The World as Will and Idea Volume II Part 3

That the return to an unconditioned cause, to a first beginning, by no means lies in the nature of reason, is, moreover, practically proved by the fact that the primitive religions of our race, which even yet have the greatest number of followers upon earth, Brahmanism and Buddhaism, neither know nor admit such a.s.sumptions, but carry the series of phenomena conditioning each other into infinity. Upon this point, I refer to the note appended to the criticism of the first antinomy, which occurs further on; and the reader may also see Upham's "Doctrine of Buddhaism" (p. 9), and in general all genuine accounts of the religions of Asia. Judaism and reason ought not to be identified.

Kant, who by no means desires to maintain his pretended principle of reason as objectively valid, but merely as subjectively necessary, deduces it even as such only by means of a shallow sophism, p. 307; V. 364. He says that because we seek to subsume every truth known to us under a more general truth, as far as this process can be carried, this is nothing else than the pursuit of the unconditioned, which we already presuppose. But, in truth, in this endeavour we do nothing more than apply reason, and intentionally make use of it to simplify our knowledge by enabling us to survey it-reason, which is that faculty of abstract, general knowledge that distinguishes the reflective, thinking man, endowed with speech, from the brute, which is the slave of the present. For the use of reason just consists in this, that we know the particular through the universal, the case through the rule, the rule through the more general rule; thus that we seek the most general points of view. Through such survey or general view our knowledge is so facilitated and perfected that from it arises the great difference between the life of the brutes and that of men, and again between the life of educated and that of uneducated men. Now, certainly the series of _grounds of knowledge_, which exist only in the sphere of the abstract, thus of reason, always finds an end in what is indemonstrable, _i.e._, in an idea which is not further conditioned according to this form of the principle of sufficient reason, thus in the _a priori_ or _a posteriori_ directly perceptible ground of the first proposition of the train of reasoning. I have already shown in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, -- 50, that here the series of grounds of knowledge really pa.s.ses over into grounds of becoming or of being. But one can only desire to make this circ.u.mstance hold good as a proof of an unconditioned according to the law of causality, or even of the mere demand for such an unconditioned, if one has not yet distinguished the forms of the principle of sufficient reason at all, but, holding to the abstract expression, has confounded them all. Kant, however, seeks to establish that confusion, through a mere play upon words, with _Universalitas_ and _Universitas_, p. 322; V. 379. Thus it is fundamentally false that our search for higher grounds of knowledge, more general truths, springs from the presupposition of an object unconditioned in its being, or has anything whatever in common with this. Moreover, how should it be essential to the reason to presuppose something which it must know to be an absurdity as soon as it reflects? The source of that conception of the unconditioned is rather to be found only in the indolence of the individual who wishes by means of it to get rid of all further questions, whether his own or of others, though entirely without justification.

Now Kant himself denies objective validity to this pretended principle of reason; he gives it, however, as a necessary subjective a.s.sumption, and thus introduces an irremediable split into our knowledge, which he soon allows to appear more clearly. With this purpose he unfolds that principle of reason further, p. 322; V. 379, in accordance with the method of architectonic symmetry of which he is so fond. From the three categories of relation spring three kinds of syllogisms, each of which gives the clue for the discovery of a special unconditioned, of which again there are three: the soul, the world (as an object in itself and absolute totality), and G.o.d. Now here we must at once note a great contradiction, of which Kant, however, takes no notice, because it would be very dangerous to the symmetry. Two of these unconditioneds are themselves conditioned by the third, the soul and the world by G.o.d, who is the cause of their existence.

Thus the two former have by no means the predicate of unconditionedness in common with the latter, though this is really the point here, but only that of inferred being according to the principles of experience, beyond the sphere of the possibility of experience.

Setting this aside, we recognise in the three unconditioneds, to which, according to Kant, reason, following its essential laws, must come, the three princ.i.p.al subjects round which the whole of philosophy under the influence of Christianity, from the Scholastics down to Christian Wolf, has turned. Accessible and familiar as these conceptions have become through all these philosophers, and now also through the philosophers of pure reason, this by no means shows that, without revelation, they would necessarily have proceeded from the development of all reason as a production peculiar to its very nature. In order to prove this it would be necessary to call in the aid of historical criticism, and to examine whether the ancient and non-European nations, especially the peoples of Hindostan and many of the oldest Greek philosophers, really attained to those conceptions, or whether it is only we who, by quite falsely translating the Brahma of the Hindus and the Tien of the Chinese as "G.o.d,"

good-naturedly attribute such conceptions to them, just as the Greeks recognised their G.o.ds everywhere; whether it is not rather the case that theism proper is only to be found in the religion of the Jews, and in the two religions which have proceeded from it, whose followers just on this account comprise the adherents of all other religions on earth under the name of heathen, which, by the way, is a most absurd and crude expression, and ought to be banished at least from the writings of the learned, because it identifies and jumbles together Brahmanists, Buddhists, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Gauls, Iroquois, Patagonians, Caribbeans, Otaheiteans, Australians, and many others. Such an expression is all very well for priests, but in the learned world it must at once be shown the door: it can go to England and take up its abode at Oxford. It is a thoroughly established fact that Buddhism, the religion which numbers more followers than any other on earth, contains absolutely no theism, indeed rejects it. As regards Plato, it is my opinion that he owes to the Jews the theism with which he is periodically seized. On this account Numenius (according to Clem. Alex., _Strom._, i. c. 22, Euseb. _praep.

evang._, xiii. 12, and Suidas under Numenius) called him the _Moses graecisans_: ?? ?a? est? ??at??, ? ??s?? att??????; and he accuses him of having stolen (ap?s???sa?) his doctrine of G.o.d and the creation from the Mosaical writings. Clemens often repeats that Plato knew and made use of Moses, _e.g._, _Strom._, i. 25.-v. c. 14, -- 90, &c., &c.; _Paedagog._, ii.

