THE CROWNING PHASE OF THE 
CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 



MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 

LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 

TORONTO 



THE 

CROWNING PHASE 

OF THE 

CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

A STUDY IN 
KANT S CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT 



BY 

R. A. C. MACMILLAN, M.A., D.PHIL. 




MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 

ST. MARTIN S STREET, LONDON 

1912 



COPYRIGHT 



TO 
MY MOTHER 



PREFACE 

THIS little work is sufficiently described as a study in 
Kant s Critique of Judgment. But I have made extensive 
use of Kant s other writings, and perhaps it would be 
more accurate to say that the Critique of Judgment is 
made the basis in an interpretation of Kant s entire 
system, with a view to expressing the highest standpoint 
of his thought. The title of so small a work may seem 
somewhat pretentious, but it is chosen to indicate the 
author s opinion that Kant s Theory of Knowledge is 
not completely understood until it is followed as it 
passes into the last phase of his system. An essential 
problem in this study is naturally the relation of 
Aesthetic to Teleology. This problem is the distinctive 
feature of the Critique of Judgment, and must be taken as 
a serious contribution to philosophy. Our best authority 
for this point of view is Kant s own mental history, as 
it is given in his correspondence and. academic lectures. 
To judge from the trend of recent speculation, the 
Critique of Judgment is about to come into its kingdom 
for the second time, and this very conjunction of 
Aesthetic and Teleology, which has been for so long 
neglected as a literary enigma, will become the natural 
formula for the philosophy of the twentieth century. 
It should be remarked here that, coincident with the 
motive of the present work, the treatment of Aesthetic 
has only been undertaken incidentally as the typical 
illustration of Kant s metaphysical position, and no 
pretension whatsoever is made to a knowledge of 



viii PREFACE 

art-criticism. It was also inevitable in a study which 
seeks to commend Kant to the modern mind, that some 
attempt should have been made to bring him into line 
with recent philosophers. In particular, the influence 
of M. Bergson may be noticed. But it would be unfair 
to suppose that I have attributed to Kant ideas which 
are foreign to his own ; and, indeed, I may be allowed 
to say that I arrived at my interpretation of Kant before 
I had read M. Bergson s works. Mr. Creed Meredith s 
recent book on Kant s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment did 
not come into my hands until after my manuscript was 
sent to the publishers. 

It is with a feeling of deep gratitude that I acknow 
ledge my indebtedness to Sir Henry Jones. With 
characteristic kindness he has read the whole of the 
proofs, and I have availed myself extensively of his 
invaluable help. The works to which my chief obliga 
tions are due are those of Caird, Adamson, Basch, 
Cohen and Stadler. I wish to take this opportunity 
of thanking Professor Boutroux of Paris for his kind 
courtesy in directing me to the French literature on 
the subject. The second chapter originally appeared 
as an article in Mind, and is here reprinted with some 
additions by the editor s permission. The generous 
appreciation which Professor Stout incidentally expressed 
for this article, was a strong encouragement to proceed 
in an undertaking for which I have increasingly felt 
myself to be incompetent. I have also to thank my 
brother, Rev. E. Macmillan, B.D., of Pretoria, for 
reading the whole of the manuscript in type and for 
suggesting many improvements in the text. 

Since going to press, this book has been accepted 
as thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
by the University of Glasgow. 

It only remains for me to add, that the book was 
written in its final form under circumstances of peculiar 
difficulty. It was a serious interruption to my work 
when I was called to the care of a new Parish in a new 



PREFACE ix 

country, and I had to take up the broken threads 
under very unfavourable conditions. I have also, in 
consequence, been deprived of the assistance which I 
should have sought from my University Professors and 
other experts in this particular subject of study, just at 
the moment when their help was most needed. I shall 
not therefore be surprised if the book should prove an 
easy prey to criticism. But if the critic knew the sincere 
modesty and hesitation with which this volume is 
launched into the world of letters, he would lay aside 
his gory spear and enter the field with a sword of lath. 
I have at least the satisfaction which every author feels 
who writes to any purpose, that I have seen more than I 
have been able to express, and may console myself with 
the lines of Propertius : 



si deficiant vires, audacia certe 
Laus erlt : in magnis et voluisse sat est. 

R. A. C. MACMILLAN. 

JOHANNESBURG, Mar. 22&lt;/, 1912. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 
THE SEARCH FOR A NEW PRINCIPLE 

Difficulty of the Critique of Judgment chiefly connected with peculiar 
nature of its problem : double use of Teleology as the conception 
of subjective harmony and as a concept of Nature Summary 
statement of Kant s doctrine with a view to the discovery of a 
new principle Two main powers constitute the human mind, 
Understanding (discursive) and Reason (intuitive) These two - 
powers seek to supplement each other and thus constitute a new 
power, the Theoretic Reason, which is indifferently an extension 
of Understanding in its effort to become intuitive and an exten 
sion of Reason in its effort to become discursive Theoretic 
Reason or Inductive Hypothesis is therefore more concrete than 
either of its constituent factors But Theoretic Reason has only 
pragmatic validity, and if taken as an ultimate interpretation of 
Reality leads to illusion : hence the despair of Metaphysics and 
the need for a new principle This unsatisfactory result due to a ^ 
limitation in the constitution of the human mind In the analysis 
of knowledge we find that we are limited by something which is 
given ; this is Sensation Sensation inseparable from the notion 
of Space Kant sets out with the erroneous view that sensations 
are independent of Space In the Aesthetic Space is said to be i 
a priori as the object of perception : Kant means to say that it is \ 
only a priori as a power of perception In the Subjective Deduc- * 
tion this erroneous view, which arose from Kant s anxiety to 
distinguish between Sense and Thought as separate faculties, 
fades into the background ; now it is shown that every element 
of sensation, including the perception of space, is due to the 
synthetic activity of the subject The Objective Deduction 
corrects the subjective idealism of this position, by showing that 
synthesis presupposes analysis or previous synthesis What gives 
objectivity to the relations in Knowledge is the Transcendental 
Object This Transcendental Object not to be confused with the 
Supersensible Thing : the former represents only the actual 
relations which constitute Knowledge, or, just that objective 



xii ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

order in sensation which is necessary for the consciousness of our 
own identity ; the latter stands for sensations as they exist in 
themselves, or, as they may be supposed to exist in the Divine 
Mind Comparison with Plato s Philebus Thus the doctrine of 
the Supersensible Thing is a return to Kant s original doctrine of 
Sensation as independent datum But this does not mean that 
the Supersensible Thing is inherently incapable of appearing : 
Kant prefers to think that it is our minds, theoretical and practical, 
which are not adapted for pure perception Even our so-called 
intuitive Reason is abstract, being based on the distinction between 
ought and is Hence the discrepancy in the factors, the 
possible and the actual, which make up both Theory and Practice : 
moral intuition is possible but may not be actually realised ; 
sensation is actual but may not be capable of rational explanation 
But since our apprehension of Reality, with its acknowledged 
defects, is itself due to the influence of the Supersensible, it is 
only natural that we should look to the Supersensible for greater 
completeness in our apprehension -The question, then, put 
forward in the Critique of Judgment is, Has the Supersensible any 
favours for us beyond what is necessary for simple perception or 
the consciousness of our own identity ? Kant finds three such 
favours in artistic phenomena, organic life and moral man ; and 
the higher type of perception corresponding to these objects is 
Reflexion Hence a new problem The factors in both science 
and morality are unequally yoked, the unity (corresponding to the 
notion of possible) being conceived by thought, the parts (corre 
sponding to the notion of actual) being perceived by sense or 
imagination If now it were possible to discover a greater degree 
of facility in the way these factors come together, it would argue 
spontaneity in their relation : our thoughts would not be empty 
possibilities which only come to realisation in sensational shocks, 
but would be inherently actual ; sensations would not be regarded 
as foreign elements, but recognised as if they were the products of 
our spontaneous perception The new principle, which is required 
for this further determination of the Supersensible, is based on 
the analogy of Technical Judgment or the practical application of 
principles -The advantage in this mode of determination is that, 
while we are making a thing, our thoughts are not unduly in 
advance of presentations : possibility and actuality are both present 
to consciousness in an equal degree although vaguely and incom 
pletely Reflexion, therefore, as based on this analogy, will be 
that power of mind for which the factors of experience exist in 
an equal degree of reality but also in their completeness. Pp. 1-38 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xiii 

