finite and eternal; Matter finite and transitory. Or rather, Matter, if it could be considered by itself, would be a mere negation, and is incapable of being expressed without its opposite. For transience, for example, implies a certain duration. The material Universe, therefore, is an embodied contradiction, and Space of course a mere suspension or abstraction of this. Thus Space is both the affirmative condition and the negation of Extension; for there is no unlimited Extension, and limitation is equivalent to negation.

So of Time. It differs from Space only as quality from quantity; Intension from Extension; the inward from the outward sense, so called. As Matter is limited in extent, so also it is transient in substance; and as Space contains both extension and limitation, so Time is embodied Change, i. e. persistence and transience: we cannot arrest any particle of it, as the Present, for as we pause, it is already Past. Every-day experience shows us that our notion of Time depends upon the number of events that have successively impressed us and then given place to others. Amid a rapid succession of interesting events, a week, when past, seems a month, and a month a year, for we date from each succeeding event. On the other hand, to measure Time for economic purpose, we employ astronomic changes, since here the succession is unvarying.

It is the profound remark of an ancient Hindoo book, that Time is the connection of Matter and Spirit. And the same is true of Space.

The interesting point here, and that to which the preceding inquiries tend, is this: That not the Transcendental Ideas alone, but the commonest and simplest experience must necessarily contain a contradiction, to the Understanding. Time is the contradiction of Eternity, yet also of the moment, or point in Time; Space is the opposition of Unity, yet also of the point in Space. And it is also very remarkable that Kant in the table which he gives of the different classes of possible judgments, and also in his table of Categories, or classes under which all pure conceptions of the Understanding may be reduced, has in each instance distributed them under various heads, by threes, of which two are contraries and the third their result; without giving any deduction, or reason for so doing. Thus under the head of Quantity, in judgment, he gives: Universal, Particular, and Special; and under the same head in the Categories, he gives: Unity, Multiplicity, and Totality; and so on through the whole. The truth is that each of these classes contains, not only three kinds of judgment, or of conceptions, but also the three elements necessary to every judgment and every conception; viz. the contradiction and its result. Thus if I say: This paper is white, here we have the general attribute, white, the limitation, to this piece of paper, (negation of other paper); and the result, this special piece of paper. So of all con

ceptions, and so of all knowledge; there is no possible act of cognition that does not embrace this element of contradiction. It is the combination of outside and inside, light and darkness, extent and limitation, requisite to every sensuous impression; and it is the puzzle in the highest problems that employ the mind of man. Thus in Civil Government, the coexistence of personal freedom, (which supposes each individual supreme and unlimited), with Society, in which he is only a part. So in Religion, the fierce disputes that have agitated the world now for eighteen centuries, arise solely from the impossibility, and at the same time the ever-recurring necessity, of conceiving Man to be at once human and divine, finite and infinite; and the difficulty of reconciling the doctrine of Immortality and possible perfection, with the common views of humanity, on any other ground. A finite immortal is the most tremendous of contradictions. This is the cause of the horror with which the doctrine of the mere humanity of Jesus Christ is looked upon by most persons.

But these contradictions and these impossibilities are such only to the Understanding; that is, the mind employed only with particulars. The contradiction truly exists in the Universe, and to him who does not transcend it, does not see it and its contrary united in an harmonious synthesis, it is final. But in reality it is superficial, and Reason, or the mind contemplating things as a Whole, readily resolves it. Then it is no longer contradiction, but the necessary organism of the Idea.

Kant, from his point of view, was quite right in making knowledge subjective only, for he confines his inquiries as to the Cognitive faculty entirely to the Understanding, or subjective Reason, to the very nature of which, this antagonism of the subjective and objective, and their absolute separation, is altogether essential.

There is another branch of Kant's enquiry, touched upon in the beginning of these remarks, but which our limits forbid our discussing at much length; leading, however, to the same point. This is the distinction he makes between the phenomenon, or appearance of a thing, and the thing itself, and his doctrine that we can know nothing of the latter, but that all our perception and knowledge is confined to the former. This evidently follows from his premises.

For if all our intercourse with things is that of one thing with another, it must evidently be merely outward, like all relations of things to each other.

