Again, both those mediating principles connect them- selves in Kant's mind with the feeling of beauty, as the middle term between the intellectual consciousness of the objects and the practical consciousness of self; between the faculty of knowledge, in relation to which we are determined from without, and the will which carries its principle of determina- tion in itself. A few words, however, seem to be necessary to recapitulate the results already reached, and also to show how, by an after-thought, the Teleological Idea, which at first was used by Kant only as the key to the sense of beauty, came to be considered also in its application to nature. The sense of beauty is, for Kant, the feeling of a harmony T ^y^ a between the object and the subject; or, in other words, between f eeling < the consciousness of the object and the consciousness of self. As such, it seems already to break down the most fixed dis- tinctions of the Kantian philosophy. For the object, as empirically given, never can be in harmony with the pure 510 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book III. consciousness of self, or with the idea of a noumenal reality which arises in connection with that pure consciousness. Hence, also, the feeling of pleasure or pain excited in us by the consciousness of the object, can indicate only its harmony or disharmony with our sensitive subjectivity. A feeling of pleasure in the object as conforming to Ideas of reason, would thus seem to be an impossibility ; for the object is given in sense, and it is through sense that it awakes the feelings of pleasure and pain. Hence, also, practical determination by such feeling's is necessarily excluded in moral action ; for moral self-determination is the determination of the conscious self by the law that flows from its own rational nature. This self- determination is, indeed, at the same time the determination of the objective world by our acts; and, in this point of view, it might seem possible for us to have a pleasure in the object, in so far as it is determined by our own moral activity. We are, however, to remember that, though we may determine the object in accordance with the moral law, and though all moral action involves such a determination of it, yet we can never be conscious of such determination as realised in the object ; for a phenomenal world ordered according to the Ideas of reason is an impossibility, though the imagination of it may serve as a type, of the realisation of those Ideas. wWoh appre- Now, from this it would seem to follow that we cannot bends a unity menSand the P 0SS1 bly rejoice in the objective world as realising the Ideas of p enomenai. reason _ p or we canno t know that it does so realise them, and what we cannot know, how is it possible that we should feel ? Such a feeling, — such a sense that a particular object in the sensible world is in harmony with the pure consciousness of self, and that, in that object, so to speak, we are at home with ourselves, — if it could possibly arise, — would be an illusion, which would disappear so soon as we had really determined what the object is. But, moreover, it would be an unaccount- able illusion ; seeing that the nature of sense precludes any determination of its data by Ideas of reason, and admits only CHAP. v. THE FACULTY OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 511 of their determination by the categories of the understanding Or, looking at it from the subjective side, it would seem impossible that the feeling of pleasure caused by an object of sense, should stand in any but a negative relation to the pure consciousness of self. A fore-felt harmony of the particular with the highest universal of reason would seem, therefore, to be as impossible as an intellectual reconciliation of them. Now, Kant so far seems to admit this, as he maintains that ^mitothu"* the effect of the ideal consciousness upon feeling is always i n viewo£lt the first instance, negative. Moral feeling is the shrinking awe of nature before spirit. It is a reverence for the law, " before which our mortal nature doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised." It reaches, as Kant admits, a kind of positive through this negative, but never so as to overpower its primarily negative character. It is a dangerous Schwarmerei to say that love can cast out fear. With this it agrees that Kant makes the feeling of the Sublime arise from the objects of sense only in a negative way. The feeling of the Sublime is an anticipatory feeling of the harmony of our nature with itself, which arises out of the consciousness of the immediate disharmony of the object with our intelligence or will. In other words, it is in the recoil upon the consciousness of self, in opposition to the empirical consciousness of the object, that this feeling arises ; and if it is a joy, it is a joy which springs out of the negation of the immediate feeling of pleasure. But, then, if we take this view, aforefelt harmony of the object with the subject cannot be a harmony "of the object with our pure self-consciousness, nor with the ideal consciousness herewith connected. It can only refer to that imperfect combination of the object with the conscious self, which we call knowledge or experience. Accordingly, as we have seen, Kant at first seems to confine the sense of beauty to" this. It is, according to this view of it, a feeling of that purposive working of imagination and understanding, out of which knowledge springs whenever the, synthesis of perceptive imagination is brought in relation 512 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. Beauty aa i orefelt har- mony of the world with the intelli- gence. to the conscious unity of the conception. But to this view, as we have seen, Kant does not adhere when he speaks of " Aesthetic Ideas " as involving, not merely a harmony of per- ception or imagination with conception, but a consciousness that a perception or imagination gives us " too much to think of" to be brought under any conception. Adopting this view, the feeling of beauty implies that its object is felt to transcend the understanding, and to call reason into action, as truly as does the feeling for the Sublime. But there is this differ- ence in the two cases, that, whereas the ideal consciousness excited by the Sublime, is negatively related to the image of sense or phantasy by which it is awakened, in the case of beauty the ideal consciousness is positively related to the image. In other words, in the former ease it is the recoil of self-con- sciousness from the sensible object upon itself which makes it rise into the world of Ideas ; while, in the latter case, we are conscious of the ideal as realised in the sensible appearance, or at least we have a feeling which points to such realisation. The spirit rejoices to find itself, or an analogon of itself, in the world of sense : or, in the case of Art, it rejoices to realise itself there. I have spoken of an anticipative feeling, or a forefelt har- mony. Kant's expressions authorise us to do this, though he is considerably embarrassed by the sharp way in which he has originally opposed sense and thought. In truth, we cannot well vindicate such expressions without substituting for Kant's way of looking at thought and sense as externally related to each other, the conception of their development out of an original unity, out of which they arise only as necessarily connected correlatives. The reason why we feel pleasure in an object as beautiful is, that the divided consciousness carries with it always an element of effort and pain ; it is necessarily engaged in a struggle for unity, and the Beautiful object is " purposive," as it points to this unity. Our joy in beauty is the greeting of the spirit to the object that ceases to appear to chap. v. THE FACULTY OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 513 it as a limit, a greeting, however, which comes not in the way of a distinct conscious recognition of the object as the realisa- tion of an Idea under which it is subsumed, hut as a feeling of harmony. But, as it is out of the unity of feeling that the duality of thought and sense, or of self-consciousness and con- sciousness, arises, so it is in feeling that their unity must be first perceptible to us. Why Kant, in his discussion of the adaptation of nature why Kant at first confined to our intelligence, at first confined his view to the feeling of theiestnetio beauty, and how he was afterwards led to speak of an adap- Judgment tation which can be thought as well as felt, may perhaps be explained in the following way. Strictly speaking, on Kant's fundamental principles, a real adaptation of objects of experi- ence as such to the pure consciousness of self, i.e., a corre- spondence of these objects with Ideas, must be illusory. And, on the other hand, a consciousness of their correspondence to the conceptions of the understanding (such as is supplied in knowledge), would rather separate them from, than unite them with our consciousness of ourselves. It may, indeed, be said that the ultimate explanation of the effort of the mind after knowledge, and consequently of its effort to determine sense by thought, is that it seeks to find its own unity in the object ; and that, though in the way of knowledge we can never find such unity, yet, before knowledge has been attained, and while the faculties of perception and conception are working together in a way that is favourable to its attainment, there is a joy in their harmonious movement as at least a movement towards unity — a joy which ceases when knowledge has been attained, because the consciousness of the object as known is seen to be still opposed to the consciousness of self. But this would be only another way of saying that the sense of beauty is the illusive suggestion of an infinity in the object, which must disappear so soon as it is defined. If it were so, however, objects could not be permanently beautiful to us ; and Kant is obviously right in saying that objects are beautiful only so far VOL. II. 2 K 514 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. BOOK in. as they have something that can never be defined at all, or reduced under a definite conception of the understanding ; in other words, they are beautiful only in so far as they need an Idea of reason to interpret them. Ana why he s s00n however, as Kant had admitted that the conscious- afterwards theMeoio'gi-" ness of an object can, even in subjective feeling, be positively u gmen . connec (. e( j w ^j 1 our j(j ea i consciousness, and so with the pure consciousness of self, he was naturally led to reconsider his whole theory of the connexion of the consciousness of the object with self-consciousness ; or, what is the same thing in another aspect of it, of nature with freedom. Hence, the ques- tion ceased to relate merely to a fore-feeling of the unity of the two, and became a question of the possible conscious recognition of the two as united. Here, however, Kant was obviously and directly limited by the doctrines laid down in two previous Critiques ; and he was, therefore, forced to move more warily, and draw back whenever he came into danger of self-contra- diction. And, especially, he had to take care not to admit any use of Ideas which goes beyond the limits laid down at the end of the Critique of Pure Reason. pSnireroep- We may, perhaps, best throw light on the point by con- reference to sidering what different senses may be given to the idea of understand- ing and adaptation or design, as attributed to objects in relation to the intelligence. These are mainly two. Objects, as such, are relative to the self for which they are ; and if, with Kant, we think of sense as supplying a matter which by the synthesis of the mind is determined in relation to the self, we may say that our sense perceptions are formally purposive, in so far as they are such that they can be brought under the conceptions of the understanding with a view to knowledge. That the " given " should be such that it can be known, such that it can furnish materials for an empirical knowledge of objects, is in one way an accident ; yet, in another way, it is a necessary accident ; for its non-occurrence would be the negation of all con- sciousness of objects, and hence also of self - consciousness. chap. v. THE FACULTY OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 515 But, further, this reference of perceptions to the possibility of knowledge implies, not only that phenomena should be such that they can be brought under the principles of understanding, but such that there may be a continual progress towards the realisation of the Ideas which guide us in applying these principles. And this means that the manifold data of sense, which have to be determined by the principles of the under- standing, are not infinitely varied and changeful ; but such that, by applying these principles to them, thought is con- tinually finding its way towards a more definite and a more fully articulated system of knowledge. Now, this is not necessarily implied in the conditions of experience, as con- ditions without which objects could not be determined as such ; but it is necessary, in so far as in the determination of objects we are stimulated and guided by Ideas of reason. For we would not seek scientific knowledge, if it were not that our intelligence is driven by- the very principle of its own life to seek unity and system in objects. So far, then, as objects are a priori determined as necessarily conforming to a subjec- tive necessity of our reason, which goes beyond their necessary conformity to the principles of the pure understanding, we can say that they have a formal adaptation to our intelligence. But there is another adaptation which might be found in what would material pur- objects, i.e., if they were determined not only so as to be" osemean? capable of relation to the intelligence, but so that the intelli- gence might be able to find itself realised in them ; if, in other words, they were not only determined as objects for a subject, but as objects produced by the self-determination of a subject. Or, putting it in another way, objects might not only be such that the consciousness of them is capable of being connected with the consciousness of self, but they also might be such that the consciousness of them was necessarily involved in that consciousness. In that case we should be able to say that they are not only formally but materially purposive in relation to* the intelligence for which they are. Such objects, indeed, 516 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. book ill. could not properly be said to be " given " to the self ; they would rather be elements in the process of self-consciousness. They would be not only objects for the spirit, but essentially spiritual objects. There would be nothing in them which was simply "given." Or, if we still permitted ourselves to say that such objects were given to us from without, it would in that case be only another way of stating that self-consciousness in relation to them was imperfect and undeveloped. It would only be because we, though spiritual beings, are spiritual beings whose inner life is yet inchoate and unknown even to our- selves, that the world would come to us as a stranger ; while, on the other hand, all our discoveries of the nature of the objective world would be ultimately discoveries, not of some- thing external, but of ourselves. laSdeSwith We riave > then, two ideas of the adaptation of nature to our eaohofthem? intelligence. According to one of these views, nature, being necessarily related as an object to the conscious self, must be " given " in ways that make it possible for us to know it. According to the other view, nature is a revelation to us of that which is also the principle of our own being, in such wise that in and through it we become conscious of ourselves or of our own nature : though, to preclude misunderstanding, it must be added that it is only in and through it that we can become so conscious. How does Kant deal with each of these views ? So wridL His treatment of the former alternative is little more than a repetition of the doctrine of the Critique, of Pure Reason : for, as already stated, the distinction of determinant and reflective • judgment corresponds almost exactly to the distinction between constitutive and regulative thought ; or, in other words, between thought that is guided by the conceptions of the understanding and thought that is guided by the Ideas of reason. In deter- minant judgment, we think the particular by means of a pre- supposed universal : in reflective judgment, we seek the universal under which we have to bring the given particular. an organic OHA.P. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 517 But, in the last case, we must know what we seek, and, there- fore, judgment must bring with it a guiding principle or Idea. This Idea is simply the Idea of a universal which is an ultimate principle of unity in all particulars. This is what Kant means when he tell us that the particulars of experience are merely subsumed under the principles of pure understanding, but left undetermined in all their special characteristics beyond their agreement with these principles. But if, in knowledge, we are to find our way through the manifold particularity which is thus left undetermined by the principles of the understanding, we must assume that it, too, has such a relation to the conscious self that it can be brought under its unity. "As the universal laws of nature have their ground in our understanding, which prescribes them to nature, (though only as respects the general conception of it as nature), so the particular empirical laws of nature, so far as they have in them much that is left undeter- mined by these universal laws, must be considered in the light of that kind of unity which they would have if an understand- ing (though not our understanding) had fixed them with a view to our faculty of knowledge, so as to make possible for us the systematising of experience in all its particular laws. Not as if, in this way, such an understanding must be assumed really to exist : for it is only our reflective judgment to which this Idea serves as a guide ; or, in other words, it is a guide to us only in reflecting on the object, but not in determining it. Thus, our faculty of judgment gives the law to itself and not to nature." 1 Exactly to the same effect, in the concluding section of the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had pointed out that the Ideas of reason, which as determinations of objects give us no knowledge, yet furnish principles of the unity, multiplicity, and affinity of the forms of nature which fix the goal for all the efforts of our understanding, and direct us on what lines we should proceed in order to advance towards that goal. The goal, in fact, is simply that which Kant finds • 1 R. IV. 18 ; H. V. 186 ; Introd. IV. 518 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. B00K m - expressed in the unum, verum, bonum of the old Metaphysicians : it is the ideal of absolute unity of principle, complete develop- ment of all differences of fact, and perfect connexion of the two ; such that the principle is seen not only to subsume the facts, but to find nothing but its own expression and realisation in them, and so to bind them into perfect unity with each other and with itself. The phrase " organic system " would therefore express Kant's Idea ; and this is the same Idea, which in the Critique of Judgment, he expresses by the phrase " adaptation to our intelligence." We must look on the world as if an in- telligence had arranged it so that our intelligence might find its way to the understanding of it. We must regard it as intelligible, and intelligible by us : and this it can be only if it is such a system. 1 Kant makes it At the same time, this is only an " Idea," not a concep- only a prin- ' J L flexfon tion ; only a principle for reflexion not for determination ; for, owing to the nature of our knowledge, we can never realise it. It furnishes a goal to which knowledge is always asymptotically related. For, the goal fixed for , knowledge is to bring the consciousness of objects to the unity of the pure consciousness of self, to see (as in the case of that consciousness) the difference springing from and returning to the unity ; and this is an impossible goal, owing to the fundamental nature of our consciousness of objects. For Kant, indeed, it is doubly impossible; for (1) the given manifold, given as it is under the forms of space and time, can only be brought to a synthetic unity, i.e., to a unity which presupposes differences and externally unites them ; and (2) the categories, which are used to combine the manifold, are of such a character that they pre- suppose in that manifold the given differences which they relate to the unity of thought. In a consciousness so constituted, it is impossible to reach absolute unity of principle, or to com- plete the synthesis of difference, still more to bring the unity 1 It is easy to see how readily, in this point of view, a transition may be made from the formal adaptation of nature to its material adaptation. chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 519 and the difference together in an organic system. But it is always possible to strive to lessen the number of laws by carrying them up to higher laws, and to detect new differences by close observation of facts ; as it is always possible to trace out more carefully the connecting links between the differences, so as in their continuity to detect the working of one principle. The Critique of Judqment brings before us, in a still more We know ° b - x J u D ' jeots only as definite way, this relation of knowledge to the Idea which Su2d DloaUy knowledge seeks to realise, by telling us that it corresponds to foS tJthink . . of organic the opposition of mechanical to final causes. Nature can be objects under rr J the idea of known by us only as a mechanism, as a unity of parts which final cause - externally determine and are determined by each other; or else as a linear series of phenomena which are related to each other as causes and effects, in such a way that the one always dis- appears as the other comes. It cannot be known to us as a unity of parts which are limited and determined by the whole ; or as a succession of phenomena, which yet is not merely the passing away of one state of things to make room for another, but a continuous process of self-determination. It seems, indeed, as if in organic nature we had such objects actually presented to us ; for we cannot give any account of living beings in their dis- tinction from inorganic things, except one involving the idea of an individuality, which through the difference of its parts and their changes remains one with itself ; and such an individuality cannot be explained as a whole constituted by an aggregate of parts, or by their external influence upon each other. But Kant maintains that all that is implied in this, is that, in relation of the phenomena of life, there is a failure in the only explanation which the understanding can give of the things of Nature, and that we are, therefore, obliged to supply its place by the analogy of Art. In other words, finding ourselves unable to reduce the phenomena of life to effects of matter upon matter — because in this case the parts are not conceivable as prior to the whole, nor the changes as externally deter- mined — we fall back on the hypothesis that, as in our own 520 THE CRITIQUE OE JUDGMENT. book ill. action, it is the Idea of the whole which precedes and deter- mines the parts ; or, in other words, that it is that Idea which uses the physical actions and reactions of the parts to realise an end which is beyond them, and to which they have no necessary relation. As, however, in this case, there is no artist presented to us in experience, no being to whom we can trans- fer our own inner consciousness and will in order to explain the result, but, on the contrary, the living being seems to be a causa sui, and so at once means and end to itself, the analogy of Art which we. thus apply expresses only our ignorance; or it shows only that, in our ignorance, we take refuge in the one cause we know which seems capable of producing the effect in question, and that in spite of marked differences in the two cases. For, in truth, " the organisation of nature has nothing analogous to any causality we know." There are two things specially noticeable here : (1) the sharp line drawn between the categories of physical and of final causation in their application to nature : and (2) the way in which the organic object is treated as a sort of middle term between nature and art, which we cannot explain at all, because it cannot be reduced either to the one or the other, why we need As to the first of these points, Kant bases his doctrine upon to use the .... .... latter cate- the principle that, while the categories ol causality and recip- rocity are necessary to the general conception of nature or to the determination of objects as such, the category of final cause is one which is not involved in the bare idea of the object or of nature as such. In fact, Kant contends that, just because we are not forced to apply this category in order to determine objects as such, we are not authorised to represent it as a deter- mination of the object at all. It is an additional category brought in, because there is something in the object that is not explained by the categories which determine it as an object. For reason, as it cannot be content with mere chance as an explanation of anything, is obliged to look for another kind of necessity that gives to the object these mechanically inexplicable gory. chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 521 characteristics. The idea of final causality is thus used as a key to the ' order of the accidental ' (Gesetzmassigkeit des Zufal- ligen), i.e., as the means of expressing a higher necessity which, while it acts through mechanical laws, yet gives to the world and especially to some beings in it, a kind of unity which, accord- ing to these laws alone, could not belong to it. For, though all natural objects are once for all determined under the prin- ciples of pure understanding, — because otherwise they could not be the objects of our experience, — yet this by no means explains why objects have such relations to each other as