The World As Will And Idea

                                    By

                           Arthur Schopenhauer

                      Translated From The German By

                           R. B. Haldane, M.A.

                                   And

                              J. Kemp, M.A.

                                 Vol. II.

Containing the Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy, and the Supplements to
             the First and Part of the Second Book of Vol. I.

         “Paucis natus est, qui populum ætatis suæ cogitat.”—SEN.

                              Sixth Edition

                                  London

                    Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.

                                   1909

CONTENTS

Appendix: Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy.
Supplements to the First Book.
   First Half. The Doctrine Of The Idea Of Perception. (To § 1-7 of the
   First Volume.)
      Chapter I. The Standpoint of Idealism.
      Chapter II. The Doctrine of Perception or Knowledge Of The
      Understanding.
      Chapter III. On The Senses.
      Chapter IV. On Knowledge _A Priori_.
   Second Half. The Doctrine of the Abstract Idea, or Thinking.
      Chapter V. On The Irrational Intellect.
      Chapter VI. On The Doctrine of Abstract or Rational Knowledge.
      Chapter VII. On The Relation of the Concrete Knowledge of Perception
      to Abstract Knowledge.
      Chapter VIII. On The Theory Of The Ludicrous.
      Chapter IX. On Logic In General.
      Chapter X. On The Syllogism.
      Chapter XI. On Rhetoric.
      Chapter XII. On The Doctrine Of Science.
      Chapter XIII. On The Methods Of Mathematics.
      Chapter XIV. On The Association Of Ideas.
      Chapter XV. On The Essential Imperfections Of The Intellect.
      Chapter XVI. On The Practical Use Of Reason And On Stoicism.
      Chapter XVII. On Man’s Need Of Metaphysics.
Supplements to the Second Book.
   Chapter XVIII. On The Possibility Of Knowing The Thing In Itself.
   Chapter XIX. On The Primacy Of The Will In Self-Consciousness.
   Chapter XX. Objectification Of The Will In The Animal Organism.
   Note On What Has Been Said About Bichat.
Footnotes

APPENDIX: CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We may regard as the third the complete overthrow of the Scholastic
philosophy, a name by which I wish here to denote generally the whole
period beginning with Augustine, the Church Father, and ending just before
Kant. For the chief characteristic of Scholasticism is, indeed, that which
is very correctly stated by Tennemann, the guardianship of the prevailing
national religion over philosophy, which had really nothing left for it to
do but to prove and embellish the cardinal dogmas prescribed to it by
religion. The Schoolmen proper, down to Suarez, confess this openly; the
succeeding philosophers do it more unconsciously, or at least unavowedly.
It is held that Scholastic philosophy only extends to about a hundred
years before Descartes, and that then with him there begins an entirely
new epoch of free investigation independent of all positive theological
doctrine. Such investigation, however, is in fact not to be attributed to
Descartes and his successors,(1) but only an appearance of it, and in any
case an effort after it. Descartes was a man of supreme ability, and if we
take account of the age he lived in, he accomplished a great deal. But if
we set aside this consideration and measure him with reference to the
freeing of thought from all fetters and the commencement of a new period
of untrammelled original investigation with which he is credited, we are
obliged to find that with his doubt still wanting in true seriousness, and
therefore surrendering so quickly and so entirely, he has, indeed, the
appearance of wishing to throw off at once all the early implanted
opinions belonging to his age and nation, but does so only apparently and
for a moment, to assume them again immediately and hold them all the more
firmly; and so is it with all his successors down to Kant. Goethe’s lines
are, therefore, very applicable to a free independent thinker of this
kind:

    “Saving Thy gracious presence, he to me
    A long-legged grasshopper appears to be,
    That springing flies, and flying springs,
    And in the grass the same old ditty sings.”(2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “They prate and teach, and no one interferes;
    All from the fellowship of fools are shrinking;
    Man usually believes, if only words he hears,
    That also with them goes material for thinking.”(3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The combination of the manifold of perception” is repeatedly given as the
essential operation of the understanding, by means of its twelve
categories. Yet this is never adequately explained, nor is it shown what
this manifold of perception is before it is combined by the understanding.
But time and space, the latter in all its three dimensions, are
_continua_, _i.e._, all their parts are originally not separate but
combined. Thus, then, everything that exhibits itself in them (is given)
appears originally as a _continuum_, _i.e._, its parts appear already
combined and require no adventitious combination of a manifold. If,
however, some one should seek to interpret that combining of the manifold
of perception by saying that I refer the different sense-impressions of
one object to this one only—thus, for example, perceiving a bell, I
recognise that what affects my eye as yellow, my hand as smooth and hard,
my ear as sounding, is yet only one and the same body,—then I reply that
this is rather a consequence of the knowledge _a priori_ of the causal
nexus (this actual and only function of the understanding), by virtue of
which all those different effects upon my different organs of sense yet
lead me only to one common cause of them, the nature of the body standing
before me, so that my understanding, in spite of the difference and
multiplicity of the effects, still apprehends the unity of the cause as a
single object, which just on that account exhibits itself in perception.
In the beautiful recapitulation of his doctrine which Kant gives at p.
719-726 or V. 747-754 of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” he explains the
categories, perhaps more distinctly than anywhere else, as “the mere rule
of the synthesis of that which empirical apprehension has given _a
posteriori_.” It seems as if here he had something in his mind, such as
that, in the construction of the triangle, the angles give the rule for
the composition of the lines; at least by this image one can best explain
to oneself what he says of the function of the categories. The preface to
the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science” contains a long
note which likewise gives an explanation of the categories, and says that
they “differ in no respect from the formal acts of the understanding in
judging,” except that in the latter subject and predicate can always
change places; then the judgment in general is defined in the same passage
as “an act through which given ideas first become knowledge of an object.”
According to this, the brutes, since they do not judge, must also have no
knowledge of objects. In general, according to Kant, there are only
conceptions of objects, no perceptions. I, on the contrary, say: Objects
exist primarily only for perception, and conceptions are always
abstractions from this perception. Therefore abstract thinking must be
conducted exactly according to the world present in perception, for it is
only their relation to this that gives content to conceptions; and we must
assume for the conceptions no other _a priori_ determined form than the
faculty of reflection in general, the nature of which is the construction
of conceptions, _i.e._, of abstract non-perceptible ideas, which
constitutes the sole function of the _reason_, as I have shown in the
first book. I therefore require that we should reject eleven of the
categories, and only retain that of causality, and yet that we should see
clearly that its activity is indeed the condition of empirical perception,
which accordingly is not merely sensuous but intellectual, and that the
object so perceived, the object of experience, is one with the idea, from
which there remains nothing to distinguish except the thing in itself.