CHAPTER II 
REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT 

Literary history of the new problem in Kant s mental development 
The distinctive feature of Reflexion that, unlike the Hypothetical 
Reason of the Dialectic, it claims to be a science of the ultimate 
without falling into antinomy Preliminary justification of this new 
science (i) It is first shown that Judgment and Feeling must 
have identity of nature on account of their respective positions as 
corresponding elements in cognate systems of faculties These 
systems are : the wider system of Mental Powers (Gemilthskrafte) 
with its three faculties, Cognition, Feeling, Conation ; and the 
subordinate system of the Cognitive Faculties (Erkenntnissvermogen) 
including Concept, Judgment, Reasoning Kant had already 
derived the categories of Knowledge from the concepts of Under 
standing, and also the maxims of conduct from the principles of 
Reasoning ; what more natural than to expect that Judgment will 
also prove to be the prototype of Feeling ? The striking identity 
of their respective positions in the corresponding systems 
Feeling mediates between Cognition and Conation : in modern 
terms, Feeling is the consequent of Cognition (modification in the 
sensory-continuum) and the precedent to Conation or Desire 
(modification in the motor-continuum) ; if experience be regarded 
as a kinaesthetic-continuum, Feeling will be the self-consciousness of 
experience Again, Judgment mediates between the Concept and 
the Syllogism A concept is a microscopic judgment from which 
the appearance of synthesis has vanished : a syllogism is an exten 
sive judgment in which the synthesis is further developed ; but 
Judgment is the original mental function in which the synthesis 
of whole and part is first seen in the making Therefore Judgment 
is the self-consciousness of Cognition The further important conse 
quence follows that the self-consciousness of both Judgment and 
Feeling is of the same character, viz. indeterminate : the formal 
or contingent relation of subject and predicate in logical judgment 
is the prototype of the indeterminate content of Feeling Hence 
Urteilskraft (The Power of Judgment in general} is the original and 
wider type of Judgment from which scientific or determinant 
judgment is derived, just as the Gemiithskrajte are a wider and 
more original system of faculties than the Erkenntnissvermogen, in 
which Feeling and Judgment are elements respectively (2) 
Judgment and Feeling show a further mark of identity in their 
subjective character The subjectivity of Judgment not at first 
apparent Confusion of meaning in terms l subjective and 
1 objective Objectivity with Kant refers to province rather than 
to content of Judgment, namely, province of sense-objects Hence 
his subjective need not suggest the ordinary contrast with 



xiv ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

1 objective On the contrary, Kant s subjective, like the 
Cartesian use of the term, is what underlies the sense-object, the 
subjective unity of self-consciousness being indistinguishable for 
Kant from the unity of the transcendental object The Judg 
ment is subjective in the sense of personal as distinguished from 
divine or absolute mind Subjectivity of Judgment further 
illustrated by the contrast between Productive and Reproductive 
Imagination The conclusion of this chapter, that while Kant 
appears to reduce Feeling to a form of cognition, he really shows 
that cognition is a product of the spontaneous function of mind 
Hence Reflexion has an original province of its own of which it 
will never be completely despoiled by Science ( Suggested here, 
and further maintained in concluding chapter, that Teleology 
rather than Aesthetic is the connecting link between Nature and 
Freedom). Pp. 39-59 



CHAPTER III 
AESTHETIC AND THE FIRST CANON 

The Critique of Judgment to be regarded as constructive rather than 
critical, in spite of its polemical appearance Kant mistaken in 
his criticism of his predecessors The true meaning of the 
doctrine of Confused Knowledge (cogmtlo sensitive) as taught by 
Baumgarten : it is the content apprehended rather than the act of 
apprehension that is intellectual Baumgarten s position well 
defined in Erdmann s paradoxical statement, that cognitio sensitiva 
is a perception that is (though clear) confused The strength of 
Baumgarten s position, that the content of all perfection is 
intellectual and that therefore it is the same content that is 
differently expressed in Science, Ethicsand Aesthetics Its weakness, 
that the content is properly and only intellectual, so that Aesthetic is 
the beauty of knowledge \pulchrltudo cognitionis) But this is just 
Kant s own error, viz. that significant content is impossible 
without intellectual form On the other hand he saw the contra 
diction in Baumgarten s view, that intellectual relations can be 
apprehended by a non-intellectual mode of apprehension But 
his escape from this contradiction is no advance on Baumgarten : 
for he severs form from content and does not provide Aesthetic 
with a peculiar content of its own The First Canon, that the & 
Judgment of Taste is disinterested Contrast of the Beautiful with 
the Pleasant and the Good unsatisfactory Disinterestedness 
should only mean that we have no interest in the existence of 
objects, or that our interest is confined to their form The implied 
contrast here not the same as that of * form with matter in 
Kant s doctrine of phenomenalism : for space, the form of 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xvr 

phenomena, is excluded by Kant from Aesthetic Put otherwise,. 
Aesthetic is an independent, original interpretation, an apper- 
ceptive function, and therefore of the nature of Judgment On 
the one hand the basis of aesthetical judgment must be sensation 
(cuo-^r/o-is, Empjindung)) on the other hand it is that peculiar form 
of sensation which can never be the concept of an object, vii. 
the feeling of pleasure and pain, that is, the apperception of all 
sensation Must now show difference between aesthetical and 
logical judgment, the latter being also essentially apperceptive 
While the apperceptive function in logical judgment is definitely 
restricted by the systematic end of knowledge, the aesthetical 
judgment is conditioned by no end other than the harmony of 
its processes : in Kant s words, the aesthetical judgment is the 
free-play of Imagination and Understanding Thus Aesthetic 
may be defined as Ideal Judgment Though this means for Kant 
abstract judgment, his theory is capable of a higher interpretation : 
Degrees in subjectivity Art a creative or ideal imitation A 
test-problem in Kant s theory : If the space-form be excluded 
from Aesthetic, what is to be said of geometrical figures which 
are nothing but representations in space r Kant gives no satis 
factory reply But even here his principle holds, viz. that 
Aesthetic takes no cognisance of the existence of objects but only 
of their form, that is, the way in which the subject is affected : 
not the perception but the apperception of a representation in 
space The implied antithesis of geometrical (Greek) and character 
istic (Romantic) Art Kant s false statement of the antithesis as 
between Beauty (meaningless representation) and Art (intentional 
representation) Other views : Lessing, Tolstoi, Croce The 
problem limited by the alternatives whether expression must be 
subordinate to Beauty or Beauty subordinate to expression 
Admitted that pure representations in space, apart from all acquired 
significance, may be beautiful We are not committed, however, 
by this admission to a mimetic theory of Art, for the representa 
tion is not beautiful because Nature gives it but because it is 
chosen Aristotle s view of historical incidents as adapted for 
poetical treatment Tentative solution of the problem : formal 
representations without content may be beautiful, because in their 
destitution of significance they simulate the ideal conditions of 
artistic truth Thus Imitation, in sense of literal reproduction, 
has no place in Aesthetic How far Photography may be con 
sidered a form of Art The superiority of Art that it does not 
rival Nature as actual, but for that reason Art, in its ideal, inde 
pendent world, is able to outrival even Nature Criticism of 
Signer Croce s view that the distinction between perception and 
artistic expression is only quantitative. Pp. 60-94 



xvi ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 
AESTHETIC AND CAUSALITY THE SECOND CANON 