are necessary in order that the world should be intelligible to us, even as a system under mechanical laws ; still less why certain of the objects in it should be wholes of such a character that they cannot be explained by such laws. Kant, then, maintains that the general relation of nature to our intelligence, and the special relation of the organic being to itself, both force us to resort for their explanation to another principle than that of mechanical causation, a principle derived from the sphere of spirit and not of mere nature. But he maintains also that this principle must be taken, not as supply- ing us with a new objective determination of the facts, but merely as a guide to the investigation of them ; and that in fact the use of it enables the understanding to lay down the law not to nature, but only to itself. Let us consider each of these points successively. (1) In regard to the general formal adaptation of nature to r™ senses of x ' ° ° x the principle our intelligence, it is obvious that Kant by this phrase means f'^^of to express what is otherwise spoken of as the general " prin- ciple of Induction.'' Nature, it is said, must " agree with itself ; " it must be regarded as a system under " unchangeable laws ; " a general " uniformity " must be assumed to exist in all its processes. Under such expressions are commonly united two ideas which Kant distinguishes, viz., the conformity of phenomena to the principles of the understanding, and their relation to the regulative Ideas of reason ; or adopting the 522 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in. language of the Critique of Judgment, their subsumption by determinant judgment under mechanical laws, and their refer- ence by reflective judgment to the idea of formal purpose. Thus, these two are practically identified by Mill, when he regards the " uniformity of nature " as the same thing with the law of causation and supposes both to be reached by an inductio per enumerationem simplicem. In truth, it is not altogether easy to separate them, so long as attention is not directed to the limits of the intelligibility of nature through the laws of mechanical causation. Nor can the nature of these limits well be understood, until critical reflexion has made us look upon the object as necessarily determined in relation to a subject, and, therefore, as imperfectly known, so long as that relation is left out of account. The Critique of Pure Reason, by directing attention to the relations of objects, as determined by the necessity of nature, to the unity of the conscious self, could not but bring with it the consciousness that such deter- mination is not final. For, if nature and necessity only exists for a consciousness that is not subjected to it, a new light is thrown upon the nature of that which is so subjected — even if we agree with Kant that the unity of thought to which phenomena are thus related, cannot itself be made an object of knowledge, and that, consequently, the Idea of it cannot be positively used to correct our first view of the phenomena of nature. Kant's inter- Kant puts the matter as follows: — All our knowledge of pretation of x ° of the'uni? 6 objects is the determination of them under laws which specify Nature 7 ° the general conception of nature, as a system of substances externally determining each other in space and time. That conception is necessary, in so far as without it there would be for us no connected experience, and, therefore, no experience of objects such as could be united with the " I think." For, only as connected by the principles of the understanding can the manifold data of sense under the forms of time and space, be brought in relation to the unity of the self. Even when chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 523 brought in relation to that unity, the manifold, or rather the objects for which that manifold furnishes the material, are necessarily opposed to the unity to which they are related ; and this opposition shows itself in the antinomies, which arise whenever we attempt to determine the object as a thing in itself, These antinomies Kant solves by the idea of the phenomenal character of the object. But the term " phenome- nal " really conveys a double meaning ; for the object would cease to be phenomenal, either, if we could suppose the mind to go out of itself so as to identify itself with an object given quite independently of it, or, if we could suppose the existence of the object to be absorbed in its relativity to consciousness. The former alternative is obviously impossible ; but the latter would be possible, if we could admit the thought of an " intuitive understanding." If for us thought were synthetic and not analytic, that is, if it determined out of itself the manifold to which it applies its categories ; or, in other words, if these categories themselves brought with them the complete determination of the particulars which they subsume, the object would cease to be phenomenal, it would be known as it is. As this, in Kant's opinion, is not the case, as the manifold of sense is supposed to be given externally to thought, and the categories to be only of such a nature as to connect given differences, we have merely the problematic conception of such an understanding, and of the noumenon which would be its object. For the categories, because they are " species of the unity of Apperception," forms which the unity of thought takes in relation to a given manifold, cannot produce the manifold they determine ; nor can they so transform it that the con- sciousness of it shall become one with the consciousness of the unity of thought to which it is opposed. Eeason is thus harassed with an ideal which it cannot realise, yet which is presupposed in the objective consciousness which it does realise. In the very necessity of nature, to which in experience it is confined, it finds a measureless contin- 524 THE CRITIQUE Or JUDGMENT. book in. gency. For that necessity is merely a connexion of particular with particular ; it never reaches any final particular on which the others can rest as their hasis, or which is itself determined out of the thought that grasps it. To say that everything is hypothetically necessary, is to say that ultimately everything is contingent, i.e., that no object has necessary connexion with the consciousness for which it is, and which so far makes it its own by subsuming it under its own unity. This being the case, however, the fact that by the application of the categories the mind can go so far to make this matter its own, presupposes a certain harmony of the matter not only with the categories, but with the unity of which they are an imperfect expression. " For," Kant argues, " we might easily suppose that, in spite of all the uniformity of natural things according to those universal laws which constitute the form necessary to our empirical knowledge, the specific differences of the empirical laws of nature, with all the effects of their operation, might yet be so great that it would be impossible for our understanding to detect in nature an intelligible order, to divide its products into genera and species in such a way, that we could use the principles of explanation that hold good for one to throw light on the others. And if this were the case, it would be im- possible for us out of so confused a matter — (or properly we should say out of such an infinitely varied, and, for our in- telligence, incomprehensible, matter) — to make a connected experience." x It appears, then, that for the intelligibleness of nature, more is needed than its simple conformity to the general principles of understanding. It is required also that the mani- fold determinations of the particular which are left free by these principles, should yet be so limited in the variety of their forms, and should present such continuity of transition through all their differences, that our understanding, in dealing with them according to its principles, can continually make them more and more intelligible, i.e., can in dealing with them 1 Introduction, § 5 : "R. IV. 24 : H. V. 191. CHAP. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 525 advance towards its own ideal of systematic unity. In this way, it may be said that, while our intelligence constructs a systematic explanation of the universe in accordance with mechanical principles, it discovers in the world something that goes beyond mechanism, viz., a certain unity in the forms of its mechanism and a certain homogeneity and gradation between them so far as they are different, which makes one thing throw light on another ; and thus our progress in knowledge is a continual progress towards systematic completeness and unity. Without this, indeed, we should be continually trying to connect different phenomena according to the laws of causation and reciprocity ; but we should not be able to make any real advance towards an intelligible view of the world as a whole. We should always be beginning our investigations again, without our first experiences throwing light upon those that follow ; and the scientific impulse which arises when we begin to see how, through a thousand different forms, the same force or law reveals itself, would never be awakened. It is, there- fore, a principle which we can assume a priori, and which we do so assume in treating nature as intelligible, that " she specifies her universal laws to particular empirical laws in accordance with the form of a logical system, so as to adapt herself to our power of judgment." In assuming this, we are, in fact, simply assuming that the laws by which we connect the manifold of perception so as to produce a consciousness of objects, not only enable us once for all to bring that manifold in relation to the unity of the intelligence, but also continually to bring it into closer connexion therewith. Yet, this progress toward finding the unity of the intelligence in the world is, as already indicated, a progressus ad infinitum, which can never completely realise the ideal it continually strives after. Our continual progress to find the one in the many, and to carry back the many to the one, — to find unity, variety, and affinity in the natural world, — can never go so far as to reduce it to an organic whole. The world, after all, remains for us mechanical, 526 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book m. because our process is a synthesis of given differences, which cannot be brought into perfect correspondence with the trans- parent unity-in-difference of thought or self-consciousness. And the adaptation of the world to the intelligence remains after all a mere unexplained fact, which we cannot show to be necessary from the nature of the world itself as a mechani- cal system, but only with reference to the comprehension of the world by us. it leaves the We can, then, easily see how it is that the relation of the adaptation of " wori* to C tnT world to the mind remains, for Kant, a case of external adapta- accidentai 6 tion or design which, because it is external, we cannot verify as an objective fact. We necessarily look upon the world "as if an understanding, though not our own, had arranged it with reference to the needs of our powers of knowledge, so as to make possible for us a system of experience according to par- ticular laws of nature." But we cannot be sure of the cause, but only of the effect ; we cannot know that such an arranging intelligence has determined the world-order, though we can see that without it our understanding would not find the world intelligible. It remains, "therefore, an accident, though for us a necessary accident, that the world is so constituted. But, though the only way in which we can explain to ourselves such a necessary accident is by supposing the existence of a designing Intelligence, this may be merely the result of an incapacity on our part, and not of the nature of things. For us, the " order of the accidental " can be nothing but design, but it need not be so in reality ; for we can think without logical contradiction of an intelligence to which objects are not externally given, but which produces them by the very con- sciousness for which they exist. We can think of an intuitive understanding, for which there is no division between con- ception and perception ; and we can see that, for such an understanding, there would be no separation of accidental and necessary, particular and universal, but both would be united in the actual. We cannot, indeed, realise the possibility of an chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 527 understanding, so different from our own ; but the thought of it is forced upon us, so soon as criticism makes us conscious of the limitation of our own understanding ; and with the thought of it comes the consciousness that the form of an externally determined design or purpose, under which we necessarily think the relation of the world to our minds, may not correspond with the reality. This thought is further borne in upon us by two things : — Tims the con- sciousness of by the Beautiful and the Organic. The Beautiful, as we have S^^ "the seen, is that which causes us to feel the unity of the mind Adaptation of . . the idea of the with itself. The sense of it is the greeting which the spirit object, gives to an object which does not resist its claims, an object which, by its harmony with itself, makes the mind conscious of its own harmony. Our joy in the Beautiful is thus analogous to the joy we have in a scientific discovery which brings into unity facts that before lay apart from each other in apparent inde- pendence. There is, however, this difference, that the latter is a case of conscious subsumption, while the former is a case in which universal and particular are not separated but felt as one ; and we may add, after what has been said above, there is the further difference that the scientific discovery reveals to us only a new mechanical connexion, which, if it is an approxi- mation to the goal of unity of the world with the mind, is yet an asymptotic approximation to it as an unattainable ideal : while, on the other hand, in the consciousness of beauty, the ideal is for feeling attained, since the consciousness of the particular is in immediate unity with the consciousness of the universal. Kant, however, falls back, with his stubborn Dualism, upon the idea that the Beautiful is an accidental agreement of the object with the consciousness of the subject, or that it accidentally produces a feeling of unity with himself in that subject. Indeed, in his primary analysis of beauty, he regards it merely as an anticipation of that unity which is realised in the scientific discovery, and not of that higher unity of»the empirical with the ideal to which he afterwards points. 528 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. Nor does even The case of the Organic seems more difficult to explain in the organic o -»- ^objective this subjective fashion ; for in it, as Kant confesses, the the wea of universal and particular are inseparably combined ; and the design. parts are constituted as parts only through the whole, and do not constitute it by their combination. Do we not then find in the Organic, as an objective fact, that unity which we are else- where taught to regard only as an ideal ? Kant stub- bornly answers, No. It is not there, or at least it is not there for us. What we have in the Organic is an objective connexion of phenomena, which, as a connexion of phenomena, we can explain only by mechanical causes ; though we have also a unity manifesting itself in this connexion, which is quite accidental if we regard merely such causes. And we can make this unity intelligible to ourselves only by bringing in a de- signing intelligence similar to our own ; while, at the same time, we confess that such an hypothesis only indicates our incapacity to explain the facts in any other way, and not a necessity that they should be explained in this way. Thus, on the analogy of Art, we think of an intelligence arranging a given matter, in accordance with the mechanical relations of its parts, with a view to the realisation of an end ; though we are obliged to acknowledge that the difference of the matter from the design to be realised in it, would not exist for a creative intelligence. For, such an intelligence would not first create a mechanically determined material, and then subject it to an ideal purpose, to which it had no necessary relation. On the contrary, in relation to such an intelligence, matter and form would be but opposite aspects of an inseparable unity. It is strange to see how Kant names and explains the Idea of an organic unity, and also of an intelligence which should apprehend the world as an organic unity, while yet he abso- lutely refuses to recognise that our own intelligence can attain to more than an external union of elements which, though not logically contradictory, yet are essentially irreconcilable. He supposes, in fact, that our consciousness of our own limitations Relation of our intelli- gence to the idea of the world as an organism. chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 529 enables us to think of such an intelligence and its object as a possibility, or, perhaps we should rather say, to recognise that our own inability to conceive it does not necessarily involve the denial of its existence. But here he stops. We can conceive an external connexion of things as acting upon each other ; we can conceive a determination of that external connexion by an in- telligent being which uses it to realise some purpose or end ; but we cannot, according to Kant, form any definite conception of that, which yet seems to be set before us as a fact in organic beings, viz., of a unity which produces the differences of its parts and reveals itself in their determination by each other. In short, we cannot think of a unity that reveals itself in dif- ference except as an intelligence ; and if we think of it as an intelligence, we cannot think of it as itself the source of the differences which it apprehends and on which it superinduces its unity, but only as an artist working with a given material. Now, it is easy to see that here again Kant is influenced by why n is that absolute opposition of analysis and synthesis which was Kant ' his fundamental prejudice. The unity of self-consciousness appears to him always as formal -or analytic, and, therefore, as essentially opposed to the synthetic unity of the consciousness of objects, for which it can only provide an unattainable ideal. For, as the consciousness of objects has an element in it which can by no possibility be brought into self-conscious- ness, the unity of the two, though necessary, is yet a unity in which the elements stand permanently in a negative relation to each other. Taking his stand on these pre-suppositions, Kant is unable to regard the Idea of organic unity, — the Idea of a unity of the universal and particular, or of a unity of thought and reality, — as anything but an abstract and empty ideal, a mere " thought of which we have no conception," a con- sciousness of something which we think only by abstracting from the conditions of our own understanding ; though it is also a something which we are obliged to think in so far as we recpgnise these conditions as limits. VOL. II. 2 L 530 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in. con'iolousEess ® n ^ s > m tne nrst V^ ace > we nave to observe that the pure consciousness i organic unity°it g is 10 idea of self-consciousness in itself gives us a unity which is at only the or- . , .... game that is once analytic and synthetic, a transparent difference which is, at perfectly J J > F intelligible fl^e same time, the necessary differentiation through which the unity of self can alone be realised. Here, therefore, we have before us, not, as Kant says, a mere X — a something to which we can attach no predicate, though the consciousness of it is presupposed in every other consciousness. On the contrary, we have here a real organic unity of the intelligence with itself, which, there- fore, must be for it the type of the intelligible. So far, there- fore, from its being true that an organic unity is something which we cannot understand, it would be nearer the truth to say that we can, understanding nothing else ; that in , every- thing else we must necessarily find an unintelligible element, a contradiction which forces us to ask for a further explanation. While, therefore, it is true, that it is the unity of the intelligence with itself which it seeks in the world, and which, in so far as it assumes the world to be intelligible, it presumes it will find there ; and, while it is also true that for that reason a mechan- ical explanation of the world can never be finally satisfactory, but, however far it may be carried, must always, as a mechanical explanation, be asymptotically related to the require- ments of thought; yet, we must not suppose that such opposition between the consciousness of objects and the consciousness of self is an absolute opposition, though it undoubtedly would be so if the unity of self-consciousness were reducible to a merely analytic unity or simple identity. The consciousness of self is. as we have seen, in itself an organic unity, a unity which has difference in it, and which, therefore, has in it already — in a form which is transparently clear and explicable — the very element which appears as inexplicable so long as we seek to interpret the world only by means of mechanical laws. Even, therefore, if we confine our view to the pure idea of self-consciousness, we find that it reaches beyond the bare identity which Kant sees in it, and enables us to make a first step towards the filling up of the chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 531 gulf which he leaves open between object and subject. What, perhaps, is of more importance, our supposed incapacity to conceive of an organic unity, except as the determination by a designing mind of a matter subjected to mechanical laws, dis- appears whenever we cease to view self-consciousness as in itself a bare identity, which is only drawn out into difference by the foreign matter to which it is applied. For, in self- consciousness, we have no foreign matter on the difference of •which an external unity has to be superinduced, but, on the contrary, an ego which only through difference realises its unity with itself. To a conscious self, therefore, in so far as it draws from itself its idea of knowledge, the object must be intelligible just in proportion to the ease with which such a unity can be detected in it. Hence the organic by itself will, in the first instance, be to it less of a problem than the inorganic by itself, as determined by merely mechanical laws. Or, at least, the organic can seem more difficult to explain than the inorganic, only in so far as its nearness in form to the intelligence brings into prominence its still remaining difference: whereas, when we have once learnt to abstract from the unity of thought so as to take the inorganic as such for our object, we are not so continually haunted by the sense of that which is still wanting to the object as an intelligible reality. But there is another aspect, in which we are taught by Kant in calling attention to himself to consider the matter. The object, as determined the relation J 7 of objects to under the categories, is an object for a conscious self ; as such, Apperception, it has relations to the unity of self which are not expressed by pucitiy ac- knowledges the categories as principles of the understanding : for these can Vfj^ ™ only determine the relation of the various elements in an object or the relation of one object to another. Hence, the consciousness of the relations of the object to the self gives us a new view of the nature of the object. It enables us to discern that the object under mechanical laws exists by an abstraction, which we must correct ere we can know what that object really is. It is true that this abstraction is natural, in so far 532 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. book ill. as our consciousness begins with the division of the not-self from the self, of the object from the subject for which it is an object. And it is true also that it is only a late reflexion that enables us to discern the relation of the object to the subject, and to detect the categories that underlie our recognition of the object as such. When such reflexion comes, however, it not only discovers to us the categories which we have used in determining the object, but also brings with it new categories by which that determination mast be corrected or remoulded. For, so soon as the cate- gories are regarded as " species of pure apperception," and so as means of relating the elements of the manifold to each other, and of determining objects as such, it becomes clear that these categories cannot give us the whole truth as to objects, unless they are viewed in relation to the unity of self-consciousness which they partly express. This reflexion is indicated by Kant when he says that the determination of objects by such categories, is necessarily relative to consciousness, and that, therefore, the objects so determined are mere phenomena, i.e., objects for us. This way of putting the matter, however, carries with it the false suggestion that the object in itself is not relative to any intelligence, which is only partly corrected by Kant when he introduces the idea of an intuitive under- standing, which knows the object as it is in itself. If, how- ever, we follow out the thought that objects are mechanically determined only for a conscious self, we see that their mechanical determination cannot be their ultimate determina- tion. In other words, the mechanical is the real only for one who does not see that such reality is relative to something that is not under mechanical laws ; and it can be taken as a complete reality or thing in itself only by an abstraction. As mechanically explained, an object is fixed in an external relation to other things and even to itself, in which no object really exists. Above all, as mechanically explained, an object seems to have an independence of the thought for which it is, which, if it were a real independence, would make the object chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 533 inaccessible to the intelligence. In truth, the categories by which things are determined as mechanically