10, and iii. 11; also in the _Cohortatio ad gentes_, c. 6, where, after he has bitterly censured and derided the whole of the Greek philosophers in the preceding chapter because they were not Jews, he bestows on Plato nothing but praise, and breaks out into pure exultation that as Plato had learnt his geometry from the Egyptians, his astronomy from the Babylonians, magic from the Thracians, and much also from the a.s.syrians, so he had learnt his theism from the Jews: ??da s?? t??? d?das?a????, ?a?

ap????pte?? e?e???, ... d??a? t?? t?? ?e?? pa?? a?t?? ?fe??se? t?? ??a???

(_Tuos magistros novi, licet eos celare velis, ... illa de Deo sententia suppeditata tibi est ab Hebraeis_). A pathetic scene of recognition. But I see a remarkable confirmation of the matter in what follows. According to Plutarch (_in Mario_), and, better, according to Lactantius (i. 3, 19), Plato thanked Nature that he had been born a human being and not a brute, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian. Now in Isaac Euchel's "Prayers of the Jews," from the Hebrew, second edition, 1799, p. 7, there is a morning prayer in which G.o.d is thanked and praised that the wors.h.i.+pper was born a Jew and not a heathen, a free man and not a slave, a man and not a woman. Such an historical investigation would have spared Kant an unfortunate necessity in which he now becomes involved, in that he makes these three conceptions spring necessarily from the nature of reason, and yet explains that they are untenable and unverifiable by the reason, and thus makes the reason itself a sophisticator; for he says, p.

339; V. 397: "There are sophistications, not of man, but of pure reason itself, from which even the wisest cannot free himself, and although after much trouble he may be able to avoid error, yet he never can escape from the illusion which unceasingly torments and mocks him." Therefore these Kantian "Ideas of the Reason" might be compared to the focus in which the converging reflected rays from a concave mirror meet several inches before its surface, in consequence of which, by an inevitable process of the understanding, an object presents itself to us there which is a thing without reality.

But the name "Idea" is very unfortunately chosen for these pretended necessary productions of the pure theoretical reason, and violently appropriated from Plato, who used it to denote the eternal forms which, multiplied through s.p.a.ce and time, become partially visible in the innumerable individual fleeting things. Plato's "Ideas" are accordingly throughout perceptible, as indeed the word which he chose so definitely signifies, for it could only be adequately translated by means of perceptible or visible things; and Kant has appropriated it to denote that which lies so far from all possibility of perception that even abstract thought can only half attain to it. The word "Idea," which Plato first introduced, has, moreover, since then, through two-and-twenty centuries, always retained the significance in which he used it; for not only all ancient philosophers, but also all the Scholastics, and indeed the Church Fathers and the theologians of the Middle Ages, used it only in that Platonic sense, the sense of the Latin word _exemplar_, as Suarez expressly mentions in his twenty-fifth Disputation, sect. 1. That Englishmen and Frenchmen were later induced by the poverty of their languages to misuse this word is bad enough, but not of importance. Kant's misuse of the word idea, by the subst.i.tution of a new significance introduced by means of the slender clue of not being object of experience, which it has in common with Plato's ideas, but also in common with every possible chimera, is thus altogether unjustifiable. Now, since the misuse of a few years is not to be considered against the authority of many centuries, I have always used the word in its old, original, Platonic significance.

The refutation of _rational psychology_ is much fuller and more thorough in the first edition of the "Critique of Pure Reason" than in the second and following editions, and therefore upon this point we must make use of the first edition exclusively. This refutation has as a whole very great merit and much truth. Yet I am clearly of the opinion that it was merely from his love of symmetry that Kant deduced as necessary the conception of the soul from the paralogism of substantiality by applying the demand for the unconditioned to the conception _substance_, which is the first category of relation, and accordingly maintained that the conception of a soul arose in this way in every speculative reason. If this conception really had its origin in the presupposition of a final subject of all predicates of a thing, one would have a.s.sumed a soul not in men alone, but also just as necessarily in every lifeless thing, for such a thing also requires a final subject of all its predicates. Speaking generally, however, Kant makes use of a quite inadmissible expression when he talks of something which can exist only as subject and not as predicate (_e.g._, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 323; V. 412; Prolegomena, -- 4 and 47); though a precedent for this is to be found in Aristotle's "Metaphysics," iv. ch.

8. Nothing whatever exists as subject and predicate, for these expressions belong exclusively to logic, and denote the relations of abstract conceptions to each other. Now their correlative or representative in the world of perception must be substance and accident. But then we need not look further for that which exists always as substance and never as accident, but have it directly in matter. It is the substance corresponding to all properties of things which are their accidents. It is, in fact, if one wishes to retain the expression of Kant which has just been condemned, the final subject of all predicates of that empirically given thing, that which remains after the abstraction of all its properties of every kind. And this holds good of man as of a brute, a plant, or a stone, and is so evident, that in order not to see it a determined desire not to see is required. That it is really the prototype of the conception substance, I will show soon. But subject and predicate are related to substance and accident rather as the principle of sufficient reason in logic to the law of causality in nature, and the subst.i.tution or identification of the former is just as inadmissible as that of the latter. Yet in the "Prolegomena," -- 46, Kant carries this subst.i.tution and identification to its fullest extent in order to make the conception of the soul arise from that of the final subject of all predicates and from the form of the categorical syllogism. In order to discover the sophistical nature of this paragraph, one only needs to reflect that subject and predicate are purely logical determinations, which concern abstract conceptions solely and alone, and that according to their relation in the judgment. Substance and accident, on the other hand, belong to the world of perception and its apprehension in the understanding, and are even there only as identical with matter and form or quality. Of this more shortly.