The subjectivity of Aesthetic as disinterested is corrected by the 
Second Canon : that Aesthetic must have universality Com 
parison of the Beautiful with the Pleasant While the aesthetical 
judgment is at once singular and universal, the judgment on the 
Pleasant can only be singular without universality Kant s con 
fusion of transcendental with logical universality The real 
ground of the comparison is Kant s distinction between judgments 
of perception and judgments of experience The contradiction in 
his view of the Pleasant : the basis of the judgment on the 
Pleasant is not sensation but apperception of sensation (feeling of 
pleasure- pain) and the judgment is therefore something more than 
an ordinary judgment of experience, i.e. it is reflective ; on the 
other hand, in order to give the advantage to the Beautiful, Kant 
identifies this basis with empirical sensation and this means for 
Kant that the judgment on the Pleasant is not even an ordinary 
judgment of experience but a purely subjective modification On 
the contrary, the Pleasant is a form of universal experience but 
with a minimum of content ; that is, a parasitic form of consciousness 
Significance of Kant s contrast of the Beautiful with the 
Pleasant expressed in the doctrine of the aesthetic senses The 
universality of Aesthetic essentially the same problem as in Critique 
-of Pure Reason : How are synthetic judgments a priori possible : v 
The Beautiful must be a real connection of elements and at the 
same time a connection which is not simply given in Nature The 
technical deduction of aesthetic universality quite straightforward : 
that the aesthetic disposition must be universal because, as 
indeterminate, psychological process, it is the original implicate in 
all experience What calls for criticism is the original deduction 
in Critique of Pure Reason On the ground of Kant s theory of 
knowledge, the aesthetic disposition will be just that phase of 
mentality which can never be universal because there is no repro 
duction in Imagination His doctrine of Schematism properly 
means that the Schema is a transcendental element and therefore 
original to the nature of thought But to satisfy his rationalistic 
prejudice, the Schema becomes a psychological device : all 
schemata have time-implication and thus he can provide concepts 
of experience distinct from what he calls pure categories 
Criticism of Kant s doctrine of Schematism : (i) There are no 
pure categories which are not already schemata Kant finds his 
first instance of a pure category in geometry e.g. pure conception 
of a circle, a conception which is homogeneous with empirical 
perception of a circle and therefore already schematic But he 
thinks that a pure category has nothing in common with concrete 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xvii 

experience (which is in time as geometrical representations are not), 
presumably because the pure category has no time-implication 
Now, he seems to ask, how does a geometrical conception apply 
immediately to geometrical representations ? By a mental act 
which implies a process in time : e.g. the schema of Number 
Therefore we can think concrete experience if instead of pure 
categories we apply corresponding schemata which have time- 
implication (2) But schemata have no peculiar implication of 
time ; the Schema is not a process in consciousness but the 
consciousness of a process Hence Kant s distinction between 
Reproductive Imagination (in time) and Productive (not in time) 
Only in the latter, here identified with Inner Sense, can we 
speak of Spiel der Kr dfte But the contents of Inner Sense, not 
being subordinate to the rule of Understanding, viz. reproduction 
in Imagination, can only be a contingent conceptual play Hence 
Aesthetic, so far from having a priori universality, would seem to 
lack even that amount of coherence which is necessary to the 
consciousness of our own identity On the other hand, we 
recognise Kant s concrete view of Imagination as a single faculty 
with a double function, productive and reproductive Why then 
does he appear to confine the time-implication to the reproductive 
function ? Because succession in time was the only criterion by 
which he could identify the causal sequence of experience Kant s 
unpretentious theory of Causality justified But his official theory 
in the Second Analogy goes beyond this reasonable position His 
conclusion may be regarded as instance of illicit process : he 
seems to identify the proposition that the consciousness of necessity 
in time is a factor in Causality, with the proposition that the 
consciousness of necessity in time contains Causality * eminently 
But why does Kant throw the whole weight of his proof for 
Causality on Time, and not rather avail himself of intuition in 
space which clearly lies in the background of his argument ? 
Probably because he felt it necessary to account for the difference 
between the two kinds of mental states, inner and outer, indepen 
dently of intuition in space : without appealing to intuition in 
space, he must explain why some mental states should realise 
themselves in space-relations and others not Since all mental 
states are ultimately elements of Inner Sense, the reason for this 
difference between the kinds of mental states must be found within 
Inner Sense Hence the consciousness of determined succession in 
time is consecrated to causal sequence Thus the peculiar contents 
of Inner Sense or the contents of Productive Imagination purchase 
their freedom in Aesthetic only by forfeiting all implication of 
succession in time and therefore all coherence Kant however 
has a double view of Time : besides the empirical representation 
of Time as succession, there is Absolute Time which can never 
be perceived but is felt as duration It is possible to think that 
Kant had this deeper view of Time in mind when he seemed to 



xviii ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

isolate Productive Imagination as a timeless faculty Not only so, 
the aesthetic Imagination as it appears in the Critique of Judgment 
is certainly not timeless ; nor is the aesthetic Understanding 
devoid of schemata But this schematic interpretation of Aesthetic 
demands a modification of Kant s theory of knowledge and 
particularly his doctrine of Inner Sense. Pp. 95-140 



CHAPTER V 
ANCIENT AND MODERN THE THIRD CANON 

Like the last moment in the Hegelian triad, the Third Canon is a 
restatement of the First with a deeper significance : While in 
the Second Canon Aesthetic gains universality at the risk of being 
identified with cognitive process, the Third reverts to the first 
conception of Aesthetic as disinterested under the deeper concep 
tion of indeterminate coherence (purposiveness without a purpose) 
In this canon Kant s positive and negative views of Freedom 
struggle for the mastery Conflicting tendencies of Eighteenth 
Century : The Aufkldrung and its negative conception of Free 
dom : Positive tendency of the Sturm und Drang Kant s want of 
sympathy with the latter, and his false antithesis of Ancient and 
Modern Schiller s true interpretation of the antithesis in his 
Naive and Sentimental Poetry : distinction between formal and 
characteristic Beauty only logical Kant adopted the negative 
conception of Freedom of the Aufklarung His distinction 
between Free and Dependent Beauty (pulchritudo vaga and 
pulchritude adhaerens) False antithesis of meaning and expression 
in Art : no successful expression without artistic motive Schiller s 
criticism of the Aufkldrung ; shows how its contingent conception 
of Freedom did not realise the Infinite but an in finite _/?/ A?, an 

inexhaustible material, the indeterminate of sense-affection 

Kant s rigorism saves his theory from this disastrous consequence : 
his exclusion of Charm and Emotion from Aesthetic Charm 
excluded on the ground that it is empirical : Kant s doctrine of 
Sensation (Empjindung] as the specifically empirical element in 
Perception (W ahrnehmung) Thus Aesthetic is form exclusive of 
matter But this is not the aesthetical conception of form, which 
transcends elementary distinction of form and matter, but mathe 
matical form Kant s mistaken conception of aesthetic purity 
illustrated in his theory of the arts : it is the drawing that is 
essential in Painting, the rhythm in Music Criticism of his 
theory of Music : tones are not any kind of analogical symbolism 
but direct expression Kant s highest conception of Music a 
wealth of extensive, not intensive, symbolism Schopenhauer s 
theory, that the true parallel is not between musical expression 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xix 

and linguistic signs but between musical expression and Nature 
Music an independent articulation of the Supersensible, co 
ordinate with the language of Creation Significance of Kant s 
exclusion of Charm brought out by Schiller in his Anmuth und 
Wiirde : Charm, like the Belt of Venus, may be an objective 
characteristic without being an essential constituent of the Beauti 
ful Kant s uncompromising attitude to Emotion (Riihrung) as a 
possible factor in aesthetic experience His narrow view of 
Emotion as exclusively volitional Moral Emotion as the feeling 
for Nature not aesthetical for Kant or Schiller : the former 
regards it as intellectual interest in the Beautiful, the latter as 
moral sentiment Both Kant and Schiller failed to assimilate the 
Sublime to Aesthetic Their error consists in a false conception 
of Immediacy In contrast with Science Aesthetic is immediate, 
but there are degrees of immediacy in Aesthetic : the feeling for 
Nature not an external interest beyond " the mere act of judging," 
but the consciousness of depth in aesthetic content Kant s 
singular admission of mediation in Aesthetic as expressed in the 
principle that the pleasure must follow the judgment He does not 
mean that the pleasure must be consequent on a prior Intellectual 
act but on a prior act of Reflexion (Beurtheilung, which is psycho 
logical rather than logical), i.e. there is mediation peculiar to 
Aesthetic itself Thus the whole of Nature, as mediated through 
Reflexion, may be regarded as the content of Aesthetic Original 
problem of Critique of Judgment was the union of the abstract 
factors in this poetic idea of Nature, viz. Sense and Reason or 
Mechanism and Freedom Since he cannot find the union of 
these factors in the abstract conception of Beauty, Kant professes 
to find it in the Moral Ideal (Beauty of Character) But the 
Moral Ideal is only the Idea of Humanity, the abstract Man of 
Freedom in which Nature and Freedom are never completely 
reconciled Only in Aesthetic do we find the Idea/, or the 
realisation of the Idea in individual form ; i.e. the reconciliation of 
Mechanism and Freedom must be found in Characteristic Beauty 
and not in the Beauty of Character This conclusion confirmed 
by Kant s theory of Genius : the supersensible substrate in 
Aesthetic is not abstract Freedom but Human Nature in its 
catholicity : hence the aesthetic powers must be extended beyond 
the Erkenntnissvermogen to the Gemuthskrafte Significance of the 
Feeling of pleasure-pain (Gefuhl) as denoting the elemental 
harmony of consciousness: the term empathy (Einfiihlung) 
here suggested as an adequate description of this state Conclusion 
of discussion up to this point, that Nature and Freedom are 
completely reconciled in Aesthetic but only as symbol Kant 
unable to carry out the consequences of his theory of Genius : 
he could not assimilate the moral consciousness to the conception 
of natural liberty, as is evident in his doctrine of the Sublime. 