After repeated study of the “Critique of Pure Reason” at different periods
of my life, a conviction has forced itself upon me with regard to the
origin of the Transcendental Logic, which I now impart as very helpful to
an understanding of it. Kant’s only discovery, which is based upon
objective comprehension and the highest human thought, is the _apperçu_
that time and space are known by us _a priori_. Gratified by this happy
hit, he wished to pursue the same vein further, and his love of
architectonic symmetry afforded him the clue. As he had found that a pure
intuition or perception _a priori_ underlay the empirical _perception_ as
its condition, he thought that in the same way certain _pure conceptions_
as presuppositions in our faculty of knowledge must lie at the foundation
of the empirically obtained _conceptions_, and that real empirical thought
must be only possible through a pure thought _a priori_, which, however,
would have no objects in itself, but would be obliged to take them from
perception. So that as the _Transcendental Æsthetic_ establishes an _a
priori_ basis of mathematics, there must, he supposed, also be a similar
basis for logic; and thus, then for the sake of symmetry, the former
received a pendant in a _Transcendental Logic_. From this point onwards
Kant was no more free, no more in the position of purely, investigating
and observing what is present in consciousness; but he was guided by an
assumption and pursued a purpose—the purpose of finding what he assumed,
in order to add to the Transcendental Æsthetic so happily discovered a
Transcendental Logic analogous to it, and thus symmetrically corresponding
to it, as a second storey. Now for this purpose he hit upon the table of
judgments, out of which he constructed, as well as he could, the table of
categories, the doctrine of twelve pure _a priori_ conceptions, which are
supposed to be the conditions of our _thinking_ those very _things_ the
_perception_ of which is conditioned by the two _a priori_ forms of
sensibility: thus a _pure understanding_ now corresponded symmetrically to
a _pure sensibility_. Then another consideration occurred to him, which
offered a means of increasing the plausibility of the thing, by the
assumption of the _schematism_ of the pure conceptions of the
understanding. But just through this the way in which his procedure had,
unconsciously indeed, originated betrayed itself most distinctly. For
because he aimed at finding something _a priori_ analogous to every
empirical function of the faculty of knowledge, he remarked that between
our empirical perception and our empirical thinking, conducted in abstract
non-perceptible conceptions, a connection very frequently, though not
always, takes place, because every now and then we try to go back from
abstract thinking to perception; but try to do so merely in order really
to convince ourselves that our abstract thought has not strayed far from
the safe ground of perception, and perhaps become exaggeration, or, it may
be, mere empty talk; much in the same way as, when we are walking in the
dark, we stretch out our hand every now and then to the guiding wall. We
go back, then, to the perception only tentatively and for the moment, by
calling up in imagination a perception corresponding to the conceptions
which are occupying us at the time—a perception which can yet never be
quite adequate to the conception, but is merely a temporary
_representative_ of it. I have already adduced what is needful on this
point in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 28. Kant calls
a fleeting phantasy of this kind a schema, in opposition to the perfected
picture of the imagination. He says it is like a monogram of the
imagination, and asserts that just as such a schema stands midway between
our abstract thinking of empirically obtained conceptions, and our clear
perception which comes to us through the senses, so there are _a priori
schemata of the pure conceptions of the understanding_ between the faculty
of perception _a priori_ of pure sensibility and the faculty of thinking
_a priori_ of the pure understanding (thus the categories). These
schemata, as monograms of the pure imagination _a priori_, he describes
one by one, and assigns to each of them its corresponding category, in the
wonderful “Chapter on the Schematism of the Pure Conceptions of the
Understanding,” which is noted as exceedingly obscure, because no man has
ever been able to make anything out of it. Its obscurity, however,
vanishes if it is considered from the point of view here indicated, but
there also comes out more clearly in it than anywhere else the intentional
nature of Kant’s procedure, and of the determination formed beforehand of
finding what would correspond to the analogy, and could assist the
architectonic symmetry; indeed this is here the case to such a degree as
to be almost comical. For when he assumes schemata of the pure (empty) _a
priori_ conceptions of the understanding (categories) analogous to the
empirical schemata (or representatives through the fancy of our actual
conceptions), he overlooks the fact that the end of such schemata is here
entirely wanting, For the end of the schemata in the case of empirical
(real) thinking is entirely connected with the _material content_ of such
conceptions. For since these conceptions are drawn from empirical
perception, we assist and guide ourselves when engaged in abstract
thinking by now and then casting a momentary glance back at the perception
out of which the conceptions are framed, in order to assure ourselves that
our thought has still real content. This, however, necessarily presupposes
that the conceptions which occupy us are sprung from perception, and it is
merely a glance back at their material content, indeed a mere aid to our
weakness. But in the case of _a priori_ conceptions which as yet have no
content at all, clearly this is necessarily omitted. For these conceptions
are not sprung from perception, but come to it from within, in order to
receive a content first from it. Thus they have as yet nothing on which
they could look back. I speak fully upon this point, because it is just
this that throws light upon the secret origin of the Kantian
philosophising, which accordingly consists in this, that Kant, after the
happy discovery of the two forms of intuition or perception _a priori_,
exerted himself, under the guidance of the analogy, to prove that for
every determination of our empirical knowledge there is an _a priori_
analogue, and this finally extended, in the schemata, even to a mere
psychological fact. Here the apparent depth and the difficulty of the
exposition just serve to conceal from the reader that its content remains
a wholly undemonstrable and merely arbitrary assumption. But he who has
penetrated at last to the meaning of such an exposition is then easily
induced to mistake this understanding so painfully attained for a
conviction of the truth of the matter. If, on the contrary, Kant had kept
himself here as unprejudiced and purely observant as in the discovery of
_a priori_ intuition or perception, he must have found that what is added
to the pure intuition or perception of space and time, if an empirical
perception arises from it, is on the one hand the sensation, and on the
other hand the knowledge of causality, which changes the mere sensation
into objective empirical perception, but just on this account is not first
derived and learned from sensation, but exists _a priori_, and is indeed
the form and function of the pure understanding. It is also, however, its
sole form and function, yet one so rich in results that all our empirical
knowledge rests upon it. If, as has often been said, the refutation of an
error is only complete when the way it originated has been psychologically
demonstrated, I believe I have achieved this, with regard to Kant’s
doctrine of the categories and their schemata, in what I have said above.