related, are cate- gories of the relations of things which are represented in the externality of space, as partes extra, partes towards each other aud towards themselves. But space itself is only the first form of relation under which objects exist for us, a form which arises with the dawn of consciousness, as it separates object from subject, and thus, as it were, breaks the bond between the unity of thought and the object whose manifold it combines. Thus the object is referred to itself in its difference, as if that difference had no necessary unity presupposed in it. But this presupposed unity comes into view, whenever we reflect that the object cannot be external to the self, since, it is external or in space, only for the self. Such a reflexion, however, is not made by the ordinary, or even by the scientific consciousness, to which the unity of that which is thus externally related only appears in the form of a necessary connexion, or necessary external action and reaction between its elements. Hence the mind, seeking its own unity in the object, is bound down by the terms of the presupposed difference with which it begins, to conceive of that unity only under the form of necessity, as a law which externally binds objects that, in the first instance, are given as separate and independent of each other. For, so far as we take external perception as a fixed basis, we are by the nature of space, which is the form of such perception, limited to such an idea of the unity of things with each other as is consistent with their essential difference. It is, however, easy, from our present point of view, to see that such a conception of the nature of things can hold good only so long as we leave out of account the consciousness for which the object is external; and reflexion, when it directs attention to this consciousness, neces- sarily leads to an effort, not merely to discover the relations which constitute the external or mechanical unity of things as influencing each other, but also to see beneath this externality, — as* the source, and also as the limit of it, — the unity of the 534 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. BOOK in. intelligence. The problem of Philosophy, as distinguished from that of Science, is, therefore, the problem of bringing the consciousness of the object to the form of self-consciousness ; and also, what is the converse of this, the problem of ex- plaining how it is that self-consciousness can realise itself only through the consciousness of an objective world. Now this is a problem which is essentially different from the pro- blem of Science, and in dealing with it Philosophy does not, in any way, come into collision with Science, as would necessarily be the case if Science and Philosophy were two different solutions for the same problem. On the contrary, the problem of Philosophy is one the successful treatment of which must to a great extent depend on the previous solution of the problem of Science, and which, therefore, with the advance of Science becomes every day more pressing. For, just in pro- portion to the success of Science, it becomes clear that its results afford no final satisfaction to the intelligence. aiBo.t'h^neMs 6 - To sum up what has been said — In our criticism of Kant, gaiiic view of we have concluded that we are not, by the conditions of know- the world. ledge, confined to the alternative of an explanation of objects by mechanical causes and an explanation by external design ■ but that the idea of a unity which determines and differentiates itself, and does not merely stamp the unity of its thought on a foreign matter, is given us in self-consciousness in its pure re- lation to itself. It is true, indeed, that, as Kant maintains, self-consciousness implies the consciousness of objects ; but, as, on the other hand, objects imply the unity of the self, the unity of self-consciousness and the consciousness of the objec- tive world cannot be taken as external, but only as an organic unity, i.e., as a unity which reveals itself in differences, and not merely in the synthesis of differences given from without. The idea of such a unity is necessarily forced upon us by the theory of knowledge, although it may be admitted that the complete verification of it would be the highest result of Philosophy But, if this be true, the organic cannot be chap. v. THE FACULTY OF THEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 535 regarded as that which is least accessible to our intelligence. Eather, we must look upon it as that which is most intelligible, and ultimately as that which alone is intelligible. We do not, therefore, require to resort to the idea of an external intelli- gence working upon a given mechanically determined matter, in order to explain it ; although, no doubt, if we were thus compelled, we should be obliged, with Kant, to admit that such an explanation is only a resource of ignorance. At the same time, as has been already admitted, the organic Nevertheless. ° there seems to world generally presents a problem to us which may seem harder ^cuity'S to solve than any problem relating to the inorganic ; inasmuch as or^Ssm? the same kind of unity which self-consciousness has with itself minis: in all its differences, is here presented to us in a being which is not self-conscious. Kant speaks in the Critique of Pure Reason of the necessity of our " transferring our own consciousness to other things, which only thus we can represent as thinking beings," x i.e., he holds that we can only understand other conscious beings by transferring to them in thought our own consciousness ■ of self and of the world ; and the same view might be applied to the animals, in so far as they have a kind of consciousness which is analogous to ours. But, if we try to think of animals in this way, we can hardly avoid applying the same principle to plants, which also have something in them that is analogous to the unity of self-consciousness, in so far as in a plant the parts presuppose the whole. It is in some such way as this that Leibniz follows the idea of the monads downwards from self-consciousness to the lowest forms of the organic being, and even to the inorganic, still maintaining the idea of a unity whose differences are its own determina- tions. But, the further we go in this direction, the harder it becomes to maintain the idea of a unity which has the essential characteristics of a self or ego, yet without being such a self. And, in this point of view, it seems equally difficult to admit and to deny the essential difference of the inorganic and the ♦ A. 347 ; B. 405. 536 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. BOOK ill. organic. Indeed, so long as we suppose the inorganic to be externally given to us without any necessity for such a " trans- fer of our own consciousness " as is necessary in the other untu we see cases mentioned, the problem is insoluble. When, however, that all the ' r eiemSto r8 we recollect that it is only by virtue of categories which are seS-oonscious- partial expressions of the unity of self-consciousness, that any ness. . object exists for us as such, the difficulty begins to disappear. To say that the categories are " species of pure apperception," suggests the thought that the intelligence can determine nothing as an object, except by bestowing on it part of its own nature. Even such categories as, e.g., cause and effect, or reciprocity, are partial expressions of the unity of self-consciousness, i.e., they express the transition from the subjective to the objective self, from the self that is conscious to the self of which it is conscious, or they express their relation to each other as reciprocally determined, without expressing at the same time the essential unity of the movements thus opposed. Hence the mechanical determination of things may rightly be described as a " transfer of our own consciousness " to them. That organised beings carry us a step further, and necessitate for their understanding the transfer to them of the pure unity of self-consciousness (though as yet in an undeveloped form), is no special difficulty. On the contrary, it makes such existences more intelligible than inorganic things, i.e., it makes it easier to think of them as complete realities or things in themselves. If there seems to be a greater difficulty in this case, it is only because here the unity of thought is at once suggested by the nature of the object, with which we are dealing ; whereas in the other case, it was suggested through a reflection on the relation of the object to the thinking subject. Thus the organised being, as it is in some sense a res completa, — a unity which is determined by itself, a subject as well as an object, — calls for a kind of explanation that seemed not to be required in the case of the inorganic. And, as the idea of such an organic unity can find an adequate realisation only in a self- chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 537 consciousness, so there is an inclination to escape from the difficulty of attributing, or not attributing, such unity to the animal, either by denying that the animal or plant is a true organism, or by referring its organic character to an external designing intelligence. But there is no greater, and indeed no other, difficulty in the existence of lower forms of the organic, than in the existence of the inorganic. Both are in one sense incomplete manifestations of that Idea which is implied in all reality, and both, therefore, must ultimately be explained, not as absolutely real in themselves, but as elements in a higher reality. Notwithstanding all this we must admit the relative truth science neces- . sarily ex- of Kant's view, in so far as it confines Science to the sphere of f^H ^ external necessity, and views the Idea of adaptation or design, problem to* e Philosophy. — whether we take it in the sense of internal or external adaptation, — as valuable merely as an Idea or subjective prin- ciple of investigation: a principle which at once guides and limits the inquiries of Science. The intelligibility of the world is the presumption which underlies the application of the scientific method, though it is true that that method, even in its most successful application, can never make the world com- pletely intelligible. But, on the other hand, it is equally true that that method must be applied, and applied with the utmost strictness, to the exclusion of all " anticipations of nature ; " otherwise the higher explanation will never be realised. The Baconian denunciation of final causes, as barren in the ex- planation of nature, is from the point of view of Science entirely just ; for the objective world must be seen in its difference from the intelligence, before the unity of the intelli- gence can be seen in it. Or, to put it in another way, it is as true in the intellectual, as in the moral life, that the spirit develops by a self-abnegation, in which it seems to renounce all independent movement of its own, and to regulate itself entirely by what is given to it from without. To renounce all subjective whims and prejudices, to take the facts as they are, to 538 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in.. give up "hypothesis," is the first lesson of Science; and this means especially the surrender of the great idolon tribus, the tendency to find the explanation of things in their immediate instru- mentality to our own life. "Until the intelligence finds itself as universal, it cannot find itself in the world ; and it cannot find itself as universal till it has learnt to identify itself with, or give itself up to, an object that appears as foreign and alien to itself. The object, therefore, must be taken as an external ob- ject, which, as such, is determined in itself without relation to the subject. When we so take it, we find that it discloses itself as not merely external, but necessarily related to other objects ; and in tracing out these necessary relations, Science finds its sole field of activity. It is the very condition of its existence to guard against the ignava ratio of teleology. It is true that what Kant calls the formal adaptation of nature to the intelli- gence, is tacitly assumed by Science in all its investigations. It is its own unity that the intelligence is always seeking in the object, and it is an unconscious reference to this that gives its interest to scientific research. Science is the effort of thought in the outwardness of nature to find the inwardness of thought itself. Driven by this impulse, it is forced to refer the particular external thing, which as a mere external object does not explain itself, to another particular thing ; and so to pass from the mere unrelated manifoldness of observation, to the necessarily related manifoldness of science. But this seeking questioning impulse, for which nothing explains itself, but each object must find its explanation in something different from itself, has in it a latent contradiction, which we may best describe in Kantian language by saying, that the question we ask is too large for any possible answer that can in this way be given ; for it is reason that asks the question, and it is the understanding that gives the answer. Further, we must recognise that Kant is right, when he goes on in the Critique of Judgment to recognise that the source of the difficulty is that the question involves an idea of design, — in the relation of chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 539 the different parts or phenomena of the natural world to each other and to the intelligence, — while the answer is in terms of an external necessity. On the other hand, there is a true sense in Kant's caution that in Science we must guard against giving the answers in any other terms, or against treating the design we seem to perceive in nature as objective. For, to admit the idea of design into Science would mean an attempt immediately to relate the facts, — in their externality and before their necessary connexion has been discovered, — to an end which, so taken, could only be an external end or design, which could not, therefore, be their design or end. The inner design, or organic unity of nature, can only appear after the idea of outer design has entirely yielded to that of law and external causation. It might seem that we should be freed from this limitation in So the Dar- winian theory the case of organic beings, which cannot be conceived except postpones, ° ° ' 1 but does not as ends to themselves. For, in them, as Kant himself acknow- teieoiogicaf ledges, we find a unity that we cannot explain by the concur- rence of physical causes, and which, therefore, in relation to them, is an accident. Now, we have already seen that in this case some of Kant's objections to the recognition of a real or objective unity are invalid. It cannot be said that such a unity, given us in the very consciousness of self is "one of the possibility of which we can form no conception." On the contrary, it might rather be said that ultimately we can form a conception of no other possibility. At the same time, there is some truth in Kant's assertion that the idea of design is only a subjective principle of reflexion, and not an objective principle of determination of the phenomena, a guide in the search for efficient causes and not a substitute for them. It is so for Science. In this sense, we may answer the ques- tion which has often been raised as to the Darwinian view of the origin of species ; the question whether that view involves the conception of design. In one point of view it certainly is directed against that conception. For it is an effort (1) to 540 ■ THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. B00K m - explain the adaptation of the environment to the organism, without the supposition of any external and artificial accom- modation of the former to the latter; and (2) to explain the existence of the great variety of species, and especially the wonderful organic development of the highest species, .by means of the action and reaction between the environment and the simplest organic forms. According to the Darwinian Theory, the double adaptation shown in organisms and especially in the highest organisms, in the relation of their parts and changes to each other and to the environment, is explained as the result of the fact that each organism reproduces itself with slight variations in its offspring ; that the animals which vary in the direction of further adaptation to the environment, are preserved in the struggle for existence ; and that those that are thus preserved again reproduce their own type with slight variations which give rise to a similar struggle and a similar result in the next generation. This theory seems to exclude the idea of design, because all the special connexions of the phenomena of which it speaks are relations of things as external to each other, and externally influencing each other. It takes for granted, indeed, the tendency or impulse of the animal to maintain itself both individually and generically, and also the variation of the special parts of the animal and its offspring in consistency with this self-maintenance. But it explains the strange adaptation of the environment to the organism as really an adaptation of the organism to the environment ; and it seems to empty this latter adaptation of all design or purpose, in so far as it does not suppose the animal or plant to be confined by any- thing in its own nature to adaptive or purposive variations, but also admits the existence of "impurposive variations,'' which are destroyed by external influences. All that the theory involves, therefore, seems to be merely an extension of the law of external determination to a new region ; and this certainly excludes the idea of any external design, any external fitting of one thing to another by a designing hand. But, while in this way the chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 541 idea of external adaptation is banished, we are, as Kant indi- cates in a passage quoted above, only thrown back upon the original wonder that out of elements originally different, or at least not essentially related, such a 'purposive' result should be produced, and that merely by means of their external action and reaction upon each other. Tor, the further we carry our view backwards, the lower we go in the scale of being, — tracing back the origin of the organic to the simplest forms of vegetable life, nay, even tracing back these to the inorganic, and it, in turn, to a simple first homogenous material substance — the less do we find in that state of things with which we start, anj' necessity that the powers of change should be just such as to produce the complex organic structure and system which we now find in existence, and the more are we impressed with the contingency of the result according to the natural laws. And this, if it does not drive us back to the idea of an external Designer, who has regulated the original matter with a view to such action and reaction as is necessary to produce life and mind, — a thought that more and more disappears before the idea of necessary law, — yet forces us to treat the multiplicity of independent material elements with which we have to begin as itself a problem, which can only be satisfied if we can regard that multiplicity as the expression of a prior unity. Indeed, we are driven to this conclusion (as has been already indicated) by the very conception of the material elements themselves, which have no other nature than their relations to each other, and which, therefore, involve the negation of their own multiplicity. Thus we are led to think of one principle underlying all differences, and which, through the difference and apparent external determination of different material elements by each other, is working toward the realisation of itself. Darwinism, indeed, does not go so far ; but it, at least, presents to us a con- ception of development in which the environment is so opposed, and yet so harmonised, to the simple forms of organic life with w«hich we start, that both its opposition and its harmony are the 542 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in. means to an evolution of beings, who realise more and more com- pletely the idea of organic unity and completeness. Thus its clear exposition of the necessary relations which have determined the evolution, only makes the direction of that evolution towards the higher forms of organic life less and less intelligible, unless we can discover, concealed under the external necessity, the unity of a principle which reveals itself, both in the organism and in its environment. In truth, the further we go in ex- plaining the unity of the world as an external necessity, the more do we reduce it to an unexplained accident that things should concur to such a result ; unless we refer the difference of things to a unity of principle in which the result was im- plicitly contained. Thus, we may say that the idea of design is the beginning and end of Biological Science ; it is its begin- ning, in so far as the adaptation of the environment to the organism and of one part of the organism to another, is the great problem it seeks to solve ; yet just so far as it solves that problem by exhibiting the necessary relations of these different elements, and forces us to give up the idea of an arbitrary ex- ternal adaptation, it also negates the independence or mere externality of the elements, and makes it impossible to think that the meeting or ' concourse ' of them, by which a certain result is necessarily brought about, is itself purely accidental. But, if it is not accidental, we are forced finally to ask, what is the unity out of which arises the difference of these necessarily related elements ? This question, however, is the end of Biological Science, and, indeed, of all Science ; for, to ask for such a unity is to try to raise knowledge from the form of consciousness into the form of self-conscionsness. In other words, it is to ask not merely how, from elements supposed to be given in difference, we can by action and reaction according to mechanical laws explain a certain result ; it is to ask to what unity we are to trace back that difference, — a question which necessarily suggests itself to us, because the unity of the self is presupposed in the determination of the external object as a chap. v. THE FACULTY OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT, 543 manifold, still more as a manifold of related elements. This is the intellectual want, which is satisfied in a rough and ready way in the ordinary consciousness hy the idea of an external Teleology. But, in its proper form, it is the problem of Phil- f ^*j.™ c [* he osophy as distinguished from Science, in so far as Philosophy pMo P probiem. makes us reflect on the fact that the unity of the self is presupposed in all consciousness of the objective world, and, as a necessary consequence, forces us to think the objective world as a system which is the manifestion of a similar unity. Kant has the merit of first perceiving this connection ; in other words, he first recognised that the relation of the consciousness of objects to self-consciousness carries with it the demand for a unity in the world which cannot be found in it according to the methods of Science, and which, indeed, Science by the very conditions of its existence, is prohibited from attempting to satisfy. His error is (1) that, as he con- ceives the unity of self-consciousness as a bare analytic unity which is not related to the manifold except externally, so he necessarily treats the ideal of knowledge which is derived from that unity as a mere ideal which cannot be realised : and (2) that he therefore confines what he calls knowledge to the form of con- sciousness as opposed to self-consciousness, at the same time that he recognises that, because it is so confined, knowledge is only of phenomenal objects. While, however, we try to correct this one-sidedness, we must keep in view that truth which Kant really established, viz., that Philosophy cannot be either a substitute for Science, or a new Science added to the rest ; for it does not work in the same region, or, so to speak, on the same plane. Teleological observations are out of place in Science, because Science presupposes the externality of the object, the relation of which, or of the parts of which, it explains ; for on this presupposition, the Teleological Idea can only take the form of an external adaptation of independent things, an adaptation which therefore excludes necessary relation. Teleology, in this sense, is, an ignava ratio standing directly in the way of the scientific 544 THE CRITIQUE OE JUDGMENT. book in. impulse, which seeks, on the hypothesis of the externality of things to each other, to bring into view their necessary relations. But, just in so far as the problem of Science has been solved, the externality which it provisionally assumes becomes itself a difficulty, and the problem of Philosophy comes to the front — the problem of finding the unity presupposed in that diversity of elements, the necessary relations of which have been detected by Science. And it would be as irrevelant for Philosophy to bring in mechanical causation as a satisfactory answer to this problem, as it was for Science to bring in teleo- logical explanations of the relations of objects. In both cases, such a course would imply an ignoratio elenchi, or the fallacy of escaping from the problem before us into a different region of thought. Soil problem I s tne problem of Philosophy a legitimate one ? Is "egitimS y Philosophy, as Hegel asks, a mere attempt, once in a Kant's an- swer, way, to stand on our heads, or to paint our faces, in order to escape from the weariness of our every day appearance ? Or is it because the scientific way of knowing does not satisfy all the demands of our intelligence, that we are driven to reconsider on a new principle the results which Science has attained and in its own way proved? 1 To ask this, is, as Kant shows, to ask whether we can reach a teleological as opposed to a mechanical explanation of things ; and his answer is (1) that we are entitled to assume a formal adaptation of things to our intelligence though only with a view to the dis- covery of mechanical causes ; and that (2) in the consideration of organised beings we may also assume their material adaptation to a design involved in their own existence ; in other words, we are entitled to go on the principle that every part of such a being has a purposive meaning in relation to the whole. Even in this latter case, however, our object must be merely to inquire by what means the purpose in question has been achieved: and this at once carries us from final to efficient 1 Hegel Works, vii. 1. 