Pp. 141-186 



xx ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 
THE SUBLIME 

Kant distinguishes Sublime from Beautiful as moral emotion 
(Ruhrung) from pleasurable feeling (Gefilhl) : the former being 
volitional, the latter ideational Thus the feeling of the Sublime 
is indirect and negative, being mediated through reaction of will 
Psychological theory of Burke Kant s explanation of the 
Sublime metaphysical : a new order of Imagination peculiar to 
the moral consciousness Imagination inadequate for the estima 
tion of greatness The scientific consciousness evades the difficulty 
by using Imagination in the form of numerical schemata, which 
are capable of infinite multiples and have therefore no maximum, 
no standard of greatness It is only in the conjunction of 
Imagination with the moral consciousness that estimation of great 
ness is possible, sublimity consisting precisely in the failure of 
Imagination to keep up with the moral consciousness, or, as Kant 
says, in the play of Imagination and Moral Reason as harmonious 
through their contrast But Kant did not recognise that the first 
appearance of Sublimity must be an aesthetical moment : for no 
contrast is possible without ground of comparison, i.e. unless the 
object of Imagination is expanded as aesthetic symbol of Reason s 
object, viz. the Supersensible In this indefinite expansion the 
Imagination breaks down and the feeling of pain gives way to a 
feeling of pleasure Criticism of Kant s theory : in the un 
qualified sacrifice of Imagination, the Sublime becomes essentially 
non-sensuous and is therefore not aesthetical This negative view 
of Sublime adopted by Schiller and Hegel Difference between 
moral and aesthetical sublimity : the former implies opposition 
to, the latter implies reconciliation with, Nature The Kantian 
theory suffers from a narrow conception of Emotion as volitional 
reaction ; on the contrary it may be ideational or sympathetic 
reaction, whence it follows that there need be no permanent 
opposition to Nature Schopenhauer s advance on Kant : by 
recognising degrees of sublimity he shows the continuity of 
Sublime with Beautiful The difference is that in the Beautiful 
there is a minimum of discrepancy between meaning and expres 
sion, and we are therefore able to grasp its ideal significance 
without effort : while in the Sublime the expression is out of 
sympathy with the ideal form to which therefore we can only 
penetrate by a forcible breaking away from the hostile appearance 
Synthesis of Sublime and Beautiful only possible on the aesthetic 
principle of graduated indifference to harmonious expression 
Kant approaches towards aesthetical conception of Sublime, (a] in 
the idea of Nature as symbol of Supersensible, (&lt;) in the idea of 
Subreption (both noticed in earlier part of this chapter) and (f) 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xxi 

in the sense of Security None of these constitutes a real advance, 
the latter being a restatement of his formalism Our final con 
clusion that Kant s interpretation of the Sublime is not aesthetical 
The Sublime as the test in aesthetic theory : its important 
bearing on the relation between Beauty and Expression 
Doctrinal significance of the Sublime : Reflection has for its 
general principle the conception of Nature as adapted to our 
intelligence So far this principle is only subjective, an 
hypothesis But the Beautiful, as a disinterested harmony of 
perception in which the mind is at rest, is a visible demonstration 
of this hypothesis : it will therefore be in the interest of this 
subjective principle if we extend the conception of Beauty so as 
to include the intransigent phenomena of the Sublime, which 
contradict the purposive disposition of Nature ; and this can only 
be done by defining Beauty in terms of expression Kant, how 
ever, does not avail himself of this advantage, though he 
acknowledges the teleological value of the Beautiful By sacri 
ficing the ideational Imagination (Nature as sensuous representa 
tion), he professes to find in the sublime a new order of intensive 
Imagination as "the instrument of Reason" This comes very 
near to our view that Nature as sensuous representation must be 
re-instated in the Sublime by sympathetic symbolism But a closer 
examination shows that Kant is not prepared for this conclusion 
Kant makes radical separation between intellective and moral 
consciousness : Beauty is form without spirit, Sublime is spirit 
without form Thus there is no connecting medium between the 
extensive, ideational Imagination of the Beautiful and the intensive, 
mystical Imagination of the Sublime : stated abstractly, no 
connection between Nature and Freedom On the other hand 
Kant transcends these limitations in his theory of Genius, which 
demonstrates the elemental community of man as Nature and 
man as Freedom in the concept of natural liberty Thus Aesthetic 
is not subjective in sense of abstract : on the contrary, it is the 
primordial harmony of mental life raised to a higher immediacy 
Aesthetic as refined sensation is not therefore a less but a more 
Intensive consciousness. Pp. 187-228 



CHAPTER VII 
TELEOLOGY OF NATURE 

The view here taken that there was an implicit intention in Kant s 
Teleology of Nature, which he did not carry out in his exposition, 
viz. to emphasise and develop the psychological aspect of Natural 
Teleology which it has in common with Aesthetic, rather than its 
logical aspect as an ancillary instrument of Science A manifest 



xxii ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

difference between Aesthetic and Teleology of Nature, that while 
aesthetic representations have no existence outside our subjective 
interpretation, our interest in organisms takes its character from 
the thought that the organism has independent existence But the 
psychological aspect of Natural Teleology not affected by this 
difference, which refers to the province rather than to the process 
of judgment Kant s restriction of Teleology as subjective or 
regulative, for the behoof of our reflective faculty Metaphysic 
as Science of Nature impossible Maxims of Teleology not 
scientific principles but economic devices of Reason : Homo 
geneity, Specification, Continuity Thus the predicate of teleo- 
logical judgment not a constitutive concept but an affective idea, 
which illustrates the way in which we are affected by our 
consciousness of objects Kant seems to have lost sight of this 
aspect of Teleology, and practically does no more than repeat the 
argument of the Dialectic On the other hand a new element is 
introduced in Critique of Judgment, viz. the organic conception 
Formal Teleology only a logical disposition of Nature, which 
completes the mechanical interpretation of Nature ; but Organic 
Teleology presupposes a purpose in organic products themselves 
which is independent of our subjective or logical interest in 
Nature No doubt an organism may be regarded as a system of 
mechanism, and therefore generically identical with the totality 
of Nature conceived as a logical system : thus Organic Teleology 
would be nothing more than a particular application of Formal 
Teleology But the point is, How far is the conception of 
Formal Teleology valid as applied to Nature ? Criticism of 
Kant s theory of knowledge : objectivity in knowledge requires 
necessity in Nature but not that this necessity should be merely 
mechanical : i.e. mechanism may be only a factor in a Nature 
that is not itself mechanical Hence Formal Teleology, as 
external reflection on a given mechanical Nature, loses its 
significance Kant s mistaken conception of Teleology as in 
definite extension of mechanical (relative) whole Superficial 
identity of mechanical and teleological wholes in respect of 
timelessness But teleological whole not timeless like abstract 
logical unity, for even as perfect realisation it is conatlve 
Explanation of Kant s attitude : that the connection of Objec 
tivity with Reflexion is a contradiction, i.e. judgment must be 
purely subjective (hence the false subjectivity of his Aesthetic) or 
purely objective (hence the false objectivity and consequent 
priority of Mechanism in his theory of knowledge) Therefore 
Organic Teleology is for Kant neither scientific nor reflective, 
having nothing to do with a feeling of pleasure (though he calls It 
1 reflective ), but a hybrid hypothetical judgment which determines 
nothing either In the object or the subject Kant reduces Organic 
Teleology to the abstract principle of Uniformity : analysis of 
organisms as effects, not as causes Intensive predicates (life, 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xxiii 