The ant.i.thesis which has given occasion for the a.s.sumption of two fundamentally different substances, body and soul, is in truth that of objective and subjective. If a man apprehends himself objectively in external perception, he finds a being extended in s.p.a.ce and in general merely corporeal; but if, on the other hand, he apprehends himself in mere self-consciousness, thus purely subjectively, he finds himself a merely willing and perceiving being, free from all forms of perception, thus also without a single one of the properties which belong to bodies. Now he forms the conception of the soul, like all the transcendental conceptions called by Kant Ideas, by applying the principle of sufficient reason, the form of all objects, to that which is not an object, and in this case indeed to the subject of knowing and willing. He treats, in fact, knowing, thinking, and willing as effects of which he seeks the cause, and as he cannot accept the body as their cause, he a.s.sumes a cause of them entirely different from the body. In this manner the first and the last of the dogmatists proves the existence of the soul: Plato in the "Phaedrus" and also Wolf: from thinking and willing as the effects which lead to that cause. Only after in this way, by hypostatising a cause corresponding to the effect, the conception of an immaterial, simple, indestructible being had arisen, the school developed and demonstrated this from the conception of _substance_. But this conception itself they had previously constructed specially for this purpose by the following artifice, which is worthy of notice.

With the first cla.s.s of ideas, _i.e._, the real world of perception, the idea of matter is also given; because the law governing this cla.s.s of ideas, the law of causality, determines the change of the states or conditions, and these conditions themselves presuppose something permanent, whose changes they are. When speaking above of the principle of the permanence of substance, I showed, by reference to earlier pa.s.sages, that this idea of matter arises because in the understanding, for which alone it exists, time and s.p.a.ce are intimately united, and the share of s.p.a.ce in this product exhibits itself as the permanence of matter, while the share of time appears as the change of states. Purely in itself, matter can only be thought _in abstracto_, and not perceived; for to perception it always appears already in form and quality. From this conception of _matter_, _substance_ is again an abstraction, consequently a higher _genus_, and arose in this way. Of the conception of matter, only the predicate of permanence was allowed to remain, while all its other essential properties, extension, impenetrability, divisibility, &c., were thought away. Like every higher _genus_, then, the concept _substance_ contains _less in itself_ than the concept _matter_, but, unlike every other higher _genus_, it does not contain _more under it_, because it does not include several lower _genera_ besides matter; but this remains the one true species of the concept substance, the only a.s.signable thing by which its content is realised and receives a proof. Thus the aim with which in other cases the reason produces by abstraction a higher conception, in order that in it several subordinate species may be thought at once through common determinations, has here no place; consequently that abstraction is either undertaken idly and entirely without aim, or it has a secret secondary purpose. This secret purpose is now brought to light; for under the conception substance, along with its true sub-species matter, a second species is co-ordinated-the immaterial, simple, indestructible substance, soul. But the surrept.i.tious introduction of this last concept arose from the fact that the higher concept _substance_ was framed illogically, and in a manner contrary to law. In its legitimate procedure the reason always frames the concept of a higher genus by placing together the concepts of several species, and now comparing them, proceeds discursively, and by omitting their differences and retaining the qualities in which they agree, obtains the generic concept which includes them all but has a smaller content. From this it follows that the concepts of the species must always precede the concept of the genus. But, in the present case, the converse is true. Only the concept matter existed before the generic concept _substance_. The latter was without occasion, and consequently without justification, as it were aimlessly framed from the former by the arbitrary omission of all its determinations except one. Not till afterwards was the second ungenuine species placed beside the concept matter, and so foisted in. But for the framing of this second concept nothing more was now required than an express denial of what had already been tacitly omitted in the higher generic concept, extension, impenetrability, and divisibility. Thus the concept _substance_ was framed merely to be the vehicle for the surrept.i.tious introduction of the concept of the immaterial substance. Consequently, it is very far from being capable of holding good as a category or necessary function of the understanding; rather is it an exceedingly superfluous concept, because its only true content lies already in the concept of matter, besides which it contains only a great void, which can be filled up by nothing but the illicitly introduced species _immaterial substance_; and, indeed, it was solely for the purpose of containing this that it was framed. Accordingly, in strictness, the concept substance must be entirely rejected, and the concept matter everywhere put in its place.

The categories were a procrustean bed for every possible thing, but the three kinds of syllogisms are so only for the three so-called Ideas. The Idea of the soul was compelled to find its origin in the form of the categorical syllogism. It is now the turn of the dogmatic ideas concerning the universe, so far as it is thought as an object in itself, between two limits-that of the smallest (atom), and that of the largest (limits of the universe in time and s.p.a.ce). These must now proceed from the form of the hypothetical syllogism. Nor for this in itself is any special violence necessary. For the hypothetical judgment has its form from the principle of sufficient reason, and not the cosmological alone but all those so-called Ideas really have their origin in the inconsiderate and unrestricted application of that principle, and the laying aside of it at pleasure. For, in accordance with that principle, the mere dependence of an object upon another is ever sought for, till finally the exhaustion of the imagination puts an end to the journey; and thus it is lost sight of that every object, and indeed the whole chain of objects and the principle of sufficient reason itself, stand in a far closer and greater dependence, the dependence upon the knowing subject, for whose objects alone, _i.e._, ideas, that principle is valid, for their mere position in s.p.a.ce and time is determined by it. Thus, since the form of knowledge from which here merely the cosmological Ideas are derived, the principle of sufficient reason, is the source of all subtle hypostases, in this case no sophisms need be resorted to; but so much the more is sophistry required in order to cla.s.sify those Ideas according to the four t.i.tles of the categories.

(1.) The cosmological Ideas with regard to time and s.p.a.ce, thus of the limits of the world in both, are boldly regarded as determined through the category of _quant.i.ty_, with which they clearly have nothing in common, except the accidental denotation in logic of the extent of the concept of the subject in the judgment by the word _quant.i.ty_, a pictorial expression instead of which some other might just as well have been chosen. But for Kant's love of symmetry this is enough. He takes advantage of the fortunate accident of this nomenclature, and links to it the transcendent dogmas of the world's extension.