18, § 246. chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 545 causes. We may also (3) use the same principle (in a way afterwards to be considered) in the case of the world as a whole, when we contemplate it in relation to man ; though the world as a whole is not given us as an organism. But we are always to remember that the teleological principle is a heuristic, and not a determinant principle. Hence Philosophy, while it fixes the limits of the mechanical explanation by determining its objects as phenomena, is bound to treat the teleological i explanation, (apart from its heuristic use), merely as a subjective substitute for the unattainable objective determination of things in themselves, though a substitute which is made necessary by the demands of practical reason. To understand this last point, however, we need to consider more carefully the way in which Kant extends the teleological conception from the organic to the world in general. According to Kant, it is only by the facts of the organic J n what sense ° ' ' J ° he admits a world that we find ourselves immediately driven to the use of Natu'ef ° £ the Idea of an end; for it is only the organic which we cannot explain by the action and reaction of parts which are prior to the whole. But, in relation to an organism we naturally regard other things as outward means, and the same is the case with organisms in relation to each other. At the same time, except in the case of the relation of the two sexes, this outward adaptation does not carry with it even a subjective necessity to force us beyond the idea of efficient causation ; for it does not imply that the whole is prior to the parts, so that we can determine their unity through it. The world as a whole is not, therefore, given to us as an organism, but merely as an aggregate of externally determined things, some of which are organisms. And, while all organisms find in other things and beings the conditions of their existence, there is no one organism to which all the others are tributary as means, and which does not in its turn become the means to the life of the others. This is as true of man as of other animals; for, though he makes himself his own end, nature does not treat him, at least in his VOL. II. 2 M 546 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in. natural being, as if he were her end. " The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown;" 1 and the beings which he treats as means to his own existence, treat him in turn as a means to theirs. He is thus, if an end to nature and in a sense its highest end, (as he is an organic being, and the most complex and organic of all natural beings), yet by no means the final end of nature. In this respect he is, after all, but one link in the endless chain, one thread in the infinitely extending net- work of phenomenal causation. But, if we thus, on the one hand, exclude the reference of all natural ends to one highest end, and, on the other hand, reject the idea that nature as a whole constitutes an organism, — because neither of these conceptions of the world under the idea of final cause finds itself supported by experience, — are we not forced to give up the supposition that there is any unity to which the differences in the world can be referred as their source, and their end ? Must we not deny altogether the possibility of Philosophy, in so far as Philosophy seeks for such a unity ? Are we not compelled to say that the last attainable result of human inquiry is to trace back nature to its primary contingency, from which, by action and reaction of its con- stituent elements according to mechanical laws, everything has been evolved ; and when that explanation has been worked out as far as possible, must we not stop with a confession of the limits of human knowledge ? The moral law Xo this Kant answers, in the first place, that all this hypo- makes us ' r > j r nature as a thetically necessary, and therefore ultimately contingent, world the we of is determined as such only in relation to the self, which opposes man as a moral being, to it the ideal of a world which is an organic unity, and of an intuitive understanding, for which, and in unity with which, such a world exists. In the second place, Kant answers that, while this theoretic projection of the unity of self-consciousness 1 Pope's Essay on Man, iii. 25. " All served, all serving, nothing stands alone ; The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown. " chap. v. THE FACULTY OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 547 upon the world gives rise to a merely problematic Idea, to which experience can never be brought into conformity, we have also to consider that, through the moral law which self- consciousness brings with it, the self is determined as an unconditioned self-realising principle. While, therefore, when we look at man objectively, we are obliged to think of him as one being among others, conditioning them and conditioned by them, and, in this point of view, to recognise that nature finds no principle of unity and determination in man any more than in other beings or things, it is different when we look upon ourselves as subjects, the law of whose being determines them as free, i.e., as unconditioned causes of their own actions. From this point of view, we are obliged to regard ourselves as ends to ourselves, and, therefore, as ends to all nature. For, in moral action, the self to which all nature as phenomenal is relative, determines the phenomenal self, as one object among others in nature, with absolute freedom. As nothing within us can resist such determination (for " we can because we ought "), so neither can it find any resistance in what is without us ; for, as an ex- pression of an absolute principle, the moral law cannot find anywhere what is not its own manifestation. This idea is implied by Kant when he says that the highest good com- bines happiness as well as goodness, and that, as we are bound to seek to realise it, the conditions of its realisation must be present. The moral law must, therefore, be the nature of God, the absolute Being, and must reveal itself without us as well as within us. From this point of view, therefore, man is forced to regard himself as the end of all things ; and the fact that he does not seem to be treated by nature as an end, must be ex- plained by the distinction of the happiness which is his end as a natural being, from the moral perfection which is his end as a spiritual being. Nature cannot treat him as an end except so far as he is an end to himself; and he is not an end to himself simply as a natural being, but only as a natural being in whom a moral life is being 548 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. BOOK ill. realised. The Dysteleology of the world in relation to him in the former aspect is, therefore, consistent with its teleology in the latter aspect. Nature is at war with him, because he is at war with himself. And the very discord of the environment with the natural man may become the means whereby the spiritual man is developed. Thus, when we view the world as a mere natural system, it has no end, — seeing it is not an organism (in which case it would be at once means and end to itself), — nor again is there any one organism in it in re- lation to which all the rest may be viewed as means : but we may arrive at a different result if we regard man as a being in whom the spiritual principle which underlies nature comes to self-consciousness. For, just in so far as that spiritual principle is developed in man, he finds nature subservient to him ; and if, so far as that principle is not developed in him, he finds nature resistent, it is only with a view to his own development. History is in Xhis conception, which is briefly illustrated in the Critique this way to r > J j. the™wess a of °f Judgment, is more fully developed in a little treatise on the education of " Idea for a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan Point of View," in which Kant tries to show that we can regard all history as a unity, only if we consider its end to be the development of all the powers of man, as a rational being in subordination to the law of reason. Thus the weakness of man as an animal, his want of directing instincts, and the very limited provision which nature makes for his satisfaction apart from his own efforts, are all comprehensible, if we conceive that man is intended by nature " to produce everything, that goes beyond the mechanical order of his animal existence, entirely out of himself, and to participate in no other happiness or perfection than that which he has procured for himself, in- pendently of instinct, by his own reason." l " It seems as if nature cared not at all that he should live happily, but only that he should so far discipline and develop himself, as by his conduct to make himself worthy of happiness. With all this, ^H. 320 ;H. IV. 145. U.i:i)i. chap. v. THE FACULTY OP TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 549 there is no doubt something very surprising in the course of history, in which earlier generations seem to carry on their thankless efforts only on account of those that follow, labour- ing, as it were, to prepare a stage on which they can raise to a higher point the edifice designed by nature ; so that only the latest comers can have the good fortune of inhabiting the dwelling which the long series of their predecessors have toiled, though without any conscious intent, to build up. But, per- plexing as this may be, it is necessary, if we once assume it was intended that a species of animals endowed with reason should exist, and that, as a species (which is immortal, though all individuals in it die), they were to attain to the full development of all their capacities." 1 In other words, Kant allows that, in order to give rational meaning to the history of man, we are obliged to take the point of view of humanity, and treat the whole life of the race as if it were the con- tinuous development of one immortal being, who could realise its " Idea " as a being endowed with reason, " only in the species and not in the individual ; " but he maintains that, if we take this point of view, it is possible to regard the whole of History as a process towards an end, determined by the " Idea of Man." Even more striking is the way in which Kant works out this conception in the following section : — "The means which nature uses to bring about the develop- How the tm- dencies m ment of all the capacities she has given to man, is the antagon- STe'hostS ism of these very capacities as they are manifested in society, SaS' its 12 struments. an antagonism which in the end is turned into a means for the establishment of social order. By this antagonism I mean the unsocial sociableness of men, i.e., their inclination to enter into society, which yet is bound up at every point with a resistance which threatens constantly to break up the society so formed. Men have manifestly an inclination to associate themselves ; for in a social state, they are more definitely conscious of them- selves as men, i.e., of the development of their natural 1 R. VII. 321 ; H. IV. 146. 550 THE CRITIQUE OP JUDGMENT. BOOK in. capacities. But they have also a great inclination to isolate themselves ; for they find in themselves at the same time the unsocial characteristic, that each wishes to regulate everything to his own pleasure without reference to others, and therefore, expects resistance on every side, as he is conscious that for himself he is inclined to resist others. Now, it is just this resistance which awakens man's powers, which induces him to overcome his tendency to idleness, and which drives him, in the lust for honour, for power, for riches, to win for himself a rank among his fellow men, with whom he cannot live at pea'ce, yet without whom he cannot live at all. In this way, the first steps are taken out of rudeness into civilisation ; for civilisation properly lies in that which gives social value to men. In this way all talents are gradually developed, taste is formed, and by the continued progress of enlightenment the first foundations are laid of that habit of mind by which the rude natural capacity for moral distinctions is changed with time into definite practical principles ; and the pathologically forced con- formity of the individual to society gives place to the harmony of a moral organism. Without those, in themselves by no means lovely, qualities which set man in social opposition to man, so that each finds his selfish claims resisted by the selfishness of all the others, men would have lived on in an Arcadian shepherd life, in perfect harmony, contentment, and mutual love ; but all their talents would forever have remained hidden and undeveloped. Thus, kindly as the sheep they tended, they would scarcely have given to their existence a greater value than that of their cattle. And the place among the ends of creation which was left for the development of rational beings would not have been filled. Thanks be to nature for the unsociableness, for the spiteful competition of vanity, for the insatiate desires of gain and power ! Without these, all the excellent natural capacities of humanity would have slumbered undeveloped. Man's will is for harmony ; but nature knows better what, is good for his species : her will is chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 551 for dissension. He would like a life of comfort and satisfac- tion, but nature wills that he should be dragged out of idleness and inactive content and plunged into labour and trouble, in order that he may be made to seek in his own prudence for the means of again delivering himself from them. The natural impulses which prompt this effort, — the causes of unsociable- ness and mutual conflict, out of which so many evils spring, — ■ are also in turn the spurs which drive him to the development of his powers. Thus, they really betray the providence of a wise Creator, and not the interference of some evil spirit which has meddled with the world which God had nobly planned, and enviously overturned its order." 1 Kant then goes on, in a way with which we are already T . h ?, growth of o ' J J civil society. familiar, to show how men, by the struggle with each other for being and well-being, are gradually driven to " the solution of the greatest problem which nature has set for them ; the attainment of a civil society in which a universal rule of justice shall be secured." Tor " it is only in a society in which there is the greatest freedom and therefore a thorough antagonism of all the members, and at the , same time the most exact determination and secure maintenance of the limit of this freedom in each, so that it may consist with equal freedom in all the rest, that the highest end of nature in man, i.e., the full development of all his natural capacities can be attained." But " what compels men in spite of their love for unrestricted freedom to enter into such a civil society, is necessity, and especially the greatest of all necessities, viz., that which they put upon each other ; since their passions make it impossible for them to subsist alongside of each other in savage freedom." The greatness of this problem is, however, only to be seen when we consider that " man is a beast wlio needs a master, to break his natural self-will, and compel him to obey that universal will, under which all can be free." Yet the only master he can find is a man. " The highest sovereign must J R. VII. 323; H. IV. 146. 552 THE CRITIQUE OE JUDGMENT. book III. himself be just, and yet he must be a man. This problem is the hardest of all ; yea, it is impossible to solve it perfectly : for out of tha warped wood from which man is made, no cai-penter can produce a thing that is quite straight. Only an approximation to this Idea is laid upon us as our highest duty." We must also remember that the same necessity which makes the individual submit to the rules of law in one society, is working to drive all societies into an alliance, and that ultimately it points to the idea of a Universal Civil Society, by which alone a perfect equilibrium of man's impulses, — of his impulse toward unity and his impulse toward liberty, — can be secured. " Till this last step is taken, the human race endures the hardest evils under an illusive show of external wellbeing ; and Eousseau perhaps was not so far wrong as it has been sup- posed, when he preferred the savage state to the state of civilisation, provided always we leave out of account the last stage to which our species is yet destined to rise. We are already in a high degree cultivated by Art and Science. We are civilised, even to excess, in all kinds of social elegancies and decencies. But much is wanting ere we can call ourselves moralised. Now, the idea of morality is necessary to culture ; whereas civilisation is only such a realisation of that idea as is implied in the love of honour, and a feeling for out- ward propriety. But as long as States spend all their powers in vain and violent efforts at aggrandisement, and thus cease- lessly hinder the slow toil of the education of the inner life of their citizens, instead of giving to it all the outward support it needs, nothing of this kind can be expected ; for the culture of the citizen in this highest point of view must depend on a long process of effort by the community to secure such inner develop- ment. Meanwhile, all good that is not based on the highest moral principle is nothing but empty appearance and splendid misery." l Sto toused ea In tnis Essay, Kant purposes only to set up the guiding Idea as a guide in History. i R. VII. 329 ; H. IV. 152. chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 553 for a universal history, an Idea which is suggested by the con- ception of the highest good as an end which must ultimately realise itself within and without us. By aid of it, the student of history is to reflect on the facts and investigate the laws of their connexion. We cannot expect human history empirically to prove its truth, but only to give some partial indications of it ; if it were only because the process of history is not ended. Its value is as a leading thread put into our hands by the conception that the world is an intelligible system, which therefore stands in a necessary relation to the absolute law of self-realisation under which man as a rational being is placed. It is not to supersede an " empirically composed history ; " but, amid the infinite detail of facts, it supplies a clue which may lead to the detection of those elements which alone give to history its permanent interest. And we are to observe that the problem, which is thus set before us by the Idea of an end of history determined by the nature of man, is to be solved only in the usual method of science, by considering the way in which men have actually acted and reacted on each other in the past ; or, in so far as prophecy of the future is concerned, by following out to their ultimate results the working of the same laws that have acted hitherto. The ideas expressed in this little treatise form the natural The above *- involves a culmination to the conceptions of the Critique of Judgment, and S KantS 1 ™ involve a further modification of Kant's idea of man as a moral Sana! a social, and (2) being. For, in the first place, we find it to be his view as a natural o ' J k > being. that the end of man, even his moral end, is realised not in the individual, but in the race. The individual is regarded not as determining himself in isolation by the law of his own being, but as dependent for his culture on the society to which he belongs, and on the place which that society holds in the long process of the development of the great social organism of humanity. And, in the second place, in the conception of this process, nature and spirit are brought into close relation ; for Kant does not here speak of the natural passions and desires as 554 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in. It involves also a new view of the relation of happiness to requiring to be superseded in the moral life by a principle entirely foreign to them ; but, under the very working of these passions, he detects the operation of a principle by which they are converted to the service of the moral life which they seem to hinder. On another occasion he had declared 1 that the maxim : Fiat justitia pereat mundus, is not the expression of a real possibility ; for " moral evil has attached to it by nature the inseparable characteristic that in its aims it is self-contra- dictory and self-destructive, and, therefore, though by a very slow course of progress, it is destined to make room for the moral principle of the Good." 2 But evil cannot make room for good, unless, in that which we call evil, there is a principle at work which is at war with its immediate form as evil. In other words, the passions and desires as they appear in man are, after all, determined by that self-consciousness to the abstract law of which they seem to be opposed. Their opposi- tion to it, as Kant himself shows, is an opposition to themselves and to each other. Hence, out of that opposition and by means of it, a realisation of reason is possible, which is not possible directly and immediately. This is implied in what Kant says of the shepherd life of harmony and peace in which men might have lived, if their passions had not awakened them to antagonism with themselves and with each other. This idyllic life is not the moral ideal ; on the contrary, as Kant maintains, it would have brought with it the perpetual slumber of all man's higher powers. But if so, — if the mere absence of the selfism of natural passion is not virtue, — it follows that some- thing is gained by the development of such selfism ; and that, while moral excellence implies a negation of selfism, it is a negation in which it is not at all destroyed, but survives in a higher form, in the energetic individualism of a life in which nature has become the expression of spirit. Such a conception involves something very different from the external addition to morality of a happiness not involved 1 R. VII. 281 ; H. VI. 446. ' R. VII. 282. chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 555 in it, of which Kant generally speaks. It involves the thought that, as happiness or the immediate satisfaction of man's desires is impossible, not by any defect of outward arrangements, but by reason of his own nature (a truth which Kant often acknow- ledges), so again it cannot by outward arrangement be attached to virtue, and does not need any outward arrangement so to attach it. For, when we look at man as a social being, who realises his moral end only through a long discipline, in which his misery or imperfect happiness arises from his own unsocial passions, and in which this very misery is the means of the development of a higher social state, it becomes obvious that, with the attainment of that state and the moral develop- ment which it brings, the main sources of misery and of evil will be removed. The external conditions of happiness are contained in the constitution of the ideal civil society, when- ever man's nature is conformed to its laws. Nor is there any need for an external World-Governor to fasten to virtue the appropriate rewards which nature has failed to supply. The problem of the connexion of virtue with happiness ceases to trouble us, whenever, in the spirit of this treatise, we are raised above the point of view of the individual life, so as, in Goethe's words, " to regard the natural world as a great im- mortal Individual, which unerringly realises that which is necessary, and thereby makes itself master of the accidental." Tor the seeming injustice, which makes individuals and genera- tions of men the servants of an end which they never enjoy, and which indeed they could not enjoy because the capacity for it is imperfectly developed in them, at once disappears, if we are authorised to regard the individual as having a right to happi- ness, only so far as he realises or prepares for the realisation of a capacity which can only be manifested in the whole history of the man. The effect of Kant's view, then, is to point to a wider how the egoism of the natural Teleology, which includes and subordinates the Dysteleoloqy of passions is made & -> ' J ao to subserve nalure and human nature ; an Optimism which, as it were, moral endSi 556 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. book in. absorbs and does away with an iminediate Pessimism. We cannot deny the fact that outward nature is not purposive with relation to man as a natural being ; on the contrary, in spite of all the higher faculties with which she has endowed him, she treats him as a link, like any other link in the end- less chain of conditioned beings. Nor, again, can we deny the fact that men are not purposive in regard to each other as natural beings; i.e., that they are rivals to each other in the pursuit of the natural end of happiness, and that consequently each has to submit to be treated in turn as a means to the other. But these facts are both to be interpreted in the light of the idea that nature as a system of objects is relative to the subject, who, in his consciousness of himself, contains an absolute principle of self-determination and also of the deter- mination of nature. So far, Kant had already gone in the Critique of Practical Reason; now, he adds that the resistance of nature and of other men to our desires may itself be regarded as the means, which enable the higher principle within us to realise itself. Nature resists our immediate wishes, only that we may be driven to conform our wishes to our rational will. Other men are our rivals, their immediate selfism and their natural passions come into collision with ours, that, through the thwarting of both, the highest self may be developed in all, and the passions may be made the organs, not of nature, but of spirit. Thus, in the first place, man can conquer the resistance of outward nature, not by direct force but by obedience to its laws; and to obey them he must discover them. But this again involves