human purpose, creative mind) cannot give a more intensive 
insight into Nature, if Uniformity is restricted to a single kind of 
coherence So far Kant s interpretation of Teleology is negative 
Special examination of Kant s theory with a view to ascertain 
ing how far it is capable of a positive interpretation Main result 
of Kant s complicated scheme is to establish a broad distinction 
between external (conditional, contributive) and internal (organic) 
Teleology But organic purpose an enigma for philosophy : the 
organism only purposive in respect of internal organisation, not 
necessarily as natural product, i.e. no necessary relation to environ 
ment Crucial problem, how far necessity in relation of organism 
to environment can be demonstrated, i.e. how far organic 
conception can be applied to whole of Nature Views of Ernst 
and Pfannkuche : does Kant mean an External Teleology ? 
Kant actually did entertain this view in an earlier period, and its 
traces remain in Critique of Judgment Discussion of Occasionalism 
and Preformation in Der einzig mogliche Beweisgrund Kant s 
criticism of Preformation, that it only differs from Occasionalism 
in the time of divine interference He adopts Epigenesis or 
genuine Evolution as opposed to Preformation, which is Involu 
tion (Einschachielung) Kant s conception of Evolution as dis 
tinguished from Darwin s : the production of species is natural, 
but not their origin What is transmitted by natural causes are 
generic preformations originally created by God Kant s explana 
tion of contingent variations as variations which are not necessarily 
hereditary, and which, as such, are accounted for by the original 
tendencies (Keime] Thus Kant s theory of Evolution a Minimum 
Occasionalism : organic life introduced into dead matter by 
original creative act This unquestionably an External Teleology 
of Nature Advance on this position in Critique of Judgment : 
matter is brought into existence by same creative act as endows 
it with life How far Mechanism and Teleology may be regarded 
as united in a single principle : distinction of Mechanism from 
Causality Supersensible substrate of Nature substituted for 
theistic God of his earlier theory of Evolution : Life the spon 
taneous product of unknown, inner ground of Matter This not 
Mechanism but Creative Evolution Criticism of M. Bergson s 
interpretation of Kant The inner ground of Matter (Grundkrafi) 
for Kant is of the same nature as that of the subjective mind, 
viz. purposive reality without a purpose The Grundkraft ought 
therefore to be accessible to knowledge : but for Kant it remains 
unknowable because he regards knowledge as prevailingly dis 
cursive Discursive nature of thought means that, given a 
presentation, we must first think it in the most general terms, 
then advance from this unspecified thought to a more conditioned 
until we arrive at an adequate conception This is the apper- 
ceptive nature of thought and unquestioned The point is that 
undefined does not mean analytic, unconditioned, as Kant thinks 



xxiv ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

In his view thought becomes intuitive for first time when it 
arrives at an adequate conception, I.e. becomes schematic On the 
contrary, schemata are not confined to adequate conceptions : it 
is the schema that lies at the back of all our thinking and 
institutes the discursive process, which must therefore be intuitive 
also Aristotle s view similar to Kant s : discursive inconsistent 
with intuitive thought Criticism of the theory. Pp. 229-292 



CHAPTER VIII 
AESTHETIC AND TELEOLOGY 

The predicate in Teleology of Nature at once a purposive feeling 
and a concept of purpose : i.e. the subjective or aesthetical 
teleology in the judgment takes its character from the thought of 
independent purpose in a being which enjoys its own existence 
This independence in the organism, which is something more 
than the ideal independence of artistic objects, a stumbling-block 
for Kant His restriction of a priori to extensive magnitudes : 
we have certain knowledge only of what we can ourselves construct 
His view of intensive magnitude not an exception but a corollary 
to preceding principle On the contrary, we understand an 
organism better than anything else just because we cannot make it 
Mathematical knowledge the most certain only because it is the 
most abstract Real knowledge only possible of that which can 
react on and so confirm our knowledge, i.e. a self-subsisting centre of 
Reality Kant makes one exception : there is one type of 
experience which is not mathematical and yet is a fact, the con 
sciousness of Freedom Personality thus the only valid category 
outside mathematics : what falls below Personality (biological 
unity) has no independent substrate of reality but only an 
external entelechy Similarity of M Taggart s view that bio 
logical categories are invalid, being due to a defect in our thought 
Clear from the above that in Kant s view Natural Teleology 
obtains its sanction from the moral consciousness (self-conscious 
purpose) Discussion as to whether this interpretation is valid 
Stadler s position, that Theoretic Reason is alone sufficient to 
account for Organic Teleology True, in so far as organisms are 
only regarded as effects, but not in so far as they are regarded as 
causes Already asserted in preceding chapter that hitherto Kant s 
New Principle (the psychological idea of Nature as conceived on 
analogy of our practical causality) has stood for nothing new, 
being only an alternative statement of the logical disposition of 
Nature : this the substance of Stadler s contention Evidence 
now adduced to show that Kant did take his new principle in 
earnest : it is from our moral consciousness that our conception 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xxv 

of the organic takes its rise (contrast with his prevailing view that 
the organic conception is solely due to discursive nature of 
thought) But moral consciousness must be reinforced by the 
conception of organic purpose in Nature, or, the realisation of 
moral ends in a natural way Kant goes further : the moral 
consciousness really abstract, being an accident of our Practical 
Faculty, corresponding to discursive nature of Understanding 
Criticism of Ethical Nihilism implied : conception of Obligation 
not eliminated even for divine mind But there is this much 
truth in the criticism of the moral consciousness, that there is 
something deeper in us than the mere consciousness of Freedom and 
that is the consciousness of ourselves as Nature Particular 
examination of the relation of Aesthetic to Teleology : they 
stand in the relation of content to form Aesthetic the felt 
knowledge (content) of a principle (form), viz. teleology in 
general, or, the harmony of our consciousness of Nature with the 
consciousness of ourselves Thus Teleology, or a judgment of 
purpose, makes its first appearance as a purposive judgment, i.e. the 
felt knowledge of a principle before it is noticed Inevitable that 
Teleology should lose much of its intuitive power Maintained 
that Teleology rather than Aesthetic is the middle term in the 
Critical Philosophy The fundamental consciousness of ourselves 
as Nature a first entelechy which, through the process of morality, 
is destined to issue in a higher immediacy, the regeneration of 
Man This latter Aesthetic alone can express as the Ideal, the 
complete realisation of the Idea in individual form But the 
aesthetic Ideal only a symbol It is in a teleological interpreta 
tion of Nature, whose highest predicate is ethical, that we must 
look for the actual reconciliation of Nature and Freedom. 



CHAPTER IX 
CONCLUSION 

Ethical Teleology the highest level of experience Its claim to 
Science defended Difference of method in Ethical and Natural 
Teleology Ethical Teleology as empathic consciousness Argu 
ment in favour of Indeterminate Coherence on the basis of 
Kant s theory of moral Imagination. 

Pp. 330-347 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW PRINCIPLE. 

IT is remarkable that the work in which an author 
crowns his speculative effort, and which stands for his 
final, if not in some respects for his greatest achieve 
ment, should have received comparatively little atten 
tion. The criticism of Feeling, which is the chief 
subject of our study, has only a small share in the 
colossal literature which has grown around the Critical 
Philosophy and which has been so largely devoted to 
the criticism of Theory and Practice. While in France 
and even in Germany the literature is mean, there is 
not yet in English a single book which deals exclusively 
with the Critique of Judgment in its entire range. 