If we bring two bodies together, they touch only their outer surfaces; an inward union is impossible. Modern Chemistry has shown experimentally that the transformations of Matter are merely apparent, and consist solely of various combinations of the same particles. Bodies apparently the most distinct, for example, starch, gum, sugar, fat, and the woody fibre of

finds certain conceptions in the mind, not only unconnected with, but, by their very nature, transcending all possibility of Experience. For example, our conceptions of God, Freedom, and Immortality, to which no possible sensuous experience can be adequate. Such conceptions Kant calls Transcendental Ideas; and the faculty conceiving them, Reuson. The Transcendental Ideas lay claim to absolute certainty and objectivity, without reference to Experience. This is evidently in contradiction to the theory of Knowledge according to the Understanding. Finite perception is deceptive, and must appeal to Experience as the test of its correctness. The claims of the Transcendental Ideas to theoretic Knowledge, therefore, must be considered as an overweening pretence, and they should rather be called transcendent, than transcendental. They cannot give us any information as to the nature of any object; but, at most, like empirical conceptions, declare some law of the subject. And in support of this he shows that every Transcendental Idea contains a contradiction; that is, when we endeavour to give it a theoretic application, to declare what it asserts concerning its object, two opposite propositions of equal apparent truth are the result. Thus our idea as to the extent of the Universe, it is equally easy to maintain that it is infinite, or that it is finite; eternal, or having originated in Time, and so on. And these Antinomies of Pure Reason, as he calls them, he shows are inherent in all Ideas.

To the Transcendental Ideas he accordingly assigns a merely subjective application.

Wherever the Subject and the Object coincide, there, according to him, is the true province of the Transcendental Ideas, for then they have objective validity. Thus in the practical Ideas, as Kant styles them; for instance the Idea of Duty; here the conception (Subject) and the Object, (the course of life to be pursued,) coincide. So of the idea of God. Considered theoretically, that is, if we attempt to discover his nature, we are baffled and fall into contradictions, from the weakness of human powers;-such conceptions are transcendent, not transcendental. But considering God as the foundation of the moral order of the Universe, of the idea of Duty, we are in no danger of error, for here both ends of the problem are within our reach.

Kant's skepticism is therefore wholly theoretical; and he consoles himself for the unwelcome results of his inquiries by the reflection that all the practical and solid interests of humanity remain untouched; and that only our vain assumption of knowledge, unsuited to our nature and position, is affected. It is of no importance whether our notions of God are correct, theoretically, or not; it is sufficient that we have a subjective (practical) knowledge of him, in the Idea of Duty.

Kant's method, as already explained, is empirical, or so to say, narrative. He begins with certain universally-admitted facts, and proceeds

to examine their consequences and relations, as they fall under his hand, but without searching out their foundation or ultimate significance.

Thus he gives us the forms, Space and Time, as if for aught he knows there may be others that he has not yet discovered. And he does not inquire why it is that these and no others should exist. They stand there without our knowing whence or how. But if we examine into their nature we discover them to be essentially connected with the nature of sensuous Perception; and they conduct us to new points of view in relation to Kant's system.

All Knowledge must presuppose some connection between the Subject and the Object; the mind and the thing; and whichever it may be that acts on the other, there is at all events a communication between them. And more. over this empirical communication must depend upon an original and essential connection. If we could imagine two essentially and primarily distinct kinds of Matter, they could not act upon each other, nor could there be any communication between them. For Matter can act or be acted upon only according to its laws. But the laws of Matter are its essence, and if they act according to the same laws they must be identical. It is necessary, therefore, and an antecedent condition of the perception of things, that both they and we should be parts of one identical nature. So too in proceeding beyond mere sensuous perception, the abstract rules formed by the Understanding, e. g. the common hypotheses in Physics, presuppose a like identity, for they are formed by generalization, and this is impossible without at least a dim idea of a common centre of all things. The reason why animals, or men reduced to a mere animal existence, do not generalize nor form rules, except to a very limited extent, is that this Idea is not present in their consciousness, (or only very dimly,) but exists outside of them, as Instinct.

So that the simplest Experience presupposes an entire continuity throughout the Universe as its fundamental condition. This series or continuity, considered abstractly, is Space. Space Universe; for it belongs to subjective perception is not the idea, but the abstraction of the inaterial and Understanding, which have nothing to do with Ideas; but it is a sufficient recognition, by the sensuous faculty, of what the Reason af

terwards comes to know as concrete Truth. Thus we cannot imagine a limitation of Space, nor of a place where it is not. The edge, or boundary of Space, or a vacuum where there is Extension without Space, is an absurdity. And it is equally impossible to imagine an object not in Space.