that, subjectively, he must get beyond his immediate impressions and the prejudices they awaken ; and that, objectively, he must rise above particular phenomena to the universal principles by which they are determined. In other words, he can make nature his instrument in so far, and in so far only, as his mind and will frees itself from what is merely subjective and individual and makes itself one with the force that already acts in nature. His conquest of nature is, therefore, chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 557 also a conquest of self, as it is a subordination of his immediate impressions and desires to the higher power of reason that is in him. And, in the second place, this partial self-conquest and self-development is immediately connected with the still higher discipline and education which he receives through his relation to his fellowmen. For, in this relation, the very collision of selfishness works towards the development of the better self which sets all men at one ; nor would it be well for man that he should find anything but resistance from otber men, until, in the language of Eousseau, his will is at one with the "volonU generate " ; in other words, so long as it is at variance with the will of reason, which underlies the particular wills of all rational beings, and is alone capable of uniting them. When Kant speaks of the rational, which is also the moral nature of man, as developed only in the race and through the evolution of the civil society, and when he suggests that in this way the hiatus between the working of natural laws in human history and the teleological principle may be filled up, he practically abandons the merely subjective principle of morals, and with it the absolute opposition of nature to reason or spirit. The social well-being of Humanity is, on this view, an outward end, the realisation of which cannot be separated from the inward realisation of the moral principle in the subject ; and the resist- ance of nature and human nature to the former is necessary to the complete purification and development of the latter. The existence of an enemy without is an indication that the foe within has not been conquered ; and our struggle with the former is an essential step towards our victory over the latter. In the Critique of Judgment, then, we find that Kant reaches Kant's ulti- mate point ii the furthest point in that life-long effort of his, on the one j^™^ 111 ' hand, to vindicate the universal principles of reason as against tiel of Ms"" those who would reduce the universal to a general name for the particulars, and, on the other hand, to develop the universal as a principle of determination of the particulars. Kant was ne,ver able to bring these two tendencies of his philosophy to a 558 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. BOOK ill. unity. They seem rather to alternate in their influence over him. But, in the Critique of Judgment and in the little treatise On the Idea for a Universal History, he gives expression to the one principle which makes their reconciliation possible. It is the same principle which afterwards received such development in the Idealistic philosophy of Kant's successors, the principle that, while the universal in one point of view may be described, (as Kant describes it,) as the negation of the particulars, yet that, when thus taken as their mere negation, it presupposes them, and that, therefore, its negation of them cannot be abso- lute. It can only be a step towards that transformation of the particulars, in which they first reveal their true character and relation to the universal: In order, therefore, to give the full exposition of this principle, we have, first, to think of the universal as expressing itself in particulars, which stand opposed to it as independent existences ; and, in the next place, we have to regard this opposition as the beginning of a process, which we may describe either as a conflict of particulars by which they destroy each other and leave the universal to rule alone, or again as a conflict of the particulars with the universal, and the negation of the former by the latter. Lastly, we have to recognise that what is removed by this conflict and this nega- tion is only the independence of the particulars and the abstractness of the universal ; and that what is realised is the manifestation of the universal as a principle which, in giving rise to the particulars and in overcoming their opposition, never ceases to be one with itself. Expressed in such abstract language, this principle no doubt has an enigmatic appearance. It becomes more intelligible when we consider it in the form ■of " organic unity," i.e., as a unity in which the whole is prior to the parts and reveals itself in a tension of the parts against each other and the whole, which tension is yet the very means whereby the unity of the whole is maintained. A still better illustration of it, we may say the fundamental illustration, is found in self-consciousness — both in itself and in its unity with chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TKLEOLOGIOAL JUDGMENT. 559 the consciousness of objects. In the former aspect, it is easy to see that the ego as one with itself, presupposes a dualism, which at the same time it denies, and which, in denying, it reinstates as the essential manifestation of its unity. In the latter aspect, the consciousness of objects is the presupposition of the consciousness of self, but it is its negative presupposition. This point of view determines the main characteristics of the philosophy of Descartes, when, starting with the consciousness of objects, he arrives by abstraction at the consciousness of self, as that which cannot be abstracted from. But Descartes omits to notice that this abstraction contains in it a negative relation, which yet is a necessary relation, between the object and the subject, — a necessary relation which is betrayed by the way in which these two extremes are treated by Descartes himself, as opposite counterparts of each other. For, with him, the form of the subject is directly contrasted with the form of the object, the former being viewed as in perfect unity with itself and purely self-determined, while the latter is regarded as essentially external to itself (being not only infinitely divisible, but infinitely divided), and determined from without. The unity and freedom of spirit and the disunity and inertness of matter are, however, really determined in relation to each other ; and Descartes, when he attempts to rise to God as the bond of union between the two, is simply expressing the fact that the former is mediated by the latter, self-consciousness by consciousness of the external world. This idea, however, does not become explicit till we reach the philosophy of Kant, for whom, on the one hand, the object in its difference only exists in relation to the unity of the self; while yet, on the other hand, the con- sciousness of self is possible only through the consciousness of the object, though in negative relation to it. Out of this negative relation, which is yet a necessary relation, springs the practical requirement that the subject, in determining itself, should determine the object in accordance with itself, — a re- quirement which ultimately leads Kant to assert, that the 560 THK CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. HOOK in. Summum Bonicm is the unity of goodness and happiness ; and that this involves a determination of the outward world, accord- ing to the same principle by which the subject is bound to determine himself. The various difficulties in Kant's philosophy to which these conflicting movements of thought gives rise, have been .already discussed. The important point for us here, however, is to observe how • the successors of Kant, and especially Hegel, detected the dialectical movement by which in all his alternations of thought Kant was guided. In fact, it would not be too much to say that Hegel's great achieve- ment was, that he brought the unconscious dialectic of Kant to light. Thus, he pointed out that the negative relation of the consciousness of self to the consciousness of the object, being a necessary relation, must conceal a positive relation. Both must be regarded ultimately as forms or expressions of one principle ; nay, their difference and opposition must itself be regarded as a necessary phase in the realisation of that prin- ciple ; for it is necessary that they should stand opposed and indifferent to each other, as separate existences, in order that their unity may be realised. But, just because they are one in the ultimate principle of their being, the apparent determina- tion of the one by the other to which their division gives rise, will ultimately show itself to result neither in the annihilation of the one by the other, nor even in the subordination of the one to the other ; but in the full manifestation of the principle, which is present in both, and which has given rise to their difference. Hence, the process of knowledge, in which at first the subject seems merely to submit itself to be determined by the object, will be really the process by which the subject becomes conscious of itself in and through the object ; and the process of moral activity, — in which at first the subject seems to deter- mine the object to an end, which is not given in the object itself, but in the nature of the self to which it is made sub- servient, — will really be the process by which the objective world first reveals the spirituality of the principle which works chap. v. THE FACULTY OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. 561 in it, the end to which it is determined by its own nature. In this way, freedom and nature will both find their ultimate ex- planation in the unity that underlies their difference from the first, but which can only reveal itself fully in the attainment of an end in which, as Kant says " perfect art again becomes nature." x To such an Idea Kant ultimately points, nor can we do J^* 1 **™ 1 justice to him without showing that he does so point ; though tS^ceLSy we must also admit that, just because of his original separation realisation of reason. of positive and negative, and his refusal to treat a negative relation as involving any objective connexion, he is unable to bring together the end and the beginning of his speculation. But he has got very near to this result, when he regards the struggle of men for existence, for being and well-being, whh all its unlovely accidents, as the very means by which the highest social realisation of morality is being brought about. For, what is this but to say that in the struggles of man with nature and with his fellows, the principle of unity,, which un- derlies the difference of man from man as well as the difference of men from nature, is already manifesting itself ; and that, there- fore, the further progress of that struggle must have just the opposite effect to that which it seems by nature destined to bring about ? The freedom that struggles against social necessity, must ultimately discover that it is only in the social organism that the individual can be really free. Men "find their profit in losing of their prayers ; " because the prayer for a particular Good, as it is the prayer of a self, intends the universal Good and can find satisfaction only in the universal Good. And the struggle for particular Good is the very means by which this lesson is learnt. The working of such a thought in Kant's mind could not connexion of ° ° this Critique but influence in some degree his view of Religion ; for Eeligion ^eatiS™' 8 is concerned with the realisation of that connexion between the e lslon ' moral and the natural world which is the Suinmum Bonum, and !R. VII. 376; H. IV. 324. VOL. II. 2 N 562 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT, BOOK III. which seems to be excluded by the opposition of the principles which rule in these different worlds. Kant could not, without entirely retracing his course, give up his fundamental contrast ; and in the end of the Critique of Judgment, he repeats his caution as to the necessity of proceeding from morality to religion, and not from religion to morality, if we would not fall into all those kinds of superstition which arise, when the will of God is sepa- rated from the moral law, and when morality is viewed as a means to happiness. At the same time, as we have seen, Kant had come to think of the natural process of man's life as, by the contradiction which belongs to it (as the natural life of a spiritual being), giving opportunity for the development of the spiritual principle in him, and even, when seen from the highest point of view, as itself constituting that development. And this thought could not but lead to a mitigation of the harshness with which the difference of morality and reli- gion, and the subordination of the latter to the former, was insisted on. He who had discovered in the natural impulses, even in the evil impulses, of a spiritual being a power that works towards the realisation of the highest Good, could hardly avoid admitting that impulse in its highest forms has something in it kindred with moral principle. And the some- what grudging admission that "love as the free reception of the will of another into our maxims, is an indispensable com- plement to the imperfection of human nature, which otherwise would only be impelled by a moral necessity to obey that law which reason prescribes," 1 — at least indicates a desire on Kant's part to connect his moral principles more closely with the Eeligion of Love. The endeavour to satisfy this desire gave birth to the Treatise on Religion within the Bounds of mere Reason, which we may regard as his last effort to bring to a unity the different principles of his philosophy. 1 fi. VII. 424 ; H. VI. 370. 563 BOOK IV. KANT'S TREATISE ON RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OE MERE REASON. CHAPTER I. KANT'S VIEW OF THE RELATION" OF CHRISTIANITY TO NATURAL RELIGION. RELIGION, according to Kant's principles, can only come Kant mtro- ° . duces God after morality : it must not determine morality, but be oniyasneces- " " sary to realise determined by it, for the Idea of God arises only in connexion happSeS ° £ with the Idea of the Chief Good, in which happiness has to be ness. g0 ° combined with goodness. Eor this implies a determination of the course of nature in conformity with the law of freedom, — a determination which, as it is not in any way capable of being explained by natural causes, must be referred to the action of the highest moral Legislator, who is also the Author of nature. But in relation to us, such a conformity of nature to freedom* such a connexion of happiness with goodness, is only a finis in coTisequentiam veniens, of which we are obliged to take account, because we are unable to make the law that determines how we should act our motive, without considering to what result such act must lead. For "it is one of the unavoidable limitations of man, and especially of his practical faculty, in all his actions to look to the consequence in order to find in it something that can serve as end for him," — "something that he can love," : Hence we get "the Idea of a Good which combines in itself the formal condition of » 1 U, X. 8; H. VI. 101. 564 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OP REASON, book iv. all ends, as we ought to have them (duty), and at the same time all that agrees with this condition in the conditioned ends which we naturally have, (the happiness which corresponds to our faithfulness in duty)." 1 This is an Idea which " does not increase the number of our duties, but only supplies a central point of reference which enables us to bring all our ends into unity with each other;" and " to connect the purpose shown in nature with the ends of freedom." 2 We cannot, indeed, base morality upon it, but on the contrary, must base it on morality : yet as moral beings, we must wish it to be realised, and we must strive after its realisation ; and we are therefore entitled to postulate God as the condition of its possibility. Hence Eeii- g f ar we ma y fairly say that Kant keeps God outside of the glon seems to R. X. 6 ; H. VI. 99. chap. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 565 being. On the other hand, as he advanced in his speculation, Kant was prompted to make continual attempts to bridge over the chasm between man and man, and between nature and man ; and in the same spirit, he could not but endeavour also to draw down God into relations with his creatures, and to conceive him as a principle working in them as well as upon them. The steps which he takes in this direction, however, are never other than tentative and cautious, and he always seems, so to speak, to keep one foot on what to him is the solid rock of the independent moral personality of man, and to be ready to draw back the other whenever the sand sinks be- neath it. The question as to the possibility of bringing religion into Difficulty of reconciling closer relation to morality, and the question as to the possibility SS v t i . ew .Y ittl of conceiving the moral life in a less individualistic way, are very closely connected : for, once admit that moral aid and moral hindrance may come to us from other men or from nature, and God appears as a Being who is at once within and without, us, and whose determination of us can be reconciled with our free- dom. Now, while Christianity is primarily a moral religion, a religion which makes the moral conflict of supreme import- ance, and, indeed, finds in it the ultimate meaning of every other conflict or antagonism in man's life ; yet at the same time, it regards men as members of a race and involved in its fortunes, and, therefore, as beings whose originally pure nature has already, prior to any independent act of the individual, received a bias in the direction of evil, and who can again be restored to good only by a power which is higher than, and inde- pendent of, the individual will. Further, it regards his connexion with his race as at once the source of this evil bias in him, and the means through which the influences reach him that alone can enable him to overcome it. For " as in Adam all die, so in Christ all are to be made alive." Hence also, Christianity realises itself through a Church ; for it is the Church that furnishes, the social medium through which the 566 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON. BOOK IV. individual receives his moral life, and in which he can he active to communicate the same life to others. While, there- fore, in Christian doctrine the freedom and responsibility of the individual are constantly asserted, they are not conceived as excluding all influence from other men, even influences which reach his very inmost life, influences manifesting themselves in him as an Evil which he did not produce and which he cannot cure, and a Good which he did not originate and which he cannot by his own strength develop. In the present treatise, Kant sets himself to consider how far, from his own point of view, he can appropriate these funda- mental conceptions of the Christian religion, or, at least, give them an interpretation in harmony with his own ideas ; and also, though in a less direct and conscious way, how far he can stretch or modify his own ideas so as to admit new elements from Christianity. ofOri^S m T ^ e nrst book discusses the doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin. Kant agrees with the scriptural doctrine that " there is none righteous, no not one." The bias to evil is traceable in our earliest years ; we find it already developed in us as soon as we are conscious of ourselves. Neither in those who are nearest to the state of nature, nor in those who are furthest from it, neither in the savage nor in the civilised, do we find any exception. Yet this evil we cannot take as something " given," as a natural characteristic which we have no responsi- bility for causing and which we cannot change. We are conscious of it, as that which ought not to be, and, therefore, as that which we could have hindered from being. Here, there- fore, there seems to be an inconsistency between the consciousness of guilt and responsibility, which we feel when we look at our- selves in relation to the law of freedom, and the fact that the origin of our evil bias goes back beyond any conscious effort of our own, and seems to be a tendency inherited from our ancestors. oi^jraista! First, Kant asks us to consider exactly what constitutes the CHAP. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 567 evil bias in us. It does not lie in our sensuous impulses as such, which are neither good nor bad, and for which we cannot be in any way responsible ; nor does it lie in a corruption of our practical reason, by which we have lost the idea of moral obligation ; for, without that idea, we would be neither guilty nor conscious of guilt. " To explain moral evil in man, his sensuous nature contains too little ; for if we regard it alone, and leave out of account the motives which arise out of freedom, we reduce man to a mere animal. On the other hand, an evil reason, (or absolutely evil will,) which should declare itself free of the moral law, contains too much ; for in such a will, opposition to the law would itself be the motive of action, and the subject would thus become neither more nor less than a devil." * But, if the bias to evil lies neither in the sensuous nor in the rational nature of man, where can it lie ? " The distinction whether a man is good or bad cannot lie in the difference of the motives which he takes up into his maxims (i.e., not in the matter of such motives) but only in their relative, subordination (i.e., in their form). The question is simply which of the two kinds of motives he makes the condition of the other. Man, even the best man, is bad only because he perverts the moral order of the motives in taking them up into his maxims, and . . makes the motives of selfism the condition of obedience to the moral law, whereas the latter ought to be made the universal maxim of will as the highest condition of the satisfaction of the former." 2 Under this perversion the idea of happiness, which is only the generalisation of the ends of desire, takes that central place which properly belongs to the moral law, as the principle of unity for all our maxims. Now, as we are obliged to trace back this perversion to a So^Sforit time prior to all empirical determinations of our will,, it might ^th man" seem necessary that we should refer its origin to that which is not our own action. This, however, is impossible, for that 1 R. X. 39; H. VI. 129. 2 R. X. 40 : H. VI. 130. in consistency "with man' freedom. 568 RELIGION" WITHIN" THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book iv. which is not due to a misuse of freedom cannot be moral evil. We must, therefore, carry it back to an act which precedes every act of ours as an event in time, to an "intelligible act which we can know only through reason, and not as empirically given in sense under conditions of time." 1 In fact, there is a contra- diction in the very thought of knowing an act of freedom under conditions of time ; for whatever is conceived as occurring under these conditions, must be referred to some other event that precedes it as its cause. On the other hand, the moral law forces us to regard every act as done by an original use of freedom, and not as determined by any previous act. " Every evil act, if we look to the intelligible origin of it, must be regarded as if the man fell into it out of the state of innocence " ; 2 for reason, with its "Thou canst because thou oughtest," cannot admit any excuse which would refer the evil act back to what was done before. On the other hand, if we ask how out of the state of innocence man can ever have fallen into evil, we can find no answer ; the origin of evil is unsearchable. All we can say is that we see why it is unsearchable. The Biblical narrative seems to express this when it makes temptation come from without, from an evil spirit ; though, in truth, it is impossible to see how a temptation from without could act on a being who was pure within. In a similar spirit we have to interpret the doctrine that the sin is inherited from our first parents, viz., as an expression of the truth that sin is due to an act of freedom. In this case, the first in time simply does duty for that which is prior to time itself. Otherwise, the first man's sin could only be ours in the sense that we recognise that we would have acted as he is said to have acted. Equally incomprehensible is the possibility of a free being turning again from evil to good, which also the moral law forces us to believe. We need not, indeed, exclude the possibility that some "supernatural co-operation with our will may be needed to remove hindrances, if not to give positive help; but if such co-operation be possible, we 1 R. X. 34 ; H. VI. 125. a E . x . 46 . H VI 135 chap. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 569 must first make ourselves worthy to receive it," 1 and, so to speak, open our wills to receive it by our own free action! To suppose that we can be made good by using some " means of grace," some way of getting favour with God other than good action, e.g., that a supernatural influence can be got by doing nothing but praying, "which before an all-seeing Being is nothing but wishing," is superstition. On these principles, we may adopt the Stoic doctrine, I ^' tl oon ^' con . according to which evil and good are sharply set against each plSmtyof our ,., t. i • f i i conversion to other without any mediation, and conversion irom the one to the good. other can only take place by an instantaneous act, provided only we are careful to remember the distinction between the homo noumenon and the homo phenomenon. Conversion is an instan- taneous act, if we mean by it a change in the principle of the will, and it is not too strong language to speak of this as a new birth or even a new creation. But the "new man," which is created by this change of principle, can realise that change in his life as a phenomenal or sensuous being, only by a progressus in infinitum from worse to better ; and it is only for God, whose intelligence is not limited by the form of time, that this infinite series becomes a unity. For us it never can be so ; hence the best we can have is only a relative confidence in the change of principle within us, a confidence however which may grow with our experience of the stability and gradual improvement of our character in time. This, however, brings us to the subject of Kant's second mmtand ne " book : " The conflict of the good and the evil principle for though* 011 „ ml i • , f. ., -\ i • i • Christ are supremacy in man. lhe word mrtus, or fortitude, which is interpreted on Kantian used by the Stoics, suggests that goodness is a result of war- principles. fare ; but " these worthy men mistook their true enemy " when they supposed that our moral warfare is with passion, and not with the perverted maxim of the will, by which it has made passion its primary motive. The Apostle was wiser when he 1 R. X. 51 ; F. VI. 139. 