Two reasons may be found for this apparent want 
of interest. There is not the slightest doubt that Kant s 
greatest and most fruitful work is the Critique of Pure 
Reason. The natural failing to extol our chosen subject 
of study as the author s greatest work, can have no 
place here. There is no other writing of the great 
philosophers, except the dialogues of Plato, which 
warms the brain with the same intellectual glow. The 
forbidding style, the uncouth language, the interminable 
periods and continual contradictions, yield the same 
pleasure to the strenuous thinker as the perilous ascent 
to the mountain-climber. And they who have gained 



2 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

a summit in Kant s laborious thought shall never forget 
the clarity of vision, merged in the opal haze of the 
infinite void. The Critique of Pure Reason is Kant s 
most original work, and it is not surprising if it has 
absorbed the minds of philosophers. It is the mould 
in which his spirit was cast for all time, and no study 
of Kant will be effective which does not make continual 
reference to its contents. 

The second reason is connected with the nature of 
the problem in the Critique of Judgment. Evidently 
Kant is less easily master of the situation. His aesthetic 
theory, which makes up the greater part of the book, 
is not nearly so original as it appears to be. He 
gathered his ideas from many different sources. From 
Hume he learned the subjective character of Aesthetic ; 
the influence of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, who taught 
a community of nature in the Beautiful and the Good, 
is very marked in his " Observations on the Beautiful 
and the Sublime," and appears later in his moral Ideal ; 
the conception of the Ideal he learnt from Winckelmann s 
researches into Greek Plastic, while Baumgarten and 
Gerard supplied him with the theory of Genius. 

It is not suggested that in the third Critique originality 
is displaced by an eclectic tendency. Never was there 
a thinker more severely independent than Kant. And 
though he gladly availed himself of foreign ideas, they 
must first pass through the alembic of his own mind. 
As he told Herz in October, 1790, he felt less inclined 
every day to accept from others the speculative setting 
of their ideas, and must follow the track which his own 
thought had cut out for itself during many years. 1 But 
there is an evident want of fitness in the speculative 
1 Briefwechsel : Kirchmann, p. 439. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 3 

form he has given to the material he collected and 
developed. In the programme of his lectures for the 
winter-session of 1765-66, he proposes to give some 
notice to the criticism of Taste in connection with the 
study of Logic ; l and from that time onwards he 
elaborated, from various sources, in his lectures on 
Logic and Anthropology which are now being published 
in the standard edition of the Prussian Academy, 
practically all that he has to say on Aesthetic in the 
Critique of Judgment. These discussions were under 
taken apparently without any definite systematic inten 
tion. But when he came to write the third Critique. 
the mould of his mind had already been fixed in the 
Critique of Pure Reason, and he felt bound, in the 
interest of unity, to impose this speculative form on his 
aesthetical ideas. The result could only be disappoint 
ing. In the Critique of Pure Reason^ notwithstanding 
its artificial structure, there is a certain natural affinity 
of form and content, and a great part of the originality 
consists in the marvellous symmetry of method with 
which its ideas are developed. But in the Critique of 
Judgment the ideas are forced into an alien structure, 

o 

and both form and content suffer in consequence. 

And there is a further complication. Under the 
influence of Baumgarten and Gerard, Kant came to see 
that thjs_aes_thetic__consciousaess, as it is most perfectly 
expressed in Genius, is a harmony of mental activities 
and might therefore be called a kind of Teleology. 
By the year 1787, as he indicates in his letter to 
Reinhold, his intention was to write a book exclusively 
on Taste which he identified with this subjective 
Teleology, not as a logical judgment but as a psycho- 

1 Hartenstein, ii. pp. 318-9. 



4 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

logical process. Meanwhile, in his anthropological 
studies, he had become interested in the origin of 
species, and in the following year, 1788, published a 
short essay on the use of the teleological principle. 
This, of course, is a very different kind of Teleology 
from the former. It is a logical judgment, and while 
it may also be partly a harmony of our mental states, 
its distinctive character as Teleology consists in having 
a predicate of purpose. In the one case it is our mental 
states that are purposive ; in the other their content or 
meaning is purposive, and is the predicate in our judg 
ment upon things which have teleology in themselves, 
namely, organisms. 

Now Kant had no clear idea of bringing these two 
forms of Teleology under a common principle at the 
time he wrote to Reinhold. 1 He does this for the first 
time in the two introductions, the original form of which 
must have been cast not later than 1789. What helped 
Kant to make up his mind was the unsolved problem 
in the Critique of Pure Reason. There he had developed 
the principle of the specification of Nature into classes 
and kinds. This principle naturally takes cognisance of 
organisms, for the first specification of Nature is into 
organic and inorganic. But, at the same time, it does 
not pretend to discover the real purpose or final unity 
in things, and is only introduced for our own sakes in 
order to complete the unity of our knowledge. It is 
therefore a Subjective Teleology which fulfils a purpose 
of our own in maintaining the harmony of our mental 
states. Here, then, is a principle which can ostensibly 
unite, under the comprehensive name of Reflective 

1 Erdmann is decided on this point. Kanfs Kritlk der Urteilskraft, 
Einleitung, p. xx. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 5 

Judgment, the two distinct kinds of Teleology. In a 
somewhat surreptitious manner, the scientific judgment 
of objective purpose is affiliated with the aesthetical judg 
ment of subjective purpose. At first sight it is almost 
incredible that a serious writer should have dreamt of 
forcing a marriage between such unwilling parties. It 
practically means uniting such divergent forms of 
experience as Art and Science under a common 
principle. Probably this extraordinary connection of 
ideas is the chief reason for the comparative neglect 
which the Critique of Judgment has suffered. And Kant 
himself seems to have lost all consciousness of the con 
nection. But the intellectual charm of the book consists 
precisely in its paradox. Our curiosity is stimulated and 
maintained in seeking to understand as a natural relation 
what is apparently a tour de force. And I hope to show, 
before we have finished, that what Kant blindly approved 
in a fit of literary desperation is justified on Cromwell s 
principle that a man never mounts so high as when he 
does not know where he is going. 

Besides, the Critique of Judgment has unquestioned 
importance in the history of literary criticism. It gave 
formal expression to the spirit of the Romantic move 
ment, and placed Aesthetic, for the first time, on a 
genuine philosophical basis. It is true that Kant was 
incapable of appreciating the literary movement of 
his age. He lived in the middle of the Sturm und 
Drang, but was only sensible of what he regarded 
as reprehensible features, an untempered lust for 
novelty and extravagance in fanciful expression. He 
thought deeply about Genius and was a genius himself, 
but he failed to recognise it in Goethe. His attitude 
to Schiller was naturally different. He acknowledged 



6 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

in him a kindred spirit and made light of the differ 
ences between them, so long as Schiller remained his 
disciple. 1 But when Schiller rose to Goethe s expec 
tations, he fell out of the sphere of Kant s sympathies. 
And still it is true, to use Windelband s expression, 
that the great philosopher constructed the poetical idea 
of Goethe, notwithstanding his remoteness from the 
spirit of his time. 

The Critique of Judgment is also of capital importance 
for the influence it exercised on the subsequent develop 
ment of philosophy and theology. Schelling made it 
the basis of his system, and gave to aesthetic intuition, 
as the reconciling medium of Nature and Spirit, that 
substantive existence which Kant had denied to it ; and 
from Schelling it passed to Hegel, who has much less to 
say in criticism of the third Critique than of the other 
two. Contemporary with the Romantic and Pantheistic 
tendency in philosophy at the beginning of last cen 
tury, the foundation of modern theology was laid by 
Schleiermacher. Kant s Reflective Judgment, as inde 
pendent, subjective, individual experience, but at the 
same time as self-approving, communicable and capable 
of universal validity, is the natural parent of the 
great theologian s religious intuition the feeling of 
simple dependence on the supersensible ground, a 
feeling which is neither theoretical nor practical, but 
akin to and inclusive of aesthetic experience. Later the 
Werturteil of Ritschl is a specification of the Urteilskraft ; 
and even Pragmatism, if its feelings were less arrogant 
and more sensitive to the discipline of Religion and 
Art, could put in a small claim to the rich inheritance. 