(2.) Yet more boldly does Kant link to _quality_, _i.e._, the affirmation or negation in a judgment, the transcendent Ideas concerning matter; a procedure which has not even an accidental similarity of words as a basis.

For it is just to the _quant.i.ty_, and not to the _quality_ of matter that its mechanical (not chemical) divisibility is related. But, what is more, this whole idea of divisibility by no means belongs to those inferences according to the principle of sufficient reason, from which, however, as the content of the hypothetical form, all cosmological Ideas ought to flow. For the a.s.sertion upon which Kant there relies, that the relation of the parts to the whole is that of the condition to the conditioned, thus a relation according to the principle of sufficient reason, is certainly an ingenious but yet a groundless sophism. That relation is rather based upon the principle of contradiction; for the whole is not through the part, nor the parts through the whole, but both are necessarily together because they are one, and their separation is only an arbitrary act. It depends upon this, according to the principle of contradiction, that if the parts are thought away, the whole is also thought away, and conversely; and by no means upon the fact that the parts as the _reason_ conditioned the whole as the _consequent_, and that therefore, in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, we were necessarily led to seek the ultimate parts, in order, as its reason, to understand from them the whole. Such great difficulties are here overcome by the love of symmetry.

(3.) The Idea of the first cause of the world would now quite properly come under the t.i.tle of _relation_; but Kant must reserve this for the fourth t.i.tle, that of _modality_, for which otherwise nothing would remain, and under which he forces this idea to come by saying that the contingent (_i.e._, according to his explanation, which is diametrically opposed to the truth, every consequent of its reason) becomes the necessary through the first cause. Therefore, for the sake of symmetry, the conception of _freedom_ appears here as the third Idea. By this conception, however, as is distinctly stated in the observations on the thesis of the third conflict, what is really meant is only that Idea of the cause of the world which alone is admissible here. The third and fourth conflicts are at bottom tautological.

About all this, however, I find and a.s.sert that the whole antinomy is a mere delusion, a sham fight. Only the a.s.sertions of the ant.i.theses really rest upon the forms of our faculty of knowledge, _i.e._, if we express it objectively, on the necessary, _a priori_ certain, most universal laws of nature. Their proofs alone are therefore drawn from objective grounds. On the other hand, the a.s.sertions and proofs of the theses have no other than a subjective ground, rest solely on the weakness of the reasoning individual; for his imagination becomes tired with an endless regression, and therefore he puts an end to it by arbitrary a.s.sumptions, which he tries to smooth over as well as he can; and his judgment, moreover, is in this case paralysed by early and deeply imprinted prejudices. On this account the proof of the thesis in all the four conflicts is throughout a mere sophism, while that of the ant.i.thesis is a necessary inference of the reason from the laws of the world as idea known to us _a priori_. It is, moreover, only with great pains and skill that Kant is able to sustain the thesis, and make it appear to attack its opponent, which is endowed with native power. Now in this regard his first and constant artifice is, that he does not render prominent the _nervus argumentationis_, and thus present it in as isolated, naked, and distinct a manner as he possibly can; but rather introduces the same argument on both sides, concealed under and mixed up with a ma.s.s of superfluous and prolix sentences.

The theses and ant.i.theses which here appear in such conflict remind one of the d??a??? and ad???? ????? which Socrates, in the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, brings forward as contending. Yet this resemblance extends only to the form and not to the content, though this would gladly be a.s.serted by those who ascribe to these most speculative of all questions of theoretical philosophy an influence upon morality, and therefore seriously regard the thesis as the d??a???, and the ant.i.thesis as the ad???? ?????. I shall not, however, accommodate myself here with reference to such small, narrow, and perverse minds; and, giving honour not to them, but to the truth, I shall show that the proofs which Kant adduced of the individual theses are sophisms, while those of the ant.i.theses are quite fairly and correctly drawn from objective grounds. I a.s.sume that in this examination the reader has always before him the Kantian antinomy itself.

If the proof of the thesis in the first conflict is to be held as valid, then it proves too much, for it would be just as applicable to time itself as to change in time, and would therefore prove that time itself must have had a beginning, which is absurd. Besides, the sophism consists in this, that instead of the beginninglessness of the series of states, which was at first the question, suddenly the endlessness (infinity) of the series is subst.i.tuted; and now it is proved that this is logically contradicted by completeness, and yet every present is the end of the past, which no one doubted. The end of a beginningless series can, however, always be _thought_, without prejudice to the fact that it has no beginning; just as, conversely, the beginning of an endless series can also be _thought_.

But against the real, true argument of the ant.i.thesis, that the changes of the world necessarily presuppose an infinite series of changes _backwards_, absolutely nothing is advanced. We can think the possibility that the causal chain will some day end in an absolute standstill, but we can by no means think the possibility of an absolute beginning.(8)

With reference to the spatial limits of the world, it is proved that, if it is to be regarded as a _given whole_, it must necessarily have limits.

The reasoning is correct, only it was just the first link of it that was to be proved, and that remains unproved. Totality presupposes limits, and limits presuppose totality; but here both together are arbitrarily presupposed. For this second point, however, the ant.i.thesis affords no such satisfactory proof as for the first, because the law of causality provides us with necessary determinations only with reference to time, not to s.p.a.ce, and affords us _a priori_ the certainty that no occupied time can ever be bounded by a previous empty time, and that no change can be the first change, but not that an occupied s.p.a.ce can have no empty s.p.a.ce beside it. So far no _a priori_ decision on the latter point would be possible; yet the difficulty of conceiving the world in s.p.a.ce as limited lies in the fact that s.p.a.ce itself is necessarily infinite, and therefore a limited finite world in s.p.a.ce, however large it may be, becomes an infinitely small magnitude; and in this incongruity the imagination finds an insuperable stumbling-block, because there remains for it only the choice of thinking the world either as infinitely large or infinitely small. This was already seen by the ancient philosophers: ??t??d????, ?