570 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OP BEASON. bookiv. said that our " warfare is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers," i.e., with evil spirits ; only we must remember that this last expression points not to an external, but to an internal, spirit of evil. Now, the spiritual power of evil in us can be combated only by aid of another spiritual power, which Christianity has also personified in a way that corresponds to its true idea. For, "that which alone can make a world the object of the divine decree and the end of the creation, is Humanity (the rational being as such) in its com- plete moral perfection, from which, as highest condition, happi- ness must follow as a necessary consequence in the will of the Supreme Being." 1 In this point of view, humanity may be fitly represented as the only begotten Son of God and the express image of his Person : as the Word " through which all things were made," in whom " God has loved the world," and who gives " power to those who receive him to become sons of God." As this principle is in us, and yet we are not its authors, we may fairly say that it has come down from heaven and taken our nature that it may elevate us, who are by nature evil, to itself. And, as we can form an idea of a force only by considering it as overcoming resistance, so we can image to ourselves the power of this ideal of God-pleasing Humanity, only by thinking of a man who has borne the greatest suffering and death itself for the good of men and even of his enemies. It may also, in a true sense, be said that it is only through practical belief in this Son of God, that man can hope to be pleasing to God. On the other hand, we must remember that, if an actual example of perfect goodness were externally presented to us, it could not, as merely an example, have such power over us, except in so far as it awakened in us a consciousness of the ideal of our own nature. And if, on the other hand, we were to identify a good man with the ideal, and so to take him for a being exempt from human weakness, the value of his example would be lost. If we overlook this 1 R. X. 69 ; H. VI. 155. CHAP. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 571 difficulty, — which arises from the impossibility of combining in one the conceptions of a moral ideal and an example, — we can see how such a being as we have spoken of might call upon men to see their ideal in him, as the blameless Son of God, (" which of you convinceth me of sin ? .") and to regard devotion to him as the highest duty. Again, the realisation of the moral life in us is only by a continual advance, which always leaves us far short of the ideal; and it is only to God, who sees the heart and views our life sub specie aetemitatis, that this infinite progress can appear as a completed whole. But this difference between the human and the divine point of view may enable us to find a meaning in those expressions of scripture in which we are led to think of Christ as our substitute, and of God as imputing his merit to us and seeing us in him. For while, looking to our own individual lives, we can never have objective proof of our inward conformity to the divine law, and therefore must " work out our salvation with fear and trembling ; " yetin so far as we are conscious of con- tinued purity of will, we may rise, in the sense of our unity with the ideal, to a foretaste of the joy which we cannot but associate with an unalterable will for the Good. This joy we may fitly represent as an eternal bliss of heaven, secured to us through unity with our divinely human Lord ; while its opposite sorrow will appear to us as an endless Hell, through identification with the spirit of evil. Lastly, the same system of conceptions may serve to free us from a difficulty which arises out of our moral consciousness, as to the possibility of an Atonement to the violated law for our past guilt. Such an Atonement seems impossible, when we consider that our present obedience is imperfect, and that even if it were perfect, it could not afford a surplus of merit to make up for the past ; while, on the other hand, our past guilt seems infinite, both because of the infinity of the highest Lawgiver against whom we sin, and because our guilt lies not merely in special sins, but in the adoption of an evil principle, which contains in 572 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON. BOOK IV. itself an endless possibility of evil. It would seem, therefore, that an infinite punishment alone could neutralise this infinite sin ; and it would seem, further, that this punishment must be borne at the instant of change, in order to do away with the old life of the individual and open to him a new life. This difficulty Kant meets in the following way : " The change of mind which man passes through, is at once a coming out of evil and an entrance upon good, a putting off of the old, and a putting on of the new man, in which the spirit dies to sin (and so to all inclinations that lead to sin) and lives to righteousness. In this change, however, as an intellectual determination, there are not two separate moral acts, but only one; for the abandon- ment of evil is possible, only through presence of the will for good which initiates a good life, and vice, versa. The good principle is, therefore, contained in the abandonment of evil, as well as in the adoption of good as the motive of the will ; and the pain, which rightly accompanies the former, springs entirely out of the latter. The change from the corrupt to the good mind ("dying to the old man, crucifying the flesh") already involves the sacrifice of self and the acceptance of a long series of the evils of life, which the new man takes upon himself in the spirit of the Son of God ; i.e., merely for the sake of the Good ; evils which, however, properly should have fallen upon the old man (who is morally another) in the shape of punishment. Though, therefore, physically, (viewed in his empirical character as sensible being), he is the same punish- able man, and, as such, must be condemned before a moral court of justice, and therefore by himself, yet in his mind (as an intelligible being) he appears before a divine Judge as morally another. It is, then, this new personality as the guiltless Son of God, which bears the penalty of sin ; or, (if we personify the Idea) the Son of God, as Substitute for him and for all who (practically) believe on Himself, bears the guilt of sin ; as their Redeemer, makes satisfaction to the highest justice for it by suffering and death ; and, as their Representative, secures to chap. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 573 them the hope of appearing as justified before their Judge. Thus, (according to this way of representation) that suffering which the new man must continually take upon himself in life while he dies to the old man, is regarded as a death suffered once for all by the Bepresentative of mankind. Here, there- fore, we find that surplus of merit, beyond that of our own works, which was desiderated, and which, by the grace of God, can be imputed to us." x This " Deduction of Justification " shows us the method in which Kant proceeds to find a meaning for the Christian doctrine of Atonement, while obliterating from it all ideas of external substitution and transference. Conversion from sin to goodness involves a sorrow for sin which is an atonement for it, but which, in the instant it is felt, ceases to be a punish- ment : seeing that the old man who deserves punishment has ceased to be. It may, therefore, be regarded as a punishment borne by the new man for the old, and objectively envisaged as the suffering of the Son of God in the place of sinful man, which is appropriated to the individual by faith and carries with it the forgiveness of sins. Kant goes on in the same spirit to deal with another scrip- princi£fe g00d tural conception which is closely connected with the idea sufl^mgand death. of Atonement, viz., the conception that the evil principle had by the Fall gained a rule over man's original inheritance, and had become the " Prince of this world," but that this dominion has been overthrown by the virgin-born Son of God, as one in whom the Prince of this world had no part. The evil prin- ciple, indeed, tries to tempt this holy Being, who seems to be merely human, to an acknowledgment of his own authority, and. failing, he raises a persecution against him, which ends in his death ; but this physical victory of the Evil One over the Son 1 There is a curious similarity between Kant's way of interpreting Christian doctrine and that adopted by the late Dr. McLeod Campbell, in his book on The Nature of the Atonement — a book which might be regarded as the *enthusiasia of Scottish Calvinism. R. X. 86 ; H. VI. 169. 574 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book iv. of God is a moral defeat. For the conflict is really an inner conflict of principles, which takes place, not in the kingdom of nature, but in that of freedom ; in which, therefore, death itself becomes the exhibition of the triumph of the good prin- ciple, and the beginning of a like-triumph for all that follow its guidance. In this way all the dogmas of Christianity may be interpreted as an expression of the moral revolution whereby the bias of man to evil is overthrown ; and, if so, it is well for us to " continue to pay reverence to the outward vesture, that has served to bring into general acceptance a doctrine which really rests upon an authority within the soul of every man, and which, therefore, needs no miracle to commend it to man- kind." 1 It is true that in the outward form in which this Gos- pel was first presented, not as an expression of principles, but as a record of facts of experience, it seemed to call for the super- natural evidence of miracles ; but whether these miracles really took place or not, we need not now concern ourselves. At any rate, they were useful only at the first introduction of the Christian faith, and even then only by reason of the inadequate form in which it was so introduced; and the belief in continued miracles would no longer serve any good purpose, but would rather prevent the necessary transition from the outward form to the inner meaning of it. Hence it was a step in the right direc- tion, when the belief in miracles was confined to the past ; and a wise teacher will seek more and more to dissociate the moral doctrine of the necessity for a change of character, from all such external scaffolding. The origin The third book of Kant's treatise goes on to discuss the and nature of the church, conditions of.the complete victory of the good principle, and of the foundation of a kingdom of God on earth. For, so far, we have only considered the way in which the new principle had to be introduced into the world. The death of Christ, indeed, is regarded by Christianity as already a victory in which " all is finished ;" yet, in another sense, it is only the beginning of R. X. 100 ; H. VI. 181. chap. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 575 a struggle which has to be carried on by the Church, the society founded by Christ, till it ends in a complete victory over the world. In his view of the Church Kant is involved in very great difficulties, in so far as his moral principles seem to exclude a social realisation of morality. He begins by pointing out that the great hindrance to the triumph of good in the indi- vidual, lies not " in his own rude nature, in so far as he stands isolated by himself, but in his relations to, and connexions with other men." 1 For the violent passions of envy, ambition, and avarice, which make men reciprocally corrupt each other, grow not out of their immediate wants, but out of their rivalry and conflict with each other in society ; and such social evils must be met by a social remedy, " a union of men to guard against evil and to further good, a permanent ever-extending society for the maintenance of morality." " The idea of such an ethical community or empire of virtue, has its objective reality well grounded in reason." 2 Now, just as it was the duty of mankind to abandon the legal state of nature, and to enter into a political union for the maintenance of justice, so we may also say that it is their duty to leave the ethical state of nature and combine into a Church for the furtherance of moral virtue. And, as it is only a universal Eepublic which can finally put an end to war, and fully realise the idea of the legal unity of men ; so it is only a universal Church which can realise the moral unity of men, so that they shall cease to be hindrances and become helpers to each other's virtue ; and " any partial society is to be regarded only as a schema or approximate representation of the absolute ethical whole " 8 after which we should strive. Such a universal Eepublic according to laws of virtue, however, differs from the civil society in this, that force can be no instrument in its realisation ; for violence can do nothing to secure a moral end. Hence, also the lawgiver in such a society cannot be an outward sovereign, but only the Being whose will 1 R. X. 109 ; H. VI. 189, 2 R. X. III.; H. VI. 191 3 R. X, 113 ; H, VI. 193. 576 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OE REASON. BOOK IV. is one with the moral law*; nor can such a society have any laws but the moral law itself, can the idea This lofty Idea, however, — how can it be , realised ? It of the Church J be realised? j s n0 0D j ec t f possible experience, for it implies a union of men which is universal, as being independent of all accidental differences of opinion, which separate men from each other; abso- utely pure, as regards the motives by which the members of it are actuated ; free, both in the relation of these members to each other and to the community as a whole ; and unchangeable, as regards the principles of its constitution, though in its adminis- tration it may be adapted to, the circumstances of men in different times and places. Such a union of men would best be compared, not to any form of State, whether mon- archical, aristocratical, and democratical, but rather to a "great Family under a common though invisible moral Father, acting through his Son who knows his will, and who at the same time is bound to all the other members of the Family by ties of blood." i approxtoT- Now, an actual Church cannot be founded on such a pure creed, for it must have a historical basis ; and with this is necessarily connected a certain confusion of the statutory with the moral law, and a partial substitution of a ceremonial service of God for that true service which consists in moral action alone. So far as this is the case, a book-revelation will be put in the place of reason, and a priesthood in the place of the teachers of morality. Thus faith in an external authority tends to substitute itself for faith in the inner law, and what is called " divine service " for the real moral service of God. But this tendency may be counteracted, and ultimately overcome. It is not necessary that the accidents of the outward institution should produce any permanent opposition between it and the moral purpose it is destined to subserve. On the contrary, we find that it has been the case with all book-revelations, and the beliefs therewith connected, that the better teachers of the 1 R. X. 121 ; H. VI. 200. Hon. chap. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 577 people "subjected them to a process of interpretation, by which their essential content was gradually brought into agreement with the universal principles of a moral faith." 1 And this method of interpretation ought now to be adopted on principle. Indeed, we have a right to say that only that church can be considered a true one, whose faith " carries with it a prin- ciple which makes it continually approximate to the pure faith of religion ; " 2 so that finally the leading-strings of historic belief may be dispensed with, and the element of slavish or mercenary service be removed. The difficulty, which arises in connection with the historical Thetime- •* relation of form in which the truth of religion has to be conveyed to us, f„d s^notifl- may be thus stated : — There are two conditions "under which ca '° what is called saving faith brings our hopes of future blessed- ness ; one in relation to what we cannot do, and what, therefore, it would seem, we must have done for u&, viz., the legal annulling of our former actions in the sight of a divine judge: the other in relation to what we can do and ought to do for ourselves, viz., the regulation of our future life by the law of duty." 8 Thus we need at once a faith in a satisfaction made for sin by which we are already reconciled with God, and a faith that by a good life in future we can become pleasing to God. These two elements must be united. But the , difficulty is to see which of the two we should make the condition of the other ; whether we are to ground our faith in the pardon of sin on a good moral life, or vice versa; for either view would seem to involve absurd consequences. If you say that satisfaction has been made for the sins of men, and that we only need to believe in this in order to see our guilt removed, and the very root of it so destroyed that henceforth a good life will be the necessary consequence of this faith, you are maintaining that there is an incomprehensible transference of merit from Christ to us, and that it produces a result with which it has no . intelligible i R. X. 131 ; H. VI. 208. 2 R. X. 137; H. VI. 213. 3 R. X. 138; H. ; VI. 213. VOL. II 2 O 578 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON. BOOK ™ connexion. And as such a faith could not be awakened in us by any intelligible process, we must suppose it to be directly inspired by some supernatural influence ; whereby the moral life that ensues is deprived of its whole meaning as a process of moral self-determination. If, on the other hand, you say that man, corrupt as he is by nature, is to make himself into a being pleasing to God without any extraneous aid, how is the possibility of such a process to be made comprehensible ? " If he is not to regard the Justice, which he has made his adversary, as reconciled by a satisfaction made for him by another, if he is not to view himself as in a manner born again by this faith, so that, by reason of the union thus formed between him and the good principle, he can now enter upon a new life, on what is he to base the hope of becoming a man well-pleasing to God V 1 Now, we cannot theoretically explain the cause of goodness and badness, because both involve the mystery of freedom ; but the practical key to the difficulty is, that " the living faith in the ideal of God-pleasing humanity, (in the Son of God), is in itself referred to a moral Idea of Keason, which serves not only as the rule of right conduct, but also as the all-sufficient motive to such conduct. Hence, it is one and the same thing to begin with such a rational faith and with the principle of a good life. On the other hand, the faith in that ideal in its phenomenal form, i.e., the empirical faith in the Christ of history, is not the same thing with the principle of a good life (which must be entirely rational); nor could we begin with such a faith and deduce the good life from it. So taken, the two propositions stated above would be contradictory. But we must remember that in the phenomenal appearance of the God-man, it is not that which falls under the senses, or can be known by experience but the ideal of our own reason (which we see exemplified or embodied in it), that is, properly speaking, the object of saving faith. And so far as this is the case, faith in the God-man is 1 R. X. 140 ; H. VI. 215. ap. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 579 one with the principle of a good life." 1 It is, therefore, one and the same practical Idea which Christians really have hefore them in these two forms ; and, so long as this is the case, the difficulty does not exist. It arises only when this his- torical fact is detached from its moral meaning, and viewed as a mere fact ; and when, as such fact, it is invested with a mystic or a magic influence to produce a moral change in him who believes in it, and who, indeed, is supposed to believe in it by a supernatural and arbitrarily communicated influence. If this were the truth, we should be reduced to say " that God has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will, he hardeneth : a text which, taken literally, is the salto mortale of human reason." " It is, therefore, a necessary consequence of the union of a ^Jjf2ttaa physical with a moral capacity in us — the latter of which is Ma™ 011 " the basis and interpreter of all religion — that religion is finally to be detached from its empirical basis, from all statutes which rest on history, and which by means of a church-faith provision- ally unite men for the furtherance of the Good ; and that thus a pure religion of reason is finally to gain the supremacy, so that " God may be all in all." " The coverings under which the embryo first formed itself to man, must be taken away if the man himself is to come out in the light of day." 2 The leading strings of authority, with the distinctions of clergy and laity, as well as all mere ritual or ceremonial institutions, must give away ; till gradually, not by a violent revolution, but by the silent progress of thought, the pure religion of reason shall be established. "We may say, however, that 'the kingdom of God has come to us ' — so soon as even the principle of the gradual transition from Church-faith to the pure religion of reason, the principle of a (divine) ethical State on earth, has been anywhere recognised as a fundamental principle, however far off may be the actual realisation of such a State. . . . For there is in man a capacity of recognising, and by living sympathy appropriating that which is good and true, which, therefore, » 1 R. X. 142 ; H. VI. 217. 2 R. X. 145 ; H. VI. 219. 580 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book it. owing to its affinity with his own moral nature, cannot be pre- vented from gradually gaining power over him so soon as it has once become public property." 1 The Church-faith, in short, is a "useful vehicle" for conveying to men a truth which, finally, by a true enlightenment, will be freed from the need of any such assistance. Eeu 1 ion 0ryof According to this view, the history of religion will find its totSeMstory main interest in the constant conflict between the religion of tian church. " divine service" and the religion of "morality," and especially in the progress whereby the latter gains more and more the mastery of the former. Such a history can have a real unity only if we limit it to the record of that part of the human race in which the Idea of a universal .Church has been promulgated, and in which, therefore, the question as to the difference of a rational and a historical faith is brought before the public, and its decision is made the greatest of moral concerns. Hence Church History begins with Christianity ; for Judaism, at least in its oldest form, was, though a theocracy, rather political than religious ; and it was merely an exigency of the time that led the earliest' teachers of Christianity to try to connect their faith so closely with the previous beliefs of the Jews. This is evident from the exclusion of the idea of immortality from the Jewish Scriptures ; "for without a belief in a future life no religion can be conceived." 2 We may, indeed, trace in the later Judaism of the prophets, the beginning of a higher moral teaching. But the moral idea first clearly de- taches itself from Judaism in the life of Christ, who, at the very outset, announced himself as a heaven-sent teacher who had come to free the moral commandment — 'to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect,' — from all ritualistic additions, and to declare the faith that is based on this command to be the sole saving faith ; and who crowned a life, devoted to the teaching of this doctrine in opposition to the slavish faith in outward ceremonies, by an undeserved death, thus makincr him- i R. X. H6 ; H. VI. 220. 2 R. X. 151 ; H. VI. 225. CHAP. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 581 self the manifestation of the ideal of Humanity: and who, ■finally, after this finished work, is represented as returning to the heaven whence he came, leaving to his disciples the promise that he would in spirit be with them even to the end of the world. This heaven-sent individual is further represented as evidencing his supernatural mission by miracles which, by another miracle, are handed down to us in the inspired books of Scripture. Now, the historical facts of the history of the Founder of the ghS His- of Christian religion and also of his first successors, are to a tory ' certain extent hidden from us ; because no learned or scientific public existed at that time, which could critically observe them. In later times, when the Christian religion does come within the view of scientific history, it presents itself to us in the form of a priestly and ceremonial cultus; and the crimes and calamities, the divisions and wars which have attended its development, would throw a very unfavourable light on its real character, if we were not able to account for them " by an evil tendency of human nature," which has caused the merely accidental elements attached to Christianity by the circumstances of its origin in a particular time and place, and especially by the necessity of an accommodation to minds accustomed to an old historical faith, "to be regarded as the essential basis of a religion for the world." 