1 Note to Religion within the limits of Reason alone : Abbott, Kanfs 
Theory of Ethic s y p. 330. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 7 

But apart from its historical connections, the Critique 
of Judgment is the high-water mark of the Critical 
Philosophy itself, and may indeed be called its crown 
ing phase. We lose its significance if we consider 
it only as an episodical treatment of what lay outside 
Kant s proper study. It contains a further develop 
ment of principles without which it is hardly possible 
to interpret, with some measure of fairness and appre 
ciation, his theory of knowledge. While the second 
edition of the first Critique, notwithstanding its polemical 
aim, is a reply to Kant himself rather than to his critics, 
the Critique of Judgment, which is also polemical with a 
different intention, as Schlapp has shown, contains Kant s 
further criticism of his own position, and might be 
called the third edition. Although the peculiar form 
which the problem eventually assumed is very obscure, 
the problem itself lay in the trend of Kant s thinking, 
and arose quite naturally in the course of his reflections 
as an extension of our hypothetical knowledge. In its 
simplest terms Kant s position may be stated as follows. 

There are in the human mind two distinct types of 
apprehension, Understanding and Reason. The faculty 
of Knowledge, in the common perception of scientist 
and ordinary consciousness alike, by which we articulate 
Nature into a world of things, arranged in space and suc 
cessive in time, is the Understanding. Its characteristic 
objects are incomplete unities which are dependent for 
their boundaries on their relations to each other. It is not 
necessary for our present purpose to specify Sensibility 
as a third and distinct faculty of mind, for the Under 
standing as Kant finally conceived it is organised sense- 
perception. Reason is an intuitive power, which comes 
to the clearest expression in its typical form as moral 



8 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

consciousness. It is not able to specify its objects in 
the diversity of their relations, but it does perceive their 
abstract unity. 

These two faculties, the discursive and intuitive, 
always tend to appropriate each other s merits. The 
Understanding is vaguely dissatisfied with aggregate 
unities of objects whose parts are externally related, 
and continuously but vainly aspires to completeness. 
Reason, likewise, is not always content to dwell in 
sanctuary, and seeks to make plain the mystical and 
indivisible perception of Duty by explanations which 
Understanding alone can approve. These two ten 
dencies meet in a third mode of apprehension, the 
Theoretical Reason, which is indifferently an extension 
of Understanding in its effort to become intuitive, and 
an extension of Reason in its effort to become dis 
cursive. There is the advantage in this manner of 
statement that it resolves the ambiguity of meaning 
in Reason as two distinct functions, theoretical and 
practical, which Kant does not notice or explain. In 
Kant s conception the Reason is fundamentally moral 
the apprehension of truth in the practical decisions of 
the will. But whenever there is danger of confusion, 
we shall adhere to Kant s terminology and call it the 
Practical Reason, in order to distinguish it from the 
Reason which is theoretical. 

Now the Understanding, though itself a discursive 
apprehension of parts in their discreteness, is based on 
an intuitive principle. For in order to grasp the parts 
in relation at all, their unity must at least be thought. 
We are not indeed able to perceive Nature as a whole, 
nor therefore any object in the complete conditions of its 
existence. The relativity of human knowledge means 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 9 

that all our explanations of objects are extraneous to them 
selves and in consequence unending. There is, therefore, 
no question here of unity in the object itself. But that 
they should be connected for us at all, we must furnish 
that unity to the parts of an object which is necessary 
to the consciousness of our own identity. The funda 
mental principle, then, of Understanding is itself an 
4 analytic proposition, the immediate consciousness of a 
unity which is indivisible. But it is precisely the com 
plete sum of conditions which exhausts the existence of 
an object that Understanding, in its extended form as 
Theoretical Reason, requires ; the intuitive principle 
must not only be felt as the anticipative idea of unity 
but must be maintained until it becomes the perception 
of a whole whose parts are all transparent. 

This attitude of mind, which may be called the 
inductive, is quite distinct from the other two, as 
its logical prototype shows. Kant indeed, in keeping 
with his general scheme, would seem to derive the 
Ideas of Theoretical Reason from the deductive syllo 
gism, while the Understanding is modelled on the 
logical judgment. But we know very well how 
wooden these procrustean structures are, and how 
frequently Kant s meaning is obscured by his method. 
In fact, the notions of Understanding take their 
character from the whole procedure of deductive 
reasoning, as Kant acknowledges when he opposes 
the discursive to the intuitive nature of Understand 
ing in the Critique of Judgment. And it is not the 
deductive syllogism that prefigures the Ideas of Reason, 
but the prosyllogism which leads us backwards in a 
train of reasoning to the unconditioned major premiss. 
Deduction proceeds through episyllogisms, by taking 



io THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

the conclusion in the preceding syllogism as the major 
premiss in that which follows, until it has exhausted 
the entire range of consequences. But it is the totality 
of conditions and not of consequences that the prosyl- 
logism seeks to determine ; and what is in question is 
the major premiss, the truth of which is assumed in 
the deductive syllogism. Taking the major premiss, 
then, as the conclusion, we try to construct a new 
syllogism in which the major premiss is less conditioned, 
and so ascend through syllogism to syllogism until we 
reach, if possible, a premiss that is self-evident and 
needs no further qualification. 1 

The value of this inductive method is that it com 
bines the discursive process of Understanding with 
the intuition of Reason. Understanding is the know 
ledge of related perceptions circumscribed by a certain 
unity of form which is called the object, whose limits, 
however, are quite arbitrary and subject to incessant 
change, as the piece of wax loses its rigidity and 
becomes a fluid mass in the presence of heat. The 
political divisions of the same continent on maps which 
represent different periods of history, are a good illus 
tration of the fluctuating boundaries which define the 
objects of Understanding. And the Understanding 
resembles the deductive syllogism in assuming the 
validity of the provisional system within which its 
attention is confined, as if all the conditions were 
present which make up the existence of the object. 
But only so many conditions are present as are needful 
for immediate perception, and therefore what is actual 
for the Understanding cannot be the object itself but 
only the relations. Reason, again, may be said to have 
1 Critique tf Pure Reason : Meiklejohn, p. 231. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY n 

its type in the final moment of the inductive process 
(eTra-ywyv) when the absolute premisses (/o^a/) are dis 
covered. In all probability Kant had the Aristotelian 
conception of induction vaguely in mind. In the 
absence of methodical rules, we come upon our first 
truths more or less contingently. With the same 
appearance of suddenness our moral convictions seem 
to dawn upon us, and no analysis of motives will ever 
make explicit the mystical voice of Duty. It is the 
intuition of an analytic unity in the sense that it can 
never be completely resolved into its elements, and 
therefore what is actual for Reason is the unity 
and not the diversity, for this latter is only ideal. 
Waiving for the moment the extreme formalism in 
Kant s Ethics, his fundamental principle is ultimately 
sound. The motives into which we are able to resolve 
a moral act make up such an inconsiderable part of the 
total conditions which are necessary to originate such 
an act as to be practically negligible in view of a 
complete explanation. 

This double limitation in our Theory and Practice is 
transcended, it would seem, in Theoretical Reason. It 
employs the intuition of Reason as practical in aspiring to 
a perception of totality, but at the same time, unlike Prac 
tical Reason and in furtherance of the Understanding, it 
seeks to enumerate discursively the particular conditions 
which in their sum make up this total unity. Both 
Understanding and Practical Reason are abstract forms 
of apprehension, the former having a relatively coherent 
content without an object, the latter having a complete 
object without any content at all. Reason has intuitions 
of God, the Soul and Immortality, but these are so 
remote from the conditions of existence that it must 



12 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

assume the role of Theoretical Reason to give them 
articulate expression in the form of Ideas ; and in the 
degree that these Ideas are able to supply the total con 
ditions of existence, the intuitions of Reason will be 
actual as well as possible, and so become necessary. 
Thus if we were able to have a complete insight into 
the nature of man, immortality would follow as a 
necessary attribute of his being ; and, conversely, the 
intuition of immortality would no longer be an abstract 
thought without content, but the perception of a real 
quality of existence in the complexity of its relations 
as they are known by Understanding. Similarly the 
Understanding appropriates these intuitions of Reason, 
and uses them as guiding Ideas in order to present its 
fragmentary perceptions in their completeness. 

Theoretical Reason, then, is more concrete than 
either Understanding or Reason, and it should mean 
that the tale of existence is completely told. But this 
is not the case. The knowledge given by the Under 
standing as it is extended by Theoretical Reason is only 
hypothetical, and, if taken in earnest, leads to illusion. 
In the end as in the beginning, the complete unity which 
alone deserves the name of object is merely ideal, and 
the initial feeling of unity, with which the Understand 
ing sets out in constructing experience, appears in its 
final form as the distended bladder of its own enthusiasm, 
which at a touch may explode into vacuity. 