?a????t?? ?p???????, f?d?? at?p?? e??a? e? e?a?? ped?? ??a sta???

?e??????a?, ?a? ??a ??s?? e? t? ape??? (_Metrodorus, caput scholae Epicuri, absurdum ait, in magno campo spicam unam produci, et unum in infinito mundum_) Stob. Ecl., i. c. 23. Therefore many of them taught (as immediately follows), ape????? ??s??? e? t? ape??? (_infinitos mundos in infinito_). This is also the sense of the Kantian argument for the ant.i.thesis, only he has disfigured it by a scholastic and ambiguous expression. The same argument might be used against the limitation of the world in time, only we have a far better one under the guidance of causality. In the case of the a.s.sumption of a world limited in s.p.a.ce, there arises further the unanswerable question, What advantage has the filled part of s.p.a.ce enjoyed over the infinite s.p.a.ce that has remained empty? In the fifth dialogue of his book, "_Del Infinito, Universo e Mondi_," Giordano Bruno gives a full account of the arguments for and against the finiteness of the world, which is very well worth reading. For the rest, Kant himself a.s.serts seriously, and upon objective grounds, the infinity of the world in s.p.a.ce in his "Natural History of the Theory of the Heavens," part ii. ch. 7. Aristotle also acknowledges the same, "Phys.," iii. ch. 4, a chapter which, together with the following one, is very well worth reading with reference to this antinomy.

In the second conflict the thesis is at once guilty of a very palpable _pet.i.tio principii_, for it commences, "Every _compound_ substance consists of simple parts." From the compoundness here arbitrarily a.s.sumed, no doubt it afterwards very easily proves the simple parts. But the proposition, "All matter is compound," which is just the point, remains unproved, because it is simply a groundless a.s.sumption. The opposite of simple is not compound, but extended, that which has parts and is divisible. Here, however, it is really tacitly a.s.sumed that the parts existed before the whole, and were brought together, whence the whole has arisen; for this is the meaning of the word "compound." Yet this can just as little be a.s.serted as the opposite. Divisibility means merely the possibility of separating the whole into parts, and not that the whole is compounded out of parts and thus came into being. Divisibility merely a.s.serts the parts _a parte post_; compoundness a.s.serts them _a parte ante_. For there is essentially no temporal relation between the parts and the whole; they rather condition each other reciprocally, and thus always exist at the same time, for only so far as both are there is there anything extended in s.p.a.ce. Therefore what Kant says in the observations on the thesis, "s.p.a.ce ought not to be called a _compositum_, but a _totum_," &c., holds good absolutely of matter also, which is simply s.p.a.ce become perceptible. On the other hand, the infinite divisibility of matter, which the ant.i.thesis a.s.serts, follows _a priori_ and incontrovertibly from that of s.p.a.ce, which it fills. This proposition has absolutely nothing against it; and therefore Kant also (p. 513; V. 541), when he speaks seriously and in his own person, no longer as the mouthpiece of the ad???? ?????, presents it as objective truth; and also in the "Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science" (p. 108, first edition), the proposition, "Matter is infinitely divisible," is placed at the beginning of the proof of the first proposition of mechanics as established truth, having appeared and been proved as the fourth proposition in the Dynamics. But here Kant spoils the proof of the ant.i.thesis by the greatest obscurity of style and useless acc.u.mulation of words, with the cunning intention that the evidence of the ant.i.thesis shall not throw the sophisms of the thesis too much into the shade. Atoms are no necessary thought of the reason, but merely an hypothesis for the explanation of the difference of the specific gravity of bodies. But Kant himself has shown, in the dynamics of his "Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science," that this can be otherwise, and indeed better and more simply explained than by atomism. In this, however, he was antic.i.p.ated by Priestley, "On Matter and Spirit," sect. i. Indeed, even in Aristotle, "Phys." iv. 9, the fundamental thought of this is to be found.

The argument for the third thesis is a very fine sophism, and is really Kant's pretended principle of pure reason itself entirely unadulterated and unchanged. It tries to prove the finiteness of the series of causes by saying that, in order to be _sufficient_, a cause must contain the complete sum of the conditions from which the succeeding state, the effect, proceeds. For the completeness of the determinations present _together_ in the state which is the cause, the argument now subst.i.tutes the completeness of the series of causes by which that state itself was brought to actuality; and because completeness presupposes the condition of being rounded off or closed in, and this again presupposes finiteness, the argument infers from this a first cause, closing the series and therefore unconditioned. But the juggling is obvious. In order to conceive the state A. as the sufficient cause of the state B., I a.s.sume that it contains the sum of the necessary determinations from the co-existence of which the estate B. inevitably follows. Now by this my demand upon it as a _sufficient_ cause is entirely satisfied, and has no direct connection with the question how the state A. itself came to be; this rather belongs to an entirely different consideration, in which I regard the said state A. no more as cause, but as itself an effect; in which case another state again must be related to it, just as it was related to B. The a.s.sumption of the finiteness of the series of causes and effects, and accordingly of a first beginning, appears nowhere in this as necessary, any more than the presentness of the present moment requires us to a.s.sume a beginning of time itself. It only comes to be added on account of the laziness of the speculating individual. That this a.s.sumption lies in the acceptance of a cause as a _sufficient reason_ is thus unfairly arrived at and false, as I have shown at length above when considering the Kantian principle of pure reason which coincides with this thesis. In ill.u.s.tration of the a.s.sertion of this false thesis, Kant is bold enough in his observations upon it to give as an example of an unconditioned beginning his rising from his chair; as if it were not just as impossible for him to rise without a motive as for a ball to roll without a cause. I certainly do not need to prove the baselessness of the appeal which, induced by a sense of weakness, he makes to the philosophers of antiquity, by quoting from Ocellus Luca.n.u.s, the Eleatics, &c., not to speak of the Hindus. Against the proof of this ant.i.thesis, as in the case of the previous ones, there is nothing to advance.