1 The best time we really know of in the history of Christi- ^eSty of anity is the present time ; for the hindrances that in earlier charch u^m li-i *^e Christian times prevented the seed of moral truth from developing, have Beveiation. been now for the most part removed, and we are able to see that the visible Church with its historical faith, can only be the schema of an invisible Church whose unity is based on the religion of reason. Two principles especially we can now regard as established by the critically enlightened reason of modern times; first, what we may call "the principle of rea- sonable modesty with regard to all that is called Beveiation. 1 R. X. 158 ; H. VI. 230. 582 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON. BOOK IV. . . . For, as we cannot deny the possibility of the divine origin of a book which in a practical point of view contains nothing but divine truth ; ... as it seems impossible that, without a sacred book, and a church-faith grounded on it, a religious union of men can be formed and maintained ; and as we can- not expect in the state of enlightenment we have now reached that a new revelation should be introduced with new miracles, it is best to take the book which we find generally recognised as sacred, and make it the foundation of the teaching of the Church." 1 But, while in this view we should not weaken the influence of that Book by useless attacks, so, on the other hand, we should not try to enforce the belief in it or its historical character as necessary to salvation ; a policy which would be fatal to the purpose we have in view. We must, therefore, add as a second principle, that the sacred history must be interpreted as having its sole value in an exhibition of God-pleasing Humanity, and not as an account of historical facts, which a man may or may not believe without its making his moral state better or worse. And we may welcome in this point of view the representation which the book contains of an end of the world, a final triumph of good over evil, and an entrance of the good into a blessed immortality, as a prophecy which is accordant with reason, though it carries us beyond all possible history. We must, however, remember that all this has only a symbolic significance, and that the "kingdom of God cometh not with observation" but is "within us.' - outlines of a The mysteries of religion also, the church doctrine as to the rational inter " ° ' ^christian nature of God and his relation to man, if we take them as showing us, not what God absolutely is, but what he is for us as moral beings, will have a useful meaning. Their mysterious- ness really consists in this, that we cannot give a rational meaning to them except in a practical point of view. We are obliged to conceive God as the Creator of the world and the R. X. 159 ; H. VI. 231. CHAP. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 583 holy Legislator of the moral law, the Preserver of the human race, its good Governor and moral Protector, and as its just Judge ; and we may speak of Him as a threefold personality, in order to protect ourselves against the Anthropomorphism which refuses to keep these attributes distinct. But the doctrines of Creation, Eedemption and Election represent only different aspects of the same mystery ; they are theological answers to the questions: how it is possible for God to create a free being, how it is possible for Him to give such a being wheu corrupted, the power to return to good : and, finally, how this change should be produced in some and not in others. In regard to such questions, our view is confined to the moral relations of our own being, and all we can say is, that, if there is anything necessary for the moral change and improvement beyond the determination of our own will, that something, we may believe, will be supplied by God. In this sense, we may adopt the doctrine of the Trinity as the formula of our faith. For as the highest, never perfectly attainable perfection of Humanity consists in the love of the law, and as a first principle of religious faith is that " God is love ; " it is reasonable to reverence God as the Father who loves men, with the love of moral complacency," in so far as they are conformable to his law. In like manner, we can reverence him as the Son, in so far as he reveals himself in the all-embracing ideal of humanity, which is begotten and loved by him from all eternity; and we can reverence him, finally, as the Holy Spirit, in so far as he limits his love to the condition of the agreement of man with the law, or in other words, in so far as his love is grounded in wisdom. The fourth and last book of Kant's Treatise deals with the The true relation of nature of the true, religious service of God, which consists in ^1*"^° the obedience to the moral law, and its distinction from the e glon ' priestly and ritual service of the Church, which grows out of the historical conditions under which religion has been established. " It is already the beginning of the victory of the good principle and a sign that ' the Kingdom of God is coming 584 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book IV. to us,' but even the principles of the constitution of such a King- dom should be publicly recognised : . for, in the intelligible world that may be regarded as already realised, the grounds of the realisation of which have taken firm root in the general con- sciousness ; though the perfect development of its manifestation in the world of sense may yet lie in the far future." x Now we have seen that it is a moral duty to work towards the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, and that that Kingdom, in the first instance, must take the form of a Church, a special organisation on the basis of a historical creed and with a definite order of administration ; and we have, seen further, that there are special dangers that the historical form may fail to be used as the vehicle of the truth of reason for which it exists. Natural Eeligion is the consciousness of all our duties as divine commands, not the consciousness of any special duty to God. But Eevealed Eeligion, while it presents these duties as outward commands, and therefore as positive or arbitrary in form, is apt to introduce other commands which are positive and arbitrary in matter, and even to raise them to a place of higher importance than the precepts of morality. In this way, Eevealed Eeligion may pervert and add to the religion of morality; it may substitute a learned religion, i.e., a religion based on special historical facts and evidences of which only a learned class can judge, for the universal religion of reason, which finds its evidence in the consciousness of every one, and thus is universally communicable. Every religion necessarily contains elements of this Natural Eeligion, for otherwise it could not exist as a religion at all ; but the true religion will be one which contains nothing more, or as little more as possible. It will be a Revealed Eeligion only in the sense that the truth which ultimately is to find its evidence in the minds of those who receive it, comes in the first instance as an external com- munication. Now, the Christianity of the Gospels is so far identical with Natural Eeligion, as it teaches that only moral iR. X. 181 : H. VI. 249. chap. I. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 585 goodness is pleasing to God ; as it demands inner as well as outward purity ; as it rejects the idea of making up for immoral conduct by religious practices ; as it condemns revenge and hate, and teaches forgiveness of injuries, and as it sums up the law in the command to love God above all and our neighbour as ourselves. Finally, while it holds out the hope of future bliss and the fear of future woe, to the good and bad respectively, yet it demands a free obedience to law for the love of it, not a slavish submission prompted by hope and fear. At the same time, Christianity is in a sense a learned religion, in so far as it rests on a historical basis, which cannot be accepted on internal evidence by any one, and of which the external evidence is accessible only to the learned. Here, therefore, lies the danger. The value of a historical belief received on authority is, that it is a vehicle or means to the teaching of Natural Eeligion. But this relation of means and end may easily be inverted, and the historical faith may be regarded as that which is most import- ant, or even as that, which is the ultimate basis of moral principles ; and when this is the case, the teachers of it are at once elevated into priests, who speak with authority, instead of " commending themselves to every one's conscience in the sight of God ; " and the outward service of the Church takes the place of the moral life as the main way of pleasing God. The first step in this degradation of religion is to attach Moral danger x ° ° of inverting Christianity closely to that Judaism out of which it sprung, that relatlon - and thus to turn the Christian "into a Jew whose Messiah has come." 1 In this way the whole Jewish Scriptures are raised to divine authority as expressing that which holds good universally ; and the learning of the teacher who expounds a difficult book relating to a far past age, becomes the basis of a religion for all time. The division of laity and clergy is thus made fixed and permanent, and an outward divine service is put in the place of the inner service of morality. God is anthropomorphically conceived as a Lord whom we have » 1 R. X. 199 ; H. VI. 264. 586 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON. BOOK IV. to satisfy by evidences of external submission, and therefore by acts which are in themselves useless, by sacrifices and sufferings which lead to no moral result. But " everything outside of a good life by which man supposes he can make himself pleasing to God, is superstition." x It may, indeed, be true that there is something beyond our power which God can do, and which he must do to supplement our weak efforts after goodness. But what that something is we cannot know ; and it is dangerous to teach that the belief in any doctrine about supernatural aid, or the acknowledgment of such belief, is of value in the sight of God as a substitute for, or complement of, moral action. Season allows us to believe that the divine goodness will supply in some way whatever may be lacking to our moral service, if we are really doing our best ; though we cannot determine in what way such aid can be given, and it may " indeed, be of so mysterious a nature, that God can reveal it to us only in a symbolic representation, of which we can understand nothing but its practical significance." 2 If, there- fore, any Church asserts that it knows definitely the way in which the moral defect of mankind is supplemented by God, and demands our belief in its assertion as a condition of salva- tion, we must utterly reject its claims. For the smallest con- cession to them would open the door for that degrading superstition which is ready to bring every offering to God except a good moral character. And if a " mechanical method of serving God " be once substituted for morality, there is no real difference in principle between the prayer-mill of the Buddhist of Thibet, and the Protestant faith in the efficacy of church attendance. Belief in a A very deceptive distinction is sometimes drawn between operation of j\f a t ure an( j Grace, under the former of which are included all "'''"'' kinds of moral action, while the latter is supposed to consist in some heavenly influence which lies altogether outside of our own moral self-determination. In some such influence we may 1 R. X. 205 ; H. VI. 270. * R. X. 207 ; H. VI. 271. chap. l. . NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 587 be allowed to believe ; but, if we pretend to have conscious experience of it in ourselves, we are yielding to a dangerous illusion : for we may soon come to regard such passively received experiences as higher than the moral determination of the will which we can produce for ourselves. Such a supersti- tious belief is even worse than a faith in the efficiency of outward ritualistic practices ; for the latter may be used as a means to an end beyond themselves, while the former is " the moral death of reason, without which there can be no religion, for religion, like morality, must be based on principle." 1 In general, however, we may say that he is on the wrong road who supposes that he can be well-pleasing to God by doing or experiencing anything, which he can do or experience without becoming a good man. It is the indication of an advance in the right direction The relation u of ceremonies when a temple-service such as that which was maintained f^ns™" 1 by the Jews, passes into a church-service which may be reu^on." n ' regarded as a provisional means for the support and further- ance of a true religious faith. But, as already said, the principle in both remains the same, so long as any religious value whatsoever is attached to practices which are not moral acts. In every form, the belief that we can please God and induce Him to accomplish our wishes by non-moral acts, involves the superstitious idea that " natural means can bring about supernatural effects." 2 Now, this is neither more nor less than Magic, or, (as the word Magic is specially associated with the idea of dealing with evil spirits), it is Fetish-making. For the Fetish-maker is one who " supposes that he can work upon God, and so use God as a means to produce some result in the world, which the power and insight of man cannot of them- selves compass, even though they be in complete accordance with the divine will." 3 It is not to be denied that Church observances may have a good effect, if they are used to develop the moral life of man and so indirectly to make him well-pleasing to God. 1 R. X. 211 ; H. VI. 274 2 R. X. 214 ; H. VI. 277. 3 Id. 588 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book iv. But everything depends upon the order or relative place which morality and the outward service of God take in our minds. If the so-called " divine service " comes first and virtue is made secondary, it shows that we are thinking of God as an Idol to be propitiated by prayers and flattery ; and this necessarily brings in its train priest- craft and fetish-worship. But "piety is not a substitute for virtue which enables us to dispense with it ; it is the completion of virtue which crowns it with the hope of the final realisation of all our good ends." All the services of the Church may be of use as means of cultivating piety ; but they may all easily be perverted into superstitious rites. Thus Baptism, as the solemn reception of new members into the Church, — the community of those who are combined in the cultivation of virtue, — and the Lord's Supper, as the celebra- tion of their continued union in one body, have a relative value, as they help towards the development of pure moral habit of mind in those who partake in them ; but to suppose them to be of any worth in themselves, apart from such influence, is to make them into fetishes. And so it is also with private and public prayer ; for true prayer is, not a petition for natural or even spiritual blessing, " but that resolve to lead a good life, which, combined with a consciousness of our frailty, involves a constant desire to be a worthy member of the divine kingdom." * And such prayer is always heard ; for it pro- duces the Good for which it prays. All the so-called " means of grace " are to be viewed in the same spirit, not as ways in which we may work upon God for our own ends, but rather as ways in which we may work upon ourselves by means of the Idea of God— an Idea which, when it springs out of our moral consciousness, has no little power to quicken and confirm it. But we must always remember that " the right way is not from the divine grace to virtue, but from virtue to the divine grace." 2 E. X, 236 ; H. VI. 295. 2 K x . 244 ; H. VI. 301. 589 CHAPTEE II. CEITICISM OF KANT'S VIEW OF THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO NATURAL RELIGION. THE Treatise on Religion within the bounds of Mere Reason, Kant's efforts to connect his shows, perhaps more decisively than any other of Kant's S^SS^h works, the strength and the weakness of his position ; for in it ch^Manity. he seeks to compare the view of religion to which his own principles lead him, with the facts of man's religious history, and in particular of the history of Christianity. He is thus obliged to realise how far he can go in admitting the ideas which underlie the religious life of humanity, and how far his principles force him to reject them as illusory. He is obliged to consider what kind of religion he can consistently accept as genuine, and what he must regard as spurious or imperfect ; and, on the other hand, how far he can bridge over the gulf that separates his own abstract conception from the actual religion of his time, either by a critical reinterpretation of popular conceptions, or by a new development or expansion of his own principles. Such a comparison was necessarily the severest of all tests to which the Kantian philosophy could be subjected, and we may, therefore, say that in applying its criteria to Christianity that philosophy criticised itself. Its power of explaining the greatest fact of man's spiritual history furnishes a good measure of its success in penetrating to the principle of man's spiritual life. 590 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON. BOOK IV. of h Kant n TOilTd -^ e severity of the test in this case, is due partly to the mtuSiythe abstract character of the Kantian philosophy, which takes its world- 0, stand on the moral Idea as the ultimate truth of man's life, Governor. and which reduces that Idea to the consciousness of a universal law of reason, to which the individual as such is immediately and absolutely subjected. Now, as was pointed out at the beginning of the previous chapter, this means that the indi- vidual in his inner moral life is isolated from all relations to other men and things without him. The absolute law, to which as a rational subject he owns subjection, breaks the bonds of nature, in which, as an individual object among other objects, he is bound ; and it sets him alone with himself and with it. He is thus cut off from all except an outward community of existence with his fellowmen. His highest life is solitary and incommunicable ; for he can help others and receive help from them only as regards his and their happiness, and not, at least directly, as regards his and their moral perfection. Still more definitely is he cut off in his moral life from nature, which, as it is merely an object, cannot have any right over him or claim upon him as a subject. Now, religion involves a relation to a Being who is conceived as the ultimate source of all beings and things, and as the principle of their unity with each other ; but, just in so far as they are conceived as isolated from, or external to each other, that principle of unity must itself be external to them. Now, Kant's assertion of the autonomy of the moral life means that it is an inner life with which neither man nor nature can directly interfere ; it means, therefore, that there is no point above their separation at which where spiritual beings, or, a fortiori, spiritual and material beings, can unite with each other. In the inmost secret of their being moral persons are atomic individuals who resist all fusion, and even, beyond a definite limit, repel all approximation; and the principle which unites them and keeps them united must therefore be not within, but without them. On such a theory, God, as the principle of unity, cannot be conceived CHAP. ii. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 591 as manifesting or realising Himself in the life of man and of nature, but only as an external Creator nnd Governor who at their creation lets them go from his hand, as independent beings to whom he abandons the care of their own destiny, controlling them merely by an external rule. It would seem, therefore, that in his religious conceptions Kant is limited to a kind of Judaism ; and that his God must be merely a great " KTot-ourselves, that works for the righteousness "■ of his creatures by rewards and punishments, and not a divine indwelling Spirit, the consciousness of which is immediately bound up with the consciousness of themselves. Eeligion could come in only as a kind of second thought or external supplement to morality, (which is necessary because, after all man lives an outward as well as an inward life, and the two lives must be somehow connected together) ; it could not be regarded as the principle from which the inner life itself springs or in which it centres. It appears, then, that Kant's subjective view of morality His attempts limits and distorts his conception of religion, as we have seen that ldea - that it limited and distorted his conception of the social and political life. Yet, as usual, his strenuous efforts to deal with the facts and to face all the difficulties of his subject, lead him to make concessions and to suggest mediating ideas, which, if they do not amount to a transformation of his original theory, yet give us considerable help in seeing where its defect lies, and how it should be supplemented. And it is highly instruc- tive to see how much new light he is thus able to throw upon the whole process of man's life in all its stages and aspects — upon his fall and moral corruption, upon his repentance and moral recovery, upon the social mediation by which the growth of the spiritual life in the individual and the world is pro- moted, and upon the relation of the outward service of religion to the inner life, — while still maintaining that opposition of nature and spirit which is essential to his moral theory. Whether, in the alternation of concession and recoil, admissions 592 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OP REASON, book iv: and reservations, in which he has involved himself, Kant has not strained his principles to the breaking point, will be here- after considered. dJrtS^of 6 ^ n attempting in his own way to appropriate the Biblical ofmenSL doctrine, Kant finds himself forced, in the first place, to deal their Eedemp- with the Pauline conceptions of the fall of humanity in Adam, tion. and its restoration in Christ. But these conceptions are essentially connected with the idea of mankind as an organism, in which evil or good cannot be confined to one member, but, if set up in one, must necessarily pervade all the others. Any force which tends to disorganise and destroy the natural body must diffuse itself from one member to another till the whole body is infected ; unless at some point in the organism a greater force working towards restoration is set up to absorb and over- come it. So, according to the Pauline doctrine, the fatal inheritance of sin derived from Adam is conceived as passing on from generation to generation, ever extending and deepening its effects ; and " the Law '' is supposed only to make men conscious of the evil power that has taken hold upon them, without enabling them to resist it, or throw it off. Finally, Christ is regarded as the source of a new regenerative principle, the action of which is as pure an expression of good as the fall was an expression of evil, — a principle of endless life, which by its transcendent power overcomes the disintegrating force of evil, and restores the whole organism to more than its original moral health and energy. And in the proleptic language of thought, — treating that as already completely realised the prin- ciple of which only has come into existence, — St. Paul declares that all men have died in Adam, and that in Christ all are again made alive, i^ cannot it might seem, at first, as if Kant had no point of contact Son tmodi " with such language, every word of which implies a kind of " solidarity " of mankind, which he altogether repudiates. One who regards each man as centred in himself, moving in the self-determined sphere of an inner life into which no other can CHAP. II. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 593 intrude, could scarcely be expected to find much satisfaction in the idea of Humanity as a corporate body, which "moveth altogether, if it move at all " ; so that the life of each individual is regarded as only a factor in the life of the whole, and his fate as depending not on himself, but on the issue of the general struggle between the powers of good and evil in the whole organism. The individual, indeed, must recognise that he is one with the universal, in such a sense that he cannot realise the end of his own being except by realising it. But with Kant the universal of morality takes the form, not of a prin- ciple working in the social life of humanity, but of an abstract law, which speaks only to the individual from within. If the law commands him to act in conformity with the " Idea of a kingdom of ends," yet that kingdom is merely possible, and it can never, on Kantian principles, be more than an Idea. It appears, therefore, as if any appropriation by Kant to the formulae of Christian doctrine must be a mere Procrustean attempt to force a moral Individualism into the language of a creed which is nothing if not social, or even socialistic. There is, however, one point at which Kant is compelled bv? etheadm it?' 3 3 - 1 - J- •* m a sense, tne his own rigour as a moralist to admit ideas kindred to those of origSS sL. St. Paul. For, while the moral law presupposes in man an absolute power of self-determination, for which it supplies the all-sufficient motive, or at least the motive to which all the impulses of natural passion are to be subordinated in being admitted as motives at all, our actual moral experience seems to show that there is not one individual among men in whom this normal relation of the law of reason to the desires is main- tained. From the very beginning of his earthly experience, there is in man an " evil bias," a perversion of the true order of his life, according to which the principle of the natural life, " the law of the members," should be subjected to the principle of the spiritual life, the " law of the mind." In all men the particular desires assert their claims without waiting for the law to determine the conditions of their gratification ; and even VOL. 11. 