After Kant had thus introduced such great errors into the first simple
outlines of a theory of the faculty of perception, he adopted a variety of
very complicated assumptions. To these belongs first of all the synthetic
unity of apperception: a very strange thing, very strangely explained.
“The _I think_ must be able to accompany all my ideas.” Must—be able: this
is a problematic-apodictic enunciation; in plain English, a proposition
which takes with one hand what it gives with the other. And what is the
meaning of this carefully balanced proposition? That all knowledge of
ideas is thinking? That is not the case: and it would be dreadful; there
would then be nothing but abstract conceptions, or at any rate a pure
perception free from reflection and will, such as that of the beautiful,
the deepest comprehension of the true nature of things, _i.e._, of their
Platonic Ideas. And besides, the brutes would then either think also, or
else they would not even have ideas. Or is the proposition perhaps
intended to mean: no object without a subject? That would be very badly
expressed by it, and would come too late. If we collect Kant’s utterances
on the subject, we shall find that what he understands by the synthetic
unity of apperception is, as it were, the extensionless centre of the
sphere of all our ideas, whose radii converge to it. It is what I call the
subject of knowing, the correlative of all ideas, and it is also that
which I have fully described and explained in the 22d chapter of the
Supplements, as the focus in which the rays of the activity of the brain
converge. Therefore, to avoid repetition, I now refer to that chapter.

That I reject the whole doctrine of the categories, and reckon it among
the groundless assumptions with which Kant burdened the theory of
knowledge, results from the criticism given above; and also from the proof
of the contradictions in the Transcendental Logic, which had their ground
in the confusion of perception and abstract knowledge; also further from
the proof of the want of a distinct and definite conception of the nature
of the understanding and of the reason, instead of which we found in
Kant’s writings only incoherent, inconsistent, insufficient, and incorrect
utterances with regard to these two faculties of the mind. Finally, it
results from the explanations which I myself have given of these faculties
of the mind in the first book and its Supplements, and more fully in the
essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21, 26, and
34,—explanations which are very definite and distinct, which clearly
follow from the consideration of the nature of our knowledge, and which
completely agree with the conceptions of those two faculties of knowledge
that appear in the language and writings of all ages and all nations, but
were not brought to distinctness. Their defence against the very different
exposition of Kant has, for the most part, been given already along with
the exposure of the errors of that exposition. Since, however, the table
of judgments, which Kant makes the foundation of his theory of thinking,
and indeed of his whole philosophy, has, in itself, as a whole, its
correctness, it is still incumbent upon me to show how these universal
forms of all judgment arise in our faculty of knowledge, and to reconcile
them with my exposition of it. In this discussion I shall always attach to
the concepts understanding and reason the sense given them in my
explanation, which I therefore assume the reader is familiar with.

An essential difference between Kant’s method and that which I follow lies
in this, that he starts from indirect, reflected knowledge, while I start
from direct or intuitive knowledge. He may be compared to a man who
measures the height of a tower by its shadow, while I am like him who
applies the measuring-rule directly to the tower itself. Therefore, for
him philosophy is a science _of_ conceptions, but for me it is a science
_in_ conceptions, drawn from knowledge of perception, the one source of
all evidence, and comprehended and made permanent in general conceptions.
He passes over this whole world of perception which surrounds us, so
multifarious and rich in significance, and confines himself to the forms
of abstract thinking; and, although he never expressly says so, this
procedure is founded on the assumption that reflection is the ectype of
all perception, that, therefore, all that is essential in perception must
be expressed in reflection, and expressed in very contracted forms and
outlines, which are thus easily surveyed. According to this, what is
essential and conformable to law in abstract knowledge would, as it were,
place in our hands all the threads by which the varied puppet-show of the
world of perception is set in motion before our eyes. If Kant had only
distinctly expressed this first principle of his method, and then followed
it consistently, he would at least have been obliged to separate clearly
the intuitive from the abstract, and we would not have had to contend with
inextricable contradictions and confusions. But from the way in which he
solves his problem we see that that fundamental principle of his method
was only very indistinctly present to his mind, and thus we have still to
arrive at it by conjecture even after a thorough study of his philosophy.