Space is in fact the abstraction of the Infinite displayed in the Finite. For Matter, though necessarily connected with and supported by Spirit, is yet its direct opposite. Every one of the qualities of Matter is antagonistic to the corresponding spiritual quality. Thus Spirit is in

finite and eternal; Matter finite and transitory. Or rather, Matter, if it could be considered by itself, would be a mere negation, and is incapable of being expressed without its opposite. For transience, for example, implies a certain duration. The material Universe, therefore, is an embodied contradiction, and Space of course a mere suspension or abstraction of this. Thus Space is both the affirmative condition and the negation of Extension; for there is no unlimited Extension, and limitation is equivalent to negation.

So of Time. It differs from Space only as quality from quantity; Intension from Extension; the inward from the outward sense, so called. As Matter is limited in extent, so also it is transient in substance; and as Space contains both extension and limitation, so Time is embodied Change, i. e. persistence and transience: we cannot arrest any particle of it, as the Present, for as we pause, it is already Past. Every-day experience shows us that our notion of Time depends upon the number of events that have successively impressed us and then given place to others. Amid a rapid succession of interesting events, a week, when past, seems a month, and a month a year, for we date from each succeeding event. On the other hand, to measure Time for economic purpose, we employ astronomic changes, since here the succession is unvarying.

It is the profound remark of an ancient Hindoo book, that Time is the connection of Matter and Spirit. And the same is true of Space.

The interesting point here, and that to which the preceding inquiries tend, is this: That not the Transcendental Ideas alone, but the commonest and simplest experience must necessarily contain a contradiction, to the Understanding. Time is the contradiction of Eternity, yet also of the moment, or point in Time; Space is the opposition of Unity, yet also of the point in Space. And it is also very remarkable that Kant in the table which he gives of the different classes of possible judgments, and also in his table of Categories, or classes under which all pure conceptions of the Understanding may be reduced, has in each instance distributed them under various heads, by threes, of which two are contraries and the third their result; without giving any deduction, or reason for so doing. Thus under the head of Quantity, in judgment, he gives: Universal, Particular, and Special; and under the same head in the Categories, he gives: Unity, Multiplicity, and Totality; and so on through the whole. The truth is that each of these classes contains, not only three kinds of judgment, or of conceptions, but also the three elements necessary to every judgment and every conception; viz. the contradiction and its result. Thus if I say: This paper is white, here we have the general attribute, white, the limitation, to this piece of paper, (negation of other paper); and the result, this special piece of paper. So of all con

ceptions, and so of all knowledge; there is no possible act of cognition that does not embrace this element of contradiction. It is the combination of outside and inside, light and darkness, extent and limitation, requisite to every sensuous impression; and it is the puzzle in the highest problems that employ the mind of man. Thus in Civil Government, the coexistence of personal freedom, (which supposes each indi vidual supreme and unlimited), with Society, in which he is only a part. So in Religion, the fierce disputes that have agitated the world now for eighteen centuries, arise solely from the impossibility, and at the same time the ever-recurring necessity, of conceiving Man to be at once human and divine, finite and infinite; and the difficulty of reconciling the doctrine of Immortality and possible perfection, with the common views of humanity, on any other ground. A finite immortal is the most tremendous of contradictions. This is the cause of the horror with which the doctrine of the mere humanity of Jesus Christ is looked upon by most persons.

But these contradictions and these impossibilities are such only to the Understanding; that is, the mind employed only with particulars. The contradiction truly exists in the Universe, and to him who does not transcend it, does not see it and its contrary united in an harmonious synthesis, it is final. But in reality it is superficial, and Reason, or the mind contemplating things as a Whole, readily resolves it. Then it is no longer contradiction, but the necessary organism of the Idea.

Kant, from his point of view, was quite right in making knowledge subjective only, for he confines his inquiries as to the Cognitive faculty entirely to the Understanding, or subjective Reason, to the very nature of which, this antagonism of the subjective and objective, and their absolute separation, is altogether essential.

There is another branch of Kant's enquiry, touched upon in the beginning of these remarks, but which our limits forbid our discussing at much length; leading, however, to the same point. This is the distinction he makes between the phenomenon, or appearance of a thing, and the thing itself, and his doctrine that we can know nothing of the latter, but that all our perception and knowledge is confined to the former. This evidently follows from his premises.

For if all our intercourse with things is that of one thing with another, it must evidently be merely outward, like all relations of things to each other.