The fourth conflict is, as I have already remarked, really tautological with the third; and the proof of the thesis is also essentially the same as that of the preceding one. His a.s.sertion that every conditioned presupposes a complete series of conditions, and therefore a series which ends with an unconditioned, is a _pet.i.tio principii_, which must simply be denied. Everything conditioned presupposes nothing but its condition; that this is again conditioned raises a new consideration which is not directly contained in the first.

A certain appearance of probability cannot be denied to the antinomy; yet it is remarkable that no part of the Kantian philosophy has met so little contradiction, indeed has found so much acceptance, as this exceedingly paradoxical doctrine. Almost all philosophical parties and text-books have regarded it as valid, and have also repeatedly reconstructed it; while nearly all Kant's other doctrines have been contested, and indeed there have never been wanting some perverse minds which rejected even the transcendental aesthetic. The undivided a.s.sent which the antinomy, on the other hand, has met with may ultimately arise from the fact that certain persons regard with inward satisfaction the point at which the understanding is so thoroughly brought to a standstill, having hit upon something which at once is and is not, so that they actually have before them here the sixth trick of Philadelphia in Lichtenberg's broadsheet.

If we examine the real meaning of Kant's _Critical Solution_ of the cosmological problem which now follows, we find that it is not what he gives it out to be, the solution of the problem by the disclosure that both sides, starting from false a.s.sumptions, are wrong in the first and second conflicts, and that in the third and fourth both are right. It is really the confirmation of the ant.i.theses by the explanation of their a.s.sertions.

First Kant a.s.serts, in this solution, obviously wrongly, that both sides started from the a.s.sumption, as their first principle, that with the conditioned the completed (thus rounded off) _series_ of its conditions is given. Only the thesis laid down this proposition, Kant's principle of pure reason, as the ground of its a.s.sertions; the ant.i.thesis, on the other hand, expressly denied it throughout, and a.s.serted the contrary. Further, Kant charges both sides with this a.s.sumption, that the world exists in itself, _i.e._, independently of being known and of the forms of this knowledge, but this a.s.sumption also is only made by the thesis; indeed, it is so far from forming the ground of the a.s.sertions of the ant.i.thesis that it is absolutely inconsistent with them. For that it should all be given is absolutely contradictory of the conception of an infinite series. It is therefore essential to it that it should always exist only with reference to the process of going through it, and not independently of this. On the other hand, in the a.s.sumption of definite limits also lies that of a whole which exists absolutely and independently of the process of completely measuring it. Thus it is only the thesis that makes the false a.s.sumption of a self-existent universe, _i.e._, a universe given prior to all knowledge, and to which knowledge came as to something external to itself.

The ant.i.thesis from the outset combats this a.s.sumption absolutely; for the infinity of the series which it a.s.serts merely under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason can only exist if the regressus is fully carried out, but not independently of it. As the object in general presupposes the subject, so also the object which is determined as an _endless_ chain of conditions necessarily presupposes in the subject the kind of knowledge corresponding to this, that is, the _constant following_ of the links of that chain. But this is just what Kant gives as the solution of the problem, and so often repeats: "The infinity of the world is only _through_ the regressus, not _before_ it." This his solution of the conflict is thus really only the decision in favour of the ant.i.thesis in the a.s.sertion of which this truth already lies, while it is altogether inconsistent with the a.s.sertions of the thesis. If the ant.i.thesis had a.s.serted that the world consisted of infinite series of reasons and consequents, and yet existed independently of the idea and its regressive series, thus in itself, and therefore const.i.tuted a given whole, it would have contradicted not only the thesis but also itself. For an infinite can never be given as a whole, nor an _endless_ series exist, except as an endless progress; nor can what is boundless const.i.tute a whole. Thus this a.s.sumption, of which Kant a.s.serts that it led both sides into error, belongs only to the thesis.

It is already a doctrine of Aristotle's that an infinity can never be _actu_, _i.e._, actual and given, but only _potentia_. ??? est?? e?e??e??

e??a? t? ape???? ... a??? ad??at?? t? e?te?e?e?? ?? ape???? (_infinitum non potest esse actu: ... sed impossibile, actu esse infinitum_), Metaph.

K. 10. Further: ?at? e?e??e?a? e? ?a? ??de? est?? ape????, d??ae? de ep?

t?? d?a??es?? (_nihil enim actu infinitum est, sed potentia tantum, nempe divisione ipsa_). _De generat. et corrupt._, i., 3. He develops this fully in the "Physics," iii. 5 and 6, where to a certain extent he gives the perfectly correct solution of the whole of the antinomies. He expounds the antinomies in his short way, and then says, "A mediator (d?a?t?t??) is required;" upon which he gives the solution that the infinite, both of the world in s.p.a.ce and in time and in division, is never _before_ the regressus, or progressus, but in it. This truth lies then in the rightly apprehended conception of the infinite. Thus one misunderstands himself if he imagines that he can think the infinite, of whatever kind it may be, as something objectively present and complete, and independent of the regressus.

Indeed if, reversing the procedure, we take as the starting-point what Kant gives as the solution of the conflict, the a.s.sertion of the ant.i.thesis follows exactly from it. Thus: if the world is not an unconditioned whole and does not exist absolutely but only in the idea, and if its series of reasons and consequents do not exist _before_ the regressus of the ideas of them but only _through_ this regressus, then the world cannot contain determined and finite series, because their determination and limitation would necessarily be independent of the idea, which would then only come afterwards; but all its series must be infinite, _i.e._, inexhaustible by any idea.