Now as concerns the specified method and fundamental maxim itself, there
is much to be said for it, and it is a brilliant thought. The nature of
all science indeed consists in this, that we comprehend the endless
manifold of perceptible phenomena under comparatively few abstract
conceptions, and out of these construct a system by means of which we have
all those phenomena completely in the power of our knowledge, can explain
the past and determine the future. The sciences, however, divide the wide
sphere of phenomena among them according to the special and manifold
classes of the latter. Now it was a bold and happy thought to isolate what
is absolutely essential to the conceptions as such and apart from their
content, in order to discover from these forms of all thought found in
this way what is essential to all intuitive knowledge also, and
consequently to the world as phenomenon in general; and because this would
be found _a priori_ on account of the necessity of those forms of thought,
it would be of subjective origin, and would just lead to the ends Kant had
in view. Here, however, before going further, the relation of reflection
to knowledge of perception ought to have been investigated (which
certainly presupposes the clear separation of the two, which was neglected
by Kant). He ought to have inquired in what way the former really repeats
and represents the latter, whether quite pure, or changed and to some
extent disguised by being taken up into its special forms (forms of
reflection); whether the form of abstract reflective knowledge becomes
more determined through the form of knowledge of perception, or through
the nature or constitution which unalterably belongs to itself, _i.e._, to
reflective knowledge, so that even what is very heterogeneous in intuitive
knowledge can no longer be distinguished when it has entered reflective
knowledge, and conversely many distinctions of which we are conscious in
the reflective method of knowledge have also sprung from this knowledge
itself, and by no means point to corresponding differences in intuitive
knowledge. As the result of this investigation, however, it would have
appeared that knowledge of perception suffers very nearly as much change
when it is taken up into reflection as food when it is taken into the
animal organism whose forms and compounds are determined by itself, so
that the nature of the food can no longer be recognised from the result
they produce. Or (for this is going a little too far) at least it would
have appeared that reflection is by no means related to knowledge of
perception as the reflection in water is related to the reflected objects,
but scarcely even as the mere shadow of these objects stands to the
objects themselves; which shadow repeats only a few external outlines, but
also unites the most manifold in the same form and presents the most
diverse through the same outline; so that it is by no means possible,
starting from it, to construe the forms of things with completeness and
certainty.

The whole of reflective knowledge, or the reason, has only one chief form,
and that is the abstract conception. It is proper to the reason itself,
and has no direct necessary connection with the world of perception, which
therefore exists for the brutes entirely without conceptions, and indeed,
even if it were quite another world from what it is, that form of
reflection would suit it just as well. But the combination of conceptions
for the purpose of judging has certain definite and normal forms, which
have been found by induction, and constitute the table of judgments. These
forms are for the most part deducible from the nature of reflective
knowledge itself, thus directly from the reason, because they spring from
the four laws of thought (called by me metalogical truths) and the _dictum
de omni et nullo_. Certain others of these forms, however, have their
ground in the nature of knowledge of perception, thus in the
understanding; yet they by no means point to a like number of special
forms of the understanding, but can all be fully deduced from the sole
function which the understanding has—the direct knowledge of cause and
effect. Lastly, still others of these forms have sprung from the
concurrence and combination of the reflective and intuitive modes of
knowledge, or more properly from the assumption of the latter into the
former. I shall now go through the moments of the judgment one by one, and
point out the origin of each of them in the sources referred to; and from
this it follows of itself that a deduction of categories from them is
wanting, and the assumption of this is just as groundless as its
exposition was found to be entangled and self-conflicting.

1. The so-called _Quantity_ of judgments springs from the nature of
concepts as such. It thus has its ground in the reason alone, and has
absolutely no direct connection with the understanding and with knowledge
of perception. It is indeed, as is explained at length in the first book,
essential to concepts, as such, that they should have an extent, a sphere,
and the wider, less determined concept includes the narrower and more
determined. The latter can therefore be separated from the former, and
this may happen in two ways,—either the narrower concept may be indicated
as an indefinite part of the wider concept in general, or it may be
defined and completely separated by means of the addition of a special
name. The judgment which carries out this operation is in the first case
called a particular, and in the second case an universal judgment. For
example, one and the same part of the sphere of the concept tree may be
isolated through a particular and through an universal judgment,
thus—“Some trees bear gall-nuts,” or “All oaks bear gall-nuts.” One sees
that the difference of the two operations is very slight; indeed, that the
possibility of it depends upon the richness of the language. Nevertheless,
Kant has explained this difference as disclosing two fundamentally
different actions, functions, categories of the pure understanding which
determines experience _a priori_ through them.