If we bring two bodies together, they touch only their outer surfaces; an inward union is impossible. Modern Chemistry has shown experimentally that the transformations of Matter are merely apparent, and consist solely of various combinations of the same particles. Bodies apparently the most distinct, for example, starch, gum, sugar, fat, and the woody fibre of

plants are the same or nearly so, in composition. For Matter, as has been well said, has no inside, but only outside, and is capable only of outward relations.

This Kant shows, psychologically, in our sensuous perceptions. For what do we after all mean, when we say we perceive a thing, for instance a tree? Plainly nothing more than that we see certain colours and outlines apparently connected and belonging to some thing.

But whether there is anything really existing in that place, or whether it be only something within myself, or the effect of another thing, I cannot (with absolute certainty) tell. For our senses are our only evidence, and they pretend to nothing more than a perception of appearances. To another intelligence, or to dif ferently constructed senses, the object may appear quite different. At first sight, indeed, it might seem that we do entirely rely upon the report of our senses; but let any one compare his knowledge of any outward fact with his perception of a mathematical truth, and he will find the former much the weaker. We may admit the possibility of our being persuaded to change our notions as to the colour, shape, and other qualities of any object; but we cannot for an instant admit the possibility of being convinced that two and two do not make four. Now evidently there are no degrees of certainty; we either know, or we do not know.

Kant accordingly comes to the conclusion that we cannot, properly speaking, know anything of the real nature or substance of objects: and that all we can hope to know about them is their effect upon ourselves; or at the most, the forms and rules of this subjective effect.

Nevertheless our claim of objective knowledge continues: in spite of the contradiction of the Understanding, there is an instinctive feeling that it is not absolute, but only the dif ferent sides of one truth. And in truth the contradiction here too belongs only to the Understanding, transcending its province. It is true, that of anything absolutely objective, really foreign to our nature, we can know nothing objectively; and more than this, as we have seen above, we could not have even subjective knowledge of an absolute object; it would be for us a mere non-entity.

But this antithesis of Subject and Object is entirely subordinate and belongs wholly to the Understanding Reflection and consciousness indeed by nature require it, and depend upon it; but it is the prerogative of Reason to see through and reconcile all distinctions and oppositions, not indeed annihilating them, but appointing to them their proper sphere.

So that this contradiction to the Understanding is so far from interfering with the validity of the Transcendental Ideas (conceptions of the Reason) that it is essential to their nature. Knowledge is not rendered impossible by it, but all knowledge, down to the merest sensu

ous perception, is shown by Kant himself (properly understood), to contain and require it.

Kant is not the only philosopher who has arrived at these contradictions. They are necessarily present in the Understanding; and in all empirical philosophy, logically carried out, this is made evident. The only escape is either in the feebleness that cannot understand its own results; or in wilfully ignoring them, which is the course pursued by Cousin, and more avowedly by the "Scotch School."

But the interesting feature in Kant's inquiry, and that which gives it its place in the History of Philosophy, arises from the faithfulness with which it is made. His rigid and faithful examination of facts of consciousness brought him to principles, which his adherence to the common point of view made him reject or overlook, but which in fact involved a revolution in Philosophy. His close analysis revealed the contradiction contained in those propositions which seem most solid and certain to the Understanding, and this showed the true province and the limitations of this faculty (or rather this direction of the mind), by pushing to their necessary consequences the common principles. It is not sufficient to contradict or refute Error; it is requisite moreover to show that it is an embodied self-contradiction and self-refutation, and to see this the repugnant elements must be displayed. It is this dialectic that makes the value of Kant's Critique, and it is not the less interesting for being unconscious.

Among the extracts we have given from Kant's writings, that from the Critique of the Judgment is intended as a specimen of his method and style in his strictly scientific works. This book is remarkable as displaying in the most striking manner the contradiction above alluded to. Thus in his principle that Beauty is a subjective fitness; when it is evident, and indeed he himself has explained, that fitness necessarily implies an object, something for which the thing is fit; and when he speaks of a "normal regularity without law," etc.,- here and throughout we have the material standpoint, and also the idealistic, to which the former necessarily leads. This extract may also serve as a specimen of Kant's scientific style, which is perfectly uniform throughout his more important works. Its crabbed, harsh character, and the frequent use of unusual words, or at least of words used in unusual senses, will no doubt excuse us in the eyes of our readers from giving extracts of sufficient length, to afford any adequate means of judging of Kant's general merits as a philosopher, But what is given may be enough at least to correct or prevent some false impressions; being as we have said, as far as it goes, a fair specimen of the whole.