2 p 594 EELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF BJSASUJN. »»"- lV - in the best of men the virtuous life is a continual struggle to restore the balance of nature, i.e., to restore such subordination of passion to reason that it shall never act except on the pre- supposition of the law, and to raise themselves above the im- moral attitude of mind, in which passion speaks first and the law only comes in in the second instance to limit it. As things are at present, all our good acts seem to be partial efforts to put the particular impulses of passion in their due relation to the law, efforts which never alter the fundamental disorganisa- tion in the relation of reason and passion. Hence the moral life appears as a processus in infinitum, a series of approxima- tions to a goal that can never be attained. Yet, in spite of all this, the identity of the law with the self who is conscious of it appears in the fact that that law is an absolute imperative; or, in other words, reason presents its law not as a motive, but as the motive, which excludes all motives independent of it, and even refuses to make any allowance for them, obliging us to regard every evil act " as if by it we had fallen out of a state of innocence.'' The moral law does not admit the evil bias which we have inherited with our natural life as an excuse for our failings, but rather treats this evil state as the worst part of our guilt ; and, on the other hand, it commands us not merely to act rightly in particular cases, but to exterminate the evil principle within us, and to " be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect," just as if we could elevate ourselves at one stroke above the necessity for further struggle. Good and byii Now, what are we to say of this antinomy between the are intimately " •* piataedby moral consciousness, which forces us, on the one hand, to ab- inteuSibie stract from all our empirically determined individuality, and acts. to feel guilty for an evil which we cannot trace back to any empirical act of our own ; and, on the other hand, to regard ourselves as bound at once not only to give up all evil action, but to root out its source in our nature, while yet we are well aware that empirically it will be an endless task to subdue the recalcitrant impulses which have been let loose within us ? chap. II. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 595 Kant's answer is that the consciousness of guilt for the evil bias (original sin) can only be explained by referring that bias to an " intelligible act," by which the impulses of nature were taken up into our maxims or made into independent motives competing with the moral law, the only motive that springs out of reason. This intelligible act is the source of a bias from which in our particular volitions we cannot free ourselves ; and its effects can be neutralised only by another intelligible act, which restores the moral law to its original supremacy as a motive. Empirically, indeed, the effect of the first act mani- fests itself in a long series of acts, in which particular pleasures, or happiness as the sum of pleasures, are sought without regard to the limitations of the moral law; and, empirically, the second act reduces itself to a long series of acts, in which the pursuit of particular pleasures or of happiness in general is limited and subordinated to the realisation of that law. But, as it is the peculiar characteristic of man as a rational being " that he can be determined to action by no motive except so far as he has taken it up into his maxim, or made it a universal rule of .his action," the struggle of passion with the consciousness of duty in particular cases is always to be regarded as a phenomenon, of which the noumenon is a struggle of principles ; and one of these principles must possess the man wholly to the exclusion of the other. Hence the Stoic theory, according to which wisdom and folly are absolutely opposed to each other, and change from one to the other as possible only by an instantaneous conversion, a complete revolution of the whole character, must be regarded as expressing the ultimate truth as to the process of man's spiritual life. At the same time, we must remember that, in order to bring this truth into relation with ■ our experience as empirical subjects, we are obliged to think of the intelligible act by which man becomes evil as realising itself in a long series of acts, by which character becomes gradually deteriorated (though without ever losing the consciousness that in doing evil it is at war with itself); and of the intelligible 596 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book iv. act by which we turn to good, as a long series of acts by which the evil bias is gradually overcome. But for God, who sees man's life, not under conditions of. time, but sub specie ceterni- tatis, the whole series of evil acts sums itself up in the one act whereby the principle of evil is " taken up into our maxims ; " and, in like manner, the infinite series of acts of progressive virtue sums itself up in the one act by which the moral law is restored to its place as the one all-sufficient motive. Hence it is a fair inference from Kant's view to say, that original sin is the one great sin we have to repent of, and that when it is repented of, all other sins are atoned for and done away. ths is what Now, it is easy to see how, on these principles, the Pauline is expressed ? « ' jr Jr > Seoiogyby doctrine of the Pall and Eedemption can be reinterpreted in a the doctrine of . n . .. i -i i imputed guilt Kantian sense. .Kant cannot admit that moral evil or moral and righteous- ness, good are to be referred to anything which lies beyond the indi- vidual will. Adam's sin cannot become our sin, nor Christ's goodness our goodness. But there is a sense in which the corruption and the restoration of the individual will is due to something beyond itself ; for its intelligible lies beyond its empirical character. The root of all the moral failure or deterioration, which shows itself in the long series of his acts in time, lies in an intelligible act of choice by which the principle of evil is brought into the will ; and the possi- bility of recovery also must lie in a timeless act by which the principle of good is again restored to its place ; an act which cannot be objectively known, because, as objectively known, it - must translate itself into a long series of acts, each of which is only relatively good. In this sense, it may be said that the homo phenomenon is neither lost nor saved, neither falls nor is redeemed, by his own act, but only by the acts of the homo noumenon. And the whole language of Christian theology as to imputed guilt and imputed righteousness, can be accepted as the Vorstellung, the natural symbol for the truth. Indeed, if we are to express the higher consciousness which man has of himself as a moral subject, in the forms of the empirical chap. ii. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 597 consciousness which we have of ourselves and others as objects., we cannot avoid using some such language as that which actually is used in Christian theology. We must speak of that as an event or a series of events in time, which is really a timeless act, because otherwise we could not speak of it at all ; and we must speak of it as done for us by another — by a man who has realised the ideal of Humanity, — in order to distinguish it from particular empirical acts. Nor is there any harm in. such language, provided we do not press it beyond the point, up to which the analogy of the natural and the spiritual world holds good. It is, however, the office of Critical Philo- sophy, to keep us from supposing that we can know or objec- tively realise, that which we can only think, and which we cannot even think without abstracting from all the conditions of such objective realisation. And it is its office also to pre- vent us from transferring the necessary imperfections belonging to the symbolic form, in which alone we can express the truth, to the truth expressed. The important point here is to observe what elements in the The fictitious elements in doctrine of Christianity Kant considers as belonging merely to *?** ex P res - the symbolic form in which the truth is objectively expressed, and what, therefore, he bids us set aside when we rise in thought from the symbol to the thing represented by it. In the first place, and as a matter of course, he bids us reject all that belongs to the form of the representation of objects as in space and time, i.e., all that makes us conceive of the spiritual as another natural world, existing side by side with the world of nature and, occasionally at least,' interfering with it. He thus regards all miraculous interference with the course of nature without, and equally all miraculous influences upon the course of our mental life within, — all miracles and all supernatural grace or illumination, — as illusory. He will not, indeed, deny the possibility of such interferences, especially of a divine grace which supplements our own efforts after good- ness ; indeed, he even seems to encourage the thought of such 598 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book IV. divine aid. But he holds it essential to our intellectual sanity not to admit its possibility as a conscious experience in our inner life. In the course of nature no supernatural link must be intercalated. To admit a miracle would be to break the con- text of experience, in which alone we can know objects as such ; and to admit a conscious experience of divine grace, a super- natural illumination, would be the moral death of reason. For it is not as an object either of inner or of outer experience that we can apprehend God or his relation to us, but only in so far as his existence and his action are postulated by the moral law. But this leads me to observe, in the second place, that Kant objlot^eif d re g ar( is the denial of all interference of the supernatural with SSstianview the natural as involving also the denial of any objective, and of the moral ..... ., . . lite are thus especially 01 any social, mediation m the moral life of the indi- vidual. " Each in his hidden world of joy or woe, our hermit spirits dwell ; " and as we are each charged with our own moral destiny, so no thing or person, neither nature nor man nor even God, can directly help or hinder us. Guided by that negative tendency which makes him isolate the pure conscious- ness of self from all consciousness of objects, instead of seeing in the former the completion of the latter, Kant looks upon the subject as in its pure self-determination exclusive of all determination by objects. Hence, not only does he conceive of the moral law as a law the content of which has no reference to any object, but also he thinks that all acts to be attributed to the subject must ultimately be traced back to the agency of a self which has no other determination but that law ; for, ex hypothesi, the moral subject cannot be determined by any object, except so far as it allows itself to be so determined. Primarily, the self has no motives except what it gives to itself, and the moral law is the only motive which it necessarily gives to itself, the only motive which it can derive purely from itself. If we held Kant strictly to this point of view, the Fall would become an incomprehensible act by which a rational being takes to itself a sensuous nature, and Eedemption an chap. II. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 599 equally incomprehensible act by which it rids itself of that nature ; the former would involve a mysterious movement of will by which it partly ceases to be itself and takes to itself an element which does not properly belong to it, and the latter would involve an equally mysterious expulsion of the foreign element so introduced. Kant, however, never goes quite this length, or treats the "intelligible act" by which the evil bias was produced, as an act, (like that pictured in Plato's myth of the Phaedrus,) by which a purely rational being becomes also sensuous. On the contrary, he regards the Pall as only a perversion of the proper order of the rational and sensuous principles, both of which essentially belong to man's nature. Thus, while he regards the independence of the motives of passion as an essential perversion of man's nature, he does not look upon their existence in separation from the motives of reason as already containing the germ of such perversion ; and, conversely, while he admits that moral recovery involves the subjection of the passions to the limiting condition of the law of reason, he does not suppose that these passions can them- selves be identified with the rational principle to which they are subjected. He thus seems to hold a kind of ambiguous position between Dualism and Monism, and it is no easy matter to express what he does and does not hold, without appearing to contradict oneself at every step. Some light may be thrown on Kant's position by a com- jjth?pas™ ,r parison of it with the kindred philosophy of the Stoics. The ' Stoics, like Kant, conceived of morality as the abstract self- determination of reason by its own law, and by that only. Further, they held this law to be negatively related to the passions and their objects, and therefore they regarded moral freedom as involving an absolute exclusion of the passions as motives. The passions, in their view, are " unnatural ; " that is, they are a mysterious intrusion into the rational being of something which is not himself, something which he must expel, * if he is to live " in harmony " with himself or with his own sxons. 600 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OP REASON, book iv. nature. Logically, it is difficult to see how the Stoics could speak of this intrusion and the consequent slavery of the will as other than a self-surrender of reason, a self-surrender as mysterious as Kant's intelligible act ; but they take the exist- ence of passion in man simply as a fact, and only insist on the necessity of its being extirpated ere he can become one with himself. And the supposition of such a moral necessity enables them to escape from that part of Kant's difficulty, which arises from his constant effort to make terms between passion and reason, yet without admitting any ultimate identity between them. They cut the knot of the problem of morals by the ascetic solution, though with the result that morality for them becomes purely negative. For, after the extrusion of passion, reason has no content, no motive, by which to determine itself. The universal as abstracted from, and opposed to the particular, vanishes in an empty tautology. It is true that they inculcate the duty of philanthropy and the necessity of a religious sur- render of self to God, and these seem at first to supply the place of positive determinations for the rational life ; but on a closer view their religion and their social morality are found to disappear in the same abstract identity which is implied in their idea of moral freedom. Deo parere libertas est ; but God is just the same abstract universal in relation to the world, as that which constitutes the " nature " of the rational being in relation to his passions. The Optimism of the Stoics is an Optimism in general, which is Pessimism in particular ; it is not the perception of a reason which is present in any special forms of the life of nature or the life of man. And the social principle, which is based on the recognition of a bare identity of reason as it potentially exists in every man, cannot legitimately give rise to the conception of a social organism. Men are not bound together by the fact that they are indis- tinguishably alike, but by the fact that through their correlated differences the one reason manifests itself. 1 1 Cf . above pp. 238, 394. chap. II. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 601 Up to a certain point Kant follows the same movement of how far does x r Kant agree thought which is exemplified in the Stoic philosophy. We with lt? might, therefore, expect that with him also the universal should be absolutely opposed to the particular, and that reason should be conceived as returning upon itself through the exclu- sion of everything but its own identity. But Kant does not regard passion as a mere intruder into man's natural life. He does not conceive the " intelligible act " of the Fall as for the first time introducing the sensuous passions into his being, but simply as perverting that original order of man's life in which these passions are subordinated to the law of reason. Indeed, he thinks that, on the former view, the " intelligible act," by which other motives than those of reason were created, would be the act of a devil and not of a man. The moral recovery' of man is, therefore, not the extinction of passion, but its sub- ordination to the moral law. He often, indeed, speaks of a perfect moral act as one in which the law, and the law only is the motive ; but he does not take this as involving that the motives of passion should be excluded, but only that their gratifi- cation should be limited by the moral law. The same kind of compromise appears in his treatment of the relation of moral actions to the objective ends they tend to realise, and especially to the realisation of an ideal society. The immediate tendency of his logic would make us expect to find him treating all objects, whether things or persons, as unessential and external to the self-determining subject, and even God as a " hypothesis of which he has no need." But Kant recoils from this result ; for he regards the moral self-determination of the subject as relative to an objective end, though not determined by it as a motive, and God as necessary to secure the realisation of that end. Thus, the establishment of a perfect social order, by which nature may be subjected to spiritual ends, and men may become members one of another, becomes at least a finis in consequential veniens; and God, though not directly required »for the moral life, is supposed to be needed to produce the con- 602 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book IV. formity of the natural life to it. The effect of this compromise is to produce a * nest of antinomies ' : antinomies between the Stoic and Hedonistic elements of his moral theory, between his Individualism and his Socialism, and finally between his Ethics- and his Theology, But, as usual, Kant indicates a better way than his own of reconciling the opposites he brings together ; if only we keep in view the relation of the method of abstrac- tion which he nominally follows to the method of synthesis which he suggests. Kant's diver- The truth is that Kant's rejection of the absolute dualism of gence from necessitates tne Stoics necessarily brings with it a transformation of the idea construction 6 " of moral freedom, which yet he did not himself carry out. If of bis view of , the Good. freedom be the determination of the self by its own law to the exclusion of all other motives, — and such it must be, if with Kant we suppose the pure consciousness of self to be merely negatively related to the consciousness of objects — then the Stoic conception of the moral life is the only reasonable one. The beginning of virtue will be apathy, — an extinction of passion which leaves the pure self to determine itself without the intrusion of any motive from without. On this view, how- ever, the actual presence in us of passion as a motive will be inexplicable. If we go back to the cause of that presence, we must suppose an inexplicable turning away of the will from its own law, an unmotived conversion of pure will for good into a devilish will for evil ; and the reversal of this process will be as inexplicable as the original act itself. Nor will any light be thrown by such a view on the actual state of man's will, in which passion holds its ground as a rival motive, and yet is recognised as that which ought not to be. If, on the other hand, we adopt Kant's view of man's nature as from the first both rational and sensuous, and regard the moral end as being, not the extinction of passion, but its harmony with a law of duty which flows from the idea of the self, we cannot admit that irreducible division between these two halves of his bein^ which forces Kant to conceive the realisation of the moral end CHAP. II. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 603 as a progressus in infinitum. Kant puts the problem in a mis- leading way, when he asserts that evil cannot lie either in the natural desires which of themselves are non-moral or innocent, or in the corruption of the morally legislative reason, which is impossible ; and that, therefore, it must lie in a perversion of their due relation. For the desires cannot exist in man as simple natural impulses, but only as desires of particular objects which are at the same time desires for a universal Good that can satisfy the self; nor can practical reason bring before us a universal Good which is not to be realised in any parti- cular object. Hence, to speak of a perversion of the relation of the universal and the particular, which, at the same time, leaves the character of each of these elements in itself unchanged, is to forget the essential unity or relativity of all the elements which are included in our consciousness of ourselves. If the different elements of our being are united with one self, they must be united with each other, and united in such a way as to make an external relation of them impossible. No doubt, there is a moral division in man's nature, which sometimes even tempts us to speak of him as if he were two persons in one. But the problem lies just in the unity of the being who is thus divided against himself, and who recognises the impulse to break the law as his own impulse at the same time that he recognises the law as his ovm law. If we do not admit the identical self as present in both, or if, following Kant, we refer the law to the noumenal and the desire to the phenomenal self, we cease to have even a problem before us. For the actual determination must then come from an empty unity which is beyond the distinction of the phenomenal and the noumenal subjects, from a self to which the law is an external motive quite as much as the passions. If, on the other hand, we admit that every desire of a particular object, in order to be a possible motive of the self, must be a particular form of the desire for the satisfaction of that self, we cannot but recognise that even a wrong desire implies an undeveloped consciousness of 604 RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON, book IV. the Good, in which satisfaction for the self alone can be found. The aphorism, video meliora prologue deteriora seguor, undoubtedly expresses a veritable experience ; in fact, it expresses an experi- ence which is always present in some form or other to all beings capable of moral development. But it is possible only because the meliora are not so perfectly seen as to preclude the deteriora being also set before us as sub ratione Boni. There is a point of view from which it is possible to say that all vice is ignorance, and that men do evil because " they know not what they do." Thus the process whereby men come to know what is good is not separable from the process by which they come to do it, and the conception that there can be a completed knowledge of Good, which yet remains inoperative, shows a defective perception of what such knowledge would involve. It is possible, no doubt, to have moral Good before us as an abstract law, and yet not to obey it. Indeed, consciousness of it in that form has a very feeble power as a motive with most minds, and even in minds that most willingly accept it, it has rather a repressive than a stimulative effect. It is only as the conscious- ness of law passes into the consciousness of social relations and so of an end in which the individual finds a positive object, that it can awake a higher affection which expels, or rather absorbs the lower. But this only shows that the knowledge of good itself must grow by the same process in which we become capable of giving practical effect to it in our conduct ; and, on the other hand, that the incapacity of giving to it such practical effect, is a proof that the knowledge itself is imperfect. The individu- The imperfection of Kant's view of the moral life lies mainly alism of Pro- x J caSdTrtep ™ tne onesided way in which he insists on the idea that the Kant. er y moral law is the law of our own being : a law which as rational creatures we lay down for ourselves, and which, as it is our own law; it must be in our power to obey. For if this be an adequate view of it, the moral life must be regarded as a life of individual self-determination, in which neither God nor man can assist us, but in which each individual has to carry on his chap. II. NATURAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY. 605 separate inward struggle by his own unaided strength. Now, the Protestant Beformation had isolated the individual from his fellows, and left him alone with God. It purchased freedom towards man by absolute slavery towards God, (as is involved even in the title of Luther's treatise Be Servo Arbitrio) ; nay, in Calvinism, it came perilously near to a Pantheism which identifies him, in so far as he is allowed to have any higher will or reason, i.e., as one of the elect, with God. In this sense, Spinoza may be said to have betrayed the secret of his time. But the enlightenment of the eighteenth century went further, and isolated the individual not only from man and nature, but from God. And Kant, as a true son of the eighteenth century, accepted the individualistic view of man, only insisting' that even when man is left alone with himself, he is still face to face with the universal law of his being. Kant, in fact, substitutes the idea of freedom for the idea of a divine servitude ; though he adds that it is a freedom which is capable of being enjoyed only by one who is a law to himself. He makes the individual a little world in himself, and absolutely opposes his self- determination to all determination of him by any other being or thing. The individual as sensuous is regarded as open to influences from other things ; but they have power over his will only as he gives them that power, and just as far he is true to himself, he will not give it. IsTow, I have often pointed out the root from which this Kant himself suggests how- negative view of .morality, this opposition of self-determination we ma y i? ach o