Finally, a concept may also be used in order to arrive by means of it at a
definite particular idea of perception, from which, as well as from many
others, this concept itself is drawn; this happens in the singular
judgment. Such a judgment merely indicates the boundary-line between
abstract knowledge and knowledge of perception, and passes directly to the
latter, “This tree here bears gall-nuts.” Kant has made of this also a
special category.

After all that has been said there is no need of further polemic here.

2. In the same way the _Quality_ of the judgment lies entirely within the
province of reason, and is not an adumbration of any law of that
understanding which makes perception possible, _i.e._, it does not point
to it. The nature of abstract concepts, which is just the nature of the
reason itself objectively comprehended, carries with it the possibility of
uniting and separating their spheres, as was already explained in the
first book, and upon this possibility, as their presupposition, rest the
universal laws of thought of identity and contradiction, to which I have
given the name of _metalogical_ truths, because they spring purely from
the reason, and cannot be further explained. They determine that what is
united must remain united, and what is separated must remain separate,
thus that what is established cannot at the same time be also abolished,
and thus they presuppose the possibility of the combination and separation
of spheres, _i.e._, of judgment. This, however, lies, according to its
_form_, simply and solely in the reason, and this _form_ has not, like the
_content_ of the judgments, been brought over from the perceptible
knowledge of the understanding, and therefore there is no correlative or
analogue of it to be looked for there. After the perception has been
brought about through the understanding and for the understanding, it
exists complete, subject to no doubt nor error, and therefore knows
neither assertion nor denial; for it expresses itself, and has not, like
the abstract knowledge of the reason, its value and content in its mere
relation to something outside of it, according to the principle of the
ground of knowing. It is, therefore, pure reality; all negation is foreign
to its nature, can only be added on through reflection, and just on this
account remains always in the province of abstract thought.

To the affirmative and negative Kant adds the infinite judgment, making
use of a crotchet of the old scholastics, an ingeniously invented
stop-gap, which does not even require to be explained, a blind window,
such as many others he made for the sake of his architectonic symmetry.

3. Under the very wide conception of _Relation_ Kant has brought three
entirely different properties of judgments, which we must, therefore,
examine singly, in order to recognise their origin.

(_a._) The _hypothetical judgment_ in general is the abstract expression
of that most universal form of all our knowledge, the principle of
sufficient reason. In my essay on this principle, I already showed in 1813
that it has four entirely different meanings, and in each of these
originally originates in a different faculty of knowledge, and also
concerns a different class of ideas. It clearly follows from this, that
the source of the hypothetical judgment in general, of that universal form
of thought, cannot be, as Kant wishes to make it, merely the understanding
and its category of causality; but that the law of causality which,
according to my exposition, is the one form of knowledge of the pure
understanding, is only one of the forms of that principle which embraces
all pure or _a priori_ knowledge—the principle of sufficient reason—which,
on the other hand, in each of its meanings has this hypothetical form of
judgment as its expression. We see here, however, very distinctly how
kinds of knowledge which are quite different in their origin and
significance yet appear, if thought _in abstracto_ by the reason, in one
and the same form of combination of concepts and judgments, and then in
this form can no longer be distinguished, but, in order to distinguish
them, we must go back to knowledge of perception, leaving abstract
knowledge altogether. Therefore the path which was followed by Kant,
starting from the point of view of abstract knowledge, to find the
elements and the inmost spring of intuitive knowledge also, was quite a
wrong one. For the rest, my whole introductory essay on the principle of
sufficient reason is, to a certain extent, to be regarded merely as a
thorough exposition of the significance of the hypothetical form of
judgment; therefore I do not dwell upon it longer here.

(_b._) The form of the _categorical judgment_ is nothing but the form of
judgment in general, in its strictest sense. For, strictly speaking,
judging merely means thinking, the combination of, or the impossibility of
combining, the spheres of the concepts. Therefore the hypothetical and the
disjunctive combination are properly no special forms of the judgment; for
they are only applied to already completed judgments, in which the
combination of the concepts remains unchanged the categorical. But they
again connect these judgments, for the hypothetical form expresses their
dependence upon each other, and the disjunctive their incompatibility.
Mere concepts, however, have only _one_ class of relations to each other,
those which are expressed in the categorical judgment. The fuller
determination, or the sub-species of this relation, are the intersection
and the complete separateness of the concept-spheres, _i.e._, thus
affirmation and negation; out of which Kant has made special categories,
under quite a different title, that of _quality_. Intersection and
separateness have again sub-species, according as the spheres lie within
each other entirely, or only in part, a determination which constitutes
the _quantity_ of the judgments; out of which Kant has again made a quite
special class of categories. Thus he separates what is very closely
related, and even identical, the easily surveyed modifications of the one
possible relation of mere concepts to each other, and, on the other hand,
unites what is very different under this title of relation.