The other extracts exhibit Kant rather as a philanthropist and a well-read scholar than as a philosopher, and both in matter and in style are much less abstruse and peculiar.

properly speaking, so infinitely complex) a mass into a coherent experience.

This harmony of Nature, amid the complexity of her particular laws, with our need of finding in ber, general principles, must, as far as our faculties reach, be considered accidental, but yet as a necessary postulate of our Understanding, and hence as a fitness in Nature to the aim of our Understanding in its striving after Knowledge. The general laws of the Understanding, which are at the same time laws of Nature, are as necessary to Nature (though 'subjective, or' arising from spontaneity) as the laws of motion. • But that the order

of Nature under particular laws in all their possible variety and dissimilarity, transcending our powers of comprehension, is yet in reality fitted to our cognitive faculties, is, so far as we can see, accidental; and the discovery of this order is the business of the Understanding, which is thus directed to its true function, the introduction of unity of principle among these various particular laws. This design the Judgment is forced to ascribe to Nature; since the Understanding can furnish no such law.

The Judgment is thus in possession of an a priori principle of the possibility of Nature, but it is only a subjective one, whereby a law is prescribed, not to Nature, but to itself in its study of Nature. This law we may call the law of Specification in Nature, as to her empirical laws.

This is not seen a priori in Nature, but postulated, as the principle according to which we must conceive the subdivision of her general laws, and the subordination under them of her particular laws. So that when it is said that Nature subdivides her general laws according to a principle of fitness to our cognitive faculty,

we neither give a law to Nature, nor learn one from her by Experience, though this may confirm it. For this only is intended; that however Nature may be constituted as to her general principles, we must at all events pursue our study of her empirical laws according to this principle and the maxims founded on it; since it is only so far as this is done, that we can proceed in the employment of our Understanding in Experience, and the acquisition of Knowledge.

The attaining of any end is connected with a feeling of Pleasure, and where the condition of attaining the end is an a priori notion; (as in the present case, a principle of the reflective Judgment), the feeling of Pleasure is placed on a foundation a priori, and of universal validity.

Now although we do not and cannot trace the slightest feeling of Pleasure from the coincidence of our perceptions with the laws and universal ideas of Nature, (the Categories); since the Understanding proceeds without 'conscious' aim, by the necessity of its nature; yet on the other hand the discovery that two or more apparently heterogeneous laws are em

braced under one common principle, is the occasion of very marked satisfaction, often indeed of an admiration, which does not cease even when we are familiar with the object.

It is true that in many cases' we no longer feel any pleasure to arise from the comprehensibility of Nature, and her unity amid the divisions of genera and species (whereby alone Experience and knowledge of her particular laws is possible); but it must certainly have been felt at one time; and it is only because the commonest experience would not be possible without this harmony, that it has gradually lost itself in the mere cognition, and is no longer distinguished. On the other

hand, a view of Nature which should declare at the outset, that at the slightest advance beyond the commonest experience we should come upon a heterogeneousness of her laws, making the combination of particular laws under general principles of Experience, impossible for our Understanding, would be altogether repulsive to us: for this is opposed to the principle of the (subjective) harmony of Nature in her divisions, with the reflective Judgment.

This postulate of the Judgment however is so undefined as to the extent to which this principle of the ideal fitness of Nature to our cognitive faculty is to be allowed, that if we should be told that a deeper or wider knowledge of Nature from observation must at last reveal to us a complexity in her laws, not reducible to a single principle by any human understanding; we should have nothing to object: though it is more agreeable to us when hopes are afforded, that the more we penetrate into Nature, or become acquainted with outward, as yet unknown laws, the more simple and consonant we shall find her principles, amid all the apparent heterogeneousness of her empirical laws.

THE NOTION OF ADAPTATION IN NATURE, APPLIED TO ESTHETICS.

The merely subjective in the notion of an object; i. e. its relation to the Subject, and not to the thing, forms the aesthetic character of the notion; but that which aids, or may be employed in determining the nature of the thing as an object of knowledge, is its logical validity.

*

In the cognition of a sensible object, both these relations occur. * * * Sensation expresses both the merely subjective in our notions of outward things, and also their material (real) principle, whereby their actual existence is declared. * * But that subjective element in a notion, which can in no case form part of a cognition, is the pleasure or displeasure connected with it. For by pleasure or the contrary, I know nothing of the object, though the sentiment may result from a cog

* Esthetic with Kant means sensuous; dependent on, or belonging to the senses. Tr.