On p. 506; V. 534, Kant tries to prove from the falseness of both sides the transcendental ideality of the phenomenon, and begins, "If the world is a whole existing by itself, it is either finite or infinite." But this is false; a whole existing of itself cannot possibly be infinite. That ideality may rather be concluded from the infinity of the series in the world in the following manner:-If the series of reasons and consequents in the world are absolutely without end, the world cannot be a given whole independent of the idea; for such a world always presupposes definite limits, just as on the contrary infinite series presuppose an infinite regressus. Therefore, the presupposed infinity of the series must be determined through the form of reason and consequent, and this again through the form of knowledge of the subject; thus the world as it is known must exist only in the idea of the subject.

Now whether Kant himself was aware or not that his critical solution of the problem is really a decision in favour of the ant.i.thesis, I am unable to decide. For it depends upon whether what Sch.e.l.ling has somewhere very happily called Kant's system of accommodation extended so far; or whether Kant's mind was here already involved in an unconscious accommodation to the influence of his time and surroundings.

The solution of the third antinomy, the subject of which was the Idea of freedom, deserves a special consideration, because it is for us very well worth notice that it is just here in connection with _the Idea of freedom_ that Kant is obliged to speak more fully of the _thing in itself_, which was. .h.i.therto only seen in the background. This is very explicable to us since we have recognised the thing in itself as the _will_. Speaking generally, this is the point at which the Kantian philosophy leads to mine, or at which mine springs out of his as its parent stem. One will be convinced of this if one reads with attention pp. 536 and 537; V. 564 and 565, of the "Critique of Pure Reason," and, further, compares these pa.s.sages with the introduction to the "Critique of Judgment," pp. xviii.

and xix. of the third edition, or p. 13 of Rosenkranz's edition, where indeed it is said: "The conception of freedom can in its object (that is then the will) present to the mind a thing in itself, but not in perception; the conception of nature, on the other hand, can present its object to the mind in perception, but not as a thing in itself." But specially let any one read concerning the solution of the antinomies the fifty-third paragraph of the Prolegomena, and then honestly answer the question whether all that is said there does not sound like a riddle to which my doctrine is the answer. Kant never completed his thought; I have merely carried out his work. Accordingly, what Kant says only of the human phenomenon I have extended to all phenomena in general, as differing from the human phenomenon only in degree, that their true being is something absolutely free, _i.e._, a will. It appears from my work how fruitful this insight is in connection with Kant's doctrine of the ideality of s.p.a.ce, time, and causality.

Kant has nowhere made the thing in itself the subject of a special exposition or distinct deduction; but, whenever he wants it, he introduces it at once by means of the conclusion that the phenomenon, thus the visible world, must have a reason, an intelligible cause, which is not a phenomenon, and therefore belongs to no possible experience. He does this after having a.s.siduously insisted that the categories, and thus causality also, had a use which was absolutely confined to possible experience; that they were merely forms of the understanding, which served to spell out the phenomena of the world of sense, beyond which, on the other hand, they had no significance, &c., &c. Therefore, he denies in the most uncompromising manner their application to things beyond experience, and rightly explains and at once rejects all earlier dogmatism as based upon the neglect of this law. The incredible inconsistency which Kant here fell into was soon noticed, and used by his first opponents to make attacks on his philosophy to which it could offer no resistance. For certainly we apply the law of causality entirely _a priori_ and before all experience to the changes felt in our organs of sense. But, on this very account, this law is just as much of subjective origin as these sensations themselves, and thus does not lead to a thing in itself. The truth is, that upon the path of the idea one can never get beyond the idea; it is a rounded-off whole, and has in its own resources no clue leading to the nature of the thing in itself, which is _toto genere_ different from it. If we were merely perceiving beings, the way to the thing in itself would be absolutely cut off from us. Only the other side of our own being can disclose to us the other side of the inner being of things. This path I have followed. But Kant's inference to the thing in itself, contrary as it is to his own teaching, obtains some excuse from the following circ.u.mstance. He does not say, as truth required, simply and absolutely that the object is conditioned by the subject, and conversely; but only that the manner of the appearance of the object is conditioned by the forms of knowledge of the subject, which, therefore, also come _a priori_ to consciousness. But that now which in opposition to this is only known _a posteriori_ is for him the immediate effect of the thing in itself, which becomes phenomenon only in its pa.s.sage through these forms which are given _a priori_. From this point of view it is to some extent explicable how it could escape him that objectivity in general belongs to the form of the phenomenon, and is just as much conditioned by subjectivity in general as the mode of appearing of the object is conditioned by the forms of knowledge of the subject; that thus if a thing in itself must be a.s.sumed, it absolutely cannot be an object, which however he always a.s.sumes it to be, but such a thing in itself must necessarily lie in a sphere _toto genere_ different from the idea (from knowing and being known), and therefore could least of all be arrived at through the laws of the combination of objects among themselves.

With the proof of the thing in itself it has happened to Kant precisely as with that of the _a priori_ nature of the law of causality. Both doctrines are true, but their proof is false. They thus belong to the cla.s.s of true conclusions from false premises. I have retained them both, but have proved them in an entirely different way, and with certainty.

The thing in itself I have neither introduced surrept.i.tiously nor inferred according to laws which exclude it, because they really belong to its phenomenal appearance; nor, in general, have I arrived at it by roundabout ways. On the contrary, I have shown it directly, there where it lies immediately, in the will, which reveals itself to every one directly as the in-itself of his own phenomenal being.

And it is also this immediate knowledge of his own will out of which in human consciousness the conception of _freedom_ springs; for certainly the will, as world-creating, as thing in itself, is free from the principle of sufficient reason, and therewith from all necessity, thus is completely independent, free, and indeed almighty. Yet, in truth, this only holds good of the will in itself, not of its manifestations, the individuals, who, just through the will itself, are unalterably determined as its manifestations in time. But in the ordinary consciousness, unenlightened by philosophy, the will is at once confused with its manifestation, and what belongs only to the former is attributed to the latter, whence arises the illusion of the unconditioned freedom of the individual. Therefore Spinoza says rightly that if the projected stone had consciousness, it would believe that it flew of its own free will. For certainly the in-itself of the stone also is the will, which alone is free; but, as in all its manifestations, here also, where it appears as a stone, it is already fully determined. But of all this enough has already been said in the text of this work.