Categorical judgments have as their metalogical principle the laws of
thought of identity and contradiction. But the _ground_ of the connection
of the concept-spheres which gives _truth_ to the judgment, which is
nothing but this connection, may be of very different kinds; and,
according to this, the truth of the judgment is either logical, or
empirical, or metaphysical, or metalogical, as is explained in the
introductory essay, § 30-33, and does not require to be repeated here. But
it is apparent from this how very various the direct cognitions may be,
all of which exhibit themselves in the abstract, through the combination
of the spheres of two concepts, as subject and predicate, and that we can
by no means set up the sole function of the understanding as corresponding
to them and producing them. For example, the judgments, “Water boils, the
sine measures the angle, the will resolves, business distracts,
distinction is difficult,” express through the same logical form the most
different kinds of relations; but from this we obtain the right, however
irregular the beginning may be, of placing ourselves at the standpoint of
abstract knowledge to analyse direct intuitive knowledge. For the rest,
the categorical judgment springs from knowledge of the understanding
proper, in my sense, only when causation is expressed by it; this is,
however, the case in all judgments which refer to a physical quality. For
if I say, “This body is heavy, hard, fluid, green, sour, alkaline,
organic, &c., &c.,” this always refers to its effect, and thus is
knowledge which is only possible through the pure understanding. Now,
after this, like much which is quite different from it (for example, the
subordination of very abstract concepts), has been expressed in the
abstract through subject and predicate, these mere relations of concepts
have been transferred back to knowledge of perception, and it has been
supposed that the subject and predicate of the judgment must have a
peculiar and special correlative in perception, substance and accident.
But I shall show clearly further on that the conception substance has no
other true content than that of the conception matter. Accidents, however,
are quite synonymous with kinds of effects, so that the supposed knowledge
of substance and accident is never anything more than the knowledge of
cause and effect by the understanding. But the special manner in which the
idea of matter arises is explained partly in § 4 of the first book, and
still more clearly in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason at
the end of § 21, p. 77 (3d ed., p. 82), and in some respects we shall see
it still more closely when we investigate the principle of the permanence
of substance.

(_c._) _Disjunctive judgments_ spring from the law of thought of excluded
third, which is a metalogical truth; they are, therefore, entirely the
property of the reason, and have not their origin in the understanding.
The deduction of the category of community or _reciprocity_ from them is,
however, a glaring example of the violence which Kant sometimes allowed to
be done to truth, merely in order to satisfy his love of architectonic
symmetry. The illegitimacy of that deduction has already often been justly
condemned and proved upon various grounds, especially by G. E. Schulze in
his “_Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie_,” and by Berg in his
“_Epikritik der Philosophie_.” What real analogy is there, indeed, between
the problematical determination of a concept by disjunctive predicates and
the thought of reciprocity? The two are indeed absolutely opposed, for in
the disjunctive judgment the actual affirmation of one of the two
alternative propositions is also necessarily the negation of the other;
if, on the other hand, we think two things in the relation of reciprocity,
the affirmation of one is also necessarily the affirmation of the other,
and _vice versa_. Therefore, unquestionably, the real logical analogue of
reciprocity is the vicious circle, for in it, as nominally in the case of
reciprocity, what is proved is also the proof, and conversely. And just as
logic rejects the vicious circle, so the conception of reciprocity ought
to be banished from metaphysics. For I now intend, quite seriously, to
prove that there is no reciprocity in the strict sense, and this
conception, which people are so fond of using, just on account of the
indefiniteness of the thought, is seen, if more closely considered, to be
empty, false, and invalid. First of all, the reader must call to mind what
causality really is, and to assist my exposition, see upon this subject §
20 of the introductory essay, also my prize-essay on the freedom of the
will, chap. iii. p. 27 _seq._, and lastly the fourth chapter of the second
book of this work. Causality is the law according to which the conditions
or states of matter which appear determine their position in time.
Causality has to do merely with conditions or states, indeed, properly,
only with _changes_, and neither with matter as such, nor with permanence
without change. _Matter_, as such, does not come under the law of
causality, for it neither comes into being nor passes away; thus neither
does the whole _thing_, as we commonly express ourselves, come under this
law, but only the _conditions_ or _states_ of matter. Further, the law of
causality has nothing to do with _permanence_, for where nothing changes
there is no producing of _effects_ and no causality, but a continuing
quiet condition or state. But if, now, such a state is changed, then the
new state is either again permanent or it is not, but immediately
introduces a third state, and the necessity with which this happens is
just the law of causality, which is a form of the principle of sufficient
reason, and therefore cannot be further explained, because the principle
of sufficient reason is the principle of all explanation and of all
necessity. From this it is clear that cause and effect stand in intimate
connection with, and necessary relation to, the _course of time_. Only
because the state A. precedes in time the state B., and their succession
is necessary and not accidental, _i.e._, no mere sequence but a
consequence—only because of this is the state A. cause and the state B.
effect. The conception _reciprocity_, however, contains this, that both
are cause and both are effect of each other; but this really amounts to
saying that each of the two is the earlier and also the later; thus it is
an absurdity. For that both states are simultaneous, and indeed
necessarily simultaneous, cannot be admitted, because, as necessarily
belonging to each other and existing at the same time, they constitute
only _one_ state. For the permanence of this state there is certainly
required the continued existence of all its determinations, but we are
then no longer concerned with change and causality, but with duration and
rest, and nothing further is said than that if _one_ determination of the
whole state be changed, the new state which then appears cannot continue,
but becomes the cause of the change of all the other determinations of the
first state, so that a new third state appears; which all happens merely
in accordance with the simple law of causality, and does not establish a
_new_ law, that of reciprocity.

I also definitely assert that the conception _reciprocity_ cannot be
supported by a single example. Everything that one seeks to pass off as
such is either a state of rest, to which the conception of causality,
which has only significance with reference to changes, finds no
application at all, or else it is an alternating succession of states of
the same name which condition each other, for the explanation of which
simple causality is quite sufficient. An example of the first class is
afforded by a pair of scales brought to rest by equal weights. Here there
is no effect produced, for there is no change; it is a state of rest;
gravity acts, equally divided, as in every body which is supported at its
centre of gravity, but it cannot show its force by any effect. That the
taking away of one weight produces a second state, which at once becomes
the cause of the third, the sinking of the other scale, happens according
to the simple law of cause and effect, and requires no special category of
the understanding, and not even a special name. An example of the second
class is the continuous burning of a fire. The combination of oxygen with
the combustible body is the cause of heat, and heat, again, is the cause
of the renewed occurrence of the chemical combination. But this is nothing
more than a chain of causes and effects, the links of which have
alternately _the same name_. The burning, A., produces free heat, B., this
produces new burning, C. (_i.e._, a new effect which has the same name as
the cause A., but is not individually identical with it), this produces
new heat, D. (which is not really identical with the effect B., but only
according to the concept, _i.e._, it has the same name), and so on
indefinitely. A good example of what in ordinary life is called
reciprocity is afforded by a theory about deserts given by Humboldt
(_Ansichten der Natur_, 2d ed., vol. ii. p. 79). In the sandy deserts it
does not rain, but it rains upon the wooded mountains surrounding them.
The cause is not the attraction of the clouds by the mountains; but it is
the column of heated air rising from the sandy plain which prevents the
particles of vapour from condensing, and drives the clouds high into the
heavens. On the mountains the perpendicular rising stream of air is
weaker, the clouds descend, and the rainfall ensues in the cooler air.
Thus, want of rain and the absence of plants in the desert stand in the
relation of reciprocity; it does not rain because the heated sand-plain
sends out more heat; the desert does not become a steppe or prairie
because it does not rain. But clearly we have here again, as in the
example given above, only a succession of causes and effects of the same
names, and throughout nothing essentially different from simple causality.
This is also the case with the swinging of the pendulum, and indeed also
with the self-conservation of the organised body, in which case likewise
every state introduces a new one, which is of the same kind as that by
which it was itself brought about, but individually is new. Only here the
matter is complicated, because the chain no longer consists of links of
two kinds, but of many kinds, so that a link of the same name only recurs
after several others have intervened. But we always see before us only an
application of the single and simple law of causality which gives the rule