Kant fails to understand and overlooks this immediate origin of the conception of freedom in every human consciousness, and therefore he now places (p. 533; V. 561) the source of that conception in a very subtle speculation, through which the unconditioned, to which the reason must always tend, leads us to hypostatise the conception of freedom, and it is only upon this transcendent Idea of freedom that the practical conception of it is supposed to be founded. In the "Critique of Practical Reason," -- 6, and p. 158 of the fourth and 235 of Rosenkranz's edition, he yet deduces this last conception differently by saying that the categorical imperative presupposes it. The speculative Idea is accordingly only the primary source of the conception of freedom for the sake of this presupposition, but here it obtains both significance and application.

Neither, however, is the case. For the delusion of a perfect freedom of the individual in his particular actions is most lively in the conviction of the least cultivated man who has never reflected, and it is thus founded on no speculation, although often a.s.sumed by speculation from without. Thus only philosophers, and indeed only the most profound of them, are free from it, and also the most thoughtful and enlightened of the writers of the Church.

It follows, then, from all that has been said, that the true source of the conception of freedom is in no way essentially an inference, either from the speculative Idea of an unconditioned cause, nor from the fact that it is presupposed by the categorical imperative. But it springs directly from the consciousness in which each one recognises himself at once as the _will_, _i.e._, as that which, as the thing in itself, has not the principle of sufficient reason for its form, and which itself depends upon nothing, but on which everything else rather depends. Every one, however, does not recognise himself at once with the critical and reflective insight of philosophy as a determined manifestation of this will which has already entered time, as we might say, an act of will distinguished from that will to live itself; and, therefore, instead of recognising his whole existence as an act of his freedom, he rather seeks for freedom in his individual actions. Upon this point I refer the reader to my prize-essay on the freedom of the will.

Now if Kant, as he here pretends, and also apparently did in earlier cases, had merely inferred the thing in itself, and that with the great inconsistency of an inference absolutely forbidden by himself, what a remarkable accident would it then be that here, where for the first time he approaches the thing in itself more closely and explains it, he should recognise in it at once the _will_, the free will showing itself in the world only in temporal manifestations! I therefore really a.s.sume, though it cannot be proved, that whenever Kant spoke of the thing in itself, in the obscure depths of his mind he already always indistinctly thought of the will. This receives support from a pa.s.sage in the preface to the second edition of the "Critique of Pure Reason," pp. xxvii. and xxviii., in Rosenkranz's edition, p. 677 of the Supplement.

For the rest, it is just this predetermined solution of the sham third conflict that affords Kant the opportunity of expressing very beautifully the deepest thoughts of his whole philosophy. This is the case in the whole of the "Sixth Section of the Antinomy of Pure Reason;" but, above all, in the exposition of the opposition between the empirical and the intelligible character, p. 534-550; V. 562-578, which I number among the most admirable things that have ever been said by man. (As a supplemental explanation of this pa.s.sage, compare a parallel pa.s.sage in the Critique of Practical Reason, p. 169-179 of the fourth edition, or p. 224-231 of Rosenkranz's edition.) It is yet all the more to be regretted that this is here not in its right place, partly because it is not found in the way which the exposition states, and therefore could be otherwise deduced than it is, partly because it does not fulfil the end for which it is there-the solution of the sham antinomy. The intelligible character, the thing in itself, is inferred from the phenomenon by the inconsistent use of the category of causality beyond the sphere of all phenomena, which has already been sufficiently condemned. In this case the will of man (which Kant ent.i.tles reason, most improperly, and with an unpardonable breach of all use of language) is set up as the thing in itself, with an appeal to an unconditioned ought, the categorical imperative, which is postulated without more ado.

Now, instead of all this, the plain open procedure would have been to start directly from the will, and prove it to be the in-itself of our own phenomenal being, recognised without any mediation; and then to give that exposition of the empirical and the intelligible character to explain how all actions, although necessitated by motives, yet, both by their author and by the disinterested judge, are necessarily and absolutely ascribed to the former himself and alone, as depending solely upon him, to whom therefore guilt and merit are attributed in respect of them. This alone was the straight path to the knowledge of that which is not phenomenon, and therefore will not be found by the help of the laws of the phenomenon, but is that which reveals itself through the phenomenon, becomes knowable, objectifies itself-the will to live. It would then have had to be exhibited merely by a.n.a.logy as the inner nature of every phenomenon. Then, however, it certainly could not have been said that in lifeless or even animal nature no faculty can be thought except as sensuously conditioned (p. 546; V. 574), which in Kant's language is simply saying that the explanation, according to the law of causality, exhausts the inner nature of these phenomena, and thus in their case, very inconsistently, the thing in itself disappears. Through the false position and the roundabout deduction according with it which the exposition of the thing in itself has received from Kant, the whole conception of it has also become falsified. For the will or the thing in itself, found through the investigation of an unconditioned cause, appears here related to the phenomenon as cause to effect. But this relation exists only within the phenomenal world, therefore presupposes it, and cannot connect the phenomenal world itself with what lies outside it, and is _toto genere_ different from it.

Further, the intended end, the solution of the third antinomy by the decision that both sides, each in a different sense, are right, is not reached at all. For neither the thesis nor the ant.i.thesis have anything to do with the thing in itself, but entirely with the phenomenon, the objective world, the world as idea. This it is, and absolutely nothing else, of which the thesis tries to show, by means of the sophistry we have laid bare, that it contains unconditioned causes, and it is also this of which the ant.i.thesis rightly denies that it contains such causes.