We must remind ourselves, however, that Kant is 
talking at a very high level. He does not mean that 
our efforts to give an exhaustive explanation are illu 
sive, but only that we are in danger of illusion when we 
forget our limitations. This hypothetical knowledge 
has for its results such excellent and useful information 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 13 

as the classification of Nature into genera and species, 
what we should call to-day the contents of the special 
sciences. But for a transcendental philosopher this 
knowledge does not touch the root of the matter. In 
Kant s opinion, no science will ever be able to get 
beyond appearances. There is a limit to our intensive 
perception, while its extensive range is boundless. We 
pass through an interminable maze of facts, and not 
a single fact is exhaustively explained. And Science 
often deludes itself in thinking that it is exploring the 
secret of existence when it is only spreading itself over 
a vast area. The agnostic tendency, however, in con 
temporary Science is hardly in danger of this error. 

This limitation in knowledge is due to a defect in the 
constitution of our minds. When we analyse a piece of 
knowledge we discover that there is something given 
which we have not contributed. This is sensation. 
Kant sets out from the assumption that sensations are 
produced in us by an unknown, supersensible thing, and 
are passively received ; and although he considerably 
modifies this doctrine in what is known as the Subjec 
tive Deduction, he never quits hold of its implications. 
In the first instance, sensations are described as a mani 
fold of unrelated impressions, which are simply given 
from without ; and what makes them our own as possible 
elements in knowledge is our form of Sensibility in the 
pure representation of Space. In the Aesthetic Kant 
speaks of Space as if it were the object of a pure per 
ception and therefore a priori, and he puts forward as a 
chief argument that sensation would lose all its quality 
as having relation to something outside of us, and would 
be nothing more than a subjective feeling or idea, 
without the presupposition of Space. No element 



14 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

of sensuous perception can be imagined which has 
not a spatial quality, " although we can quite readily 
think of space as empty of objects " ; 1 we must therefore 
have an antecedent perception of empty Space, to 
account for that quality of outness and of their 
external relation to each other which we observe in 
sensations as they enter into consciousness. 

Evidently Kant has here anticipated his proof in the 
Analytic, and already finds an ordered physical world in 
the pure form of Sensibility. If this view of Space were 
sound, the problem of knowledge would lose its mean 
ing. For it is quite as difficult to think of an empty 
space without any objects as to think of objects which 
are not in space. And not only is the argument invalid, 
it is in conflict with Kant s primary intention. His real 
proof is based on the established science of Geometry, 
which shows that we have the power of constructing 
relations in space according to our own conception of what 
those relations should be, and that in consequence we may 
be said to have an a priori perception of the nature of 
space by which the process of construction is controlled. 

It is quite misleading, then, to speak of Space as a 
perception. We ought rather to say that it is a power 
of perception ; and in the opening passage of the Aesthetic 
Kant defines his problem as " the capacity for receiving 
representations," which we call Sensibility. 2 It must 
therefore be said, and probably this is Kant s real 
position, that Space as a perception is inseparable from 
sensation and arises simultaneously. His view of sen 
sation as an unrelated manifold of impressions, which 
are arranged for the first time in our pure perception 

1 Transcendental Aesthetic : Watson s Selections, pp. 24-5. 

2 Meiklejohn, p. 2 i . 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 15 

of empty space, is contradicted by his own admission 
further on, that sensations have degrees and therefore 
dimensional quality. Or if we refuse to introduce the 
conception of quantity into sensation, and prefer to say 
with M. Bergson that degree in sensation means a more 
or less extended area of affection, it is all the more 
certain that sensations have no meaning for us unless 
they have the qualification of Space. 

The reason for Kant s insistence in the Aesthetic on 
Space as an object of perception, is his anxiety to define 
Sense and Thought as quite distinct faculties. But in 
the Analytic this motive, which had been taken over from 
the Dissertation of 1770, naturally fades into the back 
ground. All that he had wished to prove was that 
Space as a form of our perception renders subjective the 
primary qualities of extension and figure, and that 
therefore the objects of perception are only phenomena 
and not things in themselves. But since the Analytic 
shows that nothing can become an element in perception 
without the activity of thought, the insistence on Space as 
a priori perception in its own right is no longer necessary ; 
for now all the qualities of matter, primary and secondary, 
extension and figure as well as impenetrability, hard 
ness and colour, are found to be mental. Space itself 
is a construction due to the synthetic activity of thought, 
and what is a priori in our perception of Space can only 
be the original apprehension of the relations to be con 
structed. Accordingly, Kant now says that, without this 
mental synthesis, which alone is able to hold things 
together in the identity of one and the same unity, " not 
even the simplest and most elementary idea of space or 
time could arise in my consciousness." x 
1 Watson s Selections, p. 59. 



i6 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Perhaps some of the confusion, which inevitably 
attends the discussion of this elusive subject, will be 
avoided if we say that Kant reversed the order of the 
problem as it had appealed to Berkeley. The problem 
for Berkeley was : granted that the secondary qualities 
of matter, which are due to sensation, are mental, to 
prove that the primary qualities are likewise mental. 
Kant, on the other hand, appears to take it thus : granted 
that our apprehension of Space is independent of experi 
ence, as Geometry conclusively shows, and that therefore 
the primary qualities are mental, to prove that the 
secondary qualities, which are due to sensation, are like 
wise mental. This may seem strange, but it is a fair 
statement of Kant s position ; and though he riddles 
the independent existence of sensation by showing that 
nothing can enter into consciousness without the 
synthesis of thought, he reverts to his original view 
and maintains it to the end, as we shall presently see. 

Synthesis, then, is the paramount factor in knowledge. 
The connection of elements in perception, which is the 
distinctive feature of knowledge, could not even be 
imagined unless the relations among things were con 
sidered as held together in the unity of a conscious 
mind. That there should be relations at all, means 
that a plurality of elements are perceived by an identical 
mind, which abides one and the same throughout suc 
ceeding impressions. But when Kant was rightly 
advised by his critics that his doctrine would only 
account for a purely subjective world, confined to the 
individual mind, he replied in the second edition of the 
Critique by pointing out that synthesis is not self- 
explaining and involves a circular argument. Kant 
believed in good faith that this is not a vicious circle ; 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 17 

and though it must be admitted that his reply is as 
much a criticism of his own position, and particularly 
of his doctrine of sensation, as an answer to his critics, 
we should not discredit his method until we have 
considered the peculiar nature of his problem. 

The ordinary mind knows the difference between 
stable objects and illusions, and distinguishes them as 
reality and appearance. To this Kant would say : 
Retain this distinction, but remember that the medium 
in which it is made is itself phenomenal. He sought, 
then, to interpose this phenomenal medium as consist 
ing of mental states and something more between the 
realm of subjective illusion, which exists only for the 
individual mind, and Reality which exists for itself. 
And his proof is, that while consciousness is the source 
of relations, consciousness itself presupposes a fixed order 
of relations. Let it be granted that we know nothing 
except our mental states : on the other hand we can 
only be conscious of ourselves in a succession of mental 
states; and if these did not succeed in a certain fixed 
order, our consciousness of the preceding states would 
drop out of memory before we reached the others, 
and at each moment we should be confined to an 
isolated perception and lose the consciousness of our 
own identity. There must therefore be an objective 
ground in sensations which informs them with that 
connection which is necessary to the consciousness 
of ourselves. Of that ground we can say nothing 
more than that it is there, and mark the spot with an 
algebraical $ign. This is what Kant calls the Tran 
scendental Object. 

This transcendental object is on no account to be 
confused with the thing in itself. As every student of 



i8 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Kant knows, transcendental has always for him the 
suggestion of immanence, while the supersensible Thing 
is completely transcendent. It may be a very subtle 
distinction and hard to define, but it was quite sufficient 
for Kant s purpose. He wanted, in fact, to return to 
his original view of sensation. What gives rise to 
sensations in us is this supersensible Thing, not indeed 
as cause, for then it would be a term in our knowledge, 
but as indeterminate ground. And sensations in them 
selves are quite independent and have no necessity for 
our Understanding, or, as he says in the Critique of 
Judgment^ the particular is contingent for the universal 
of our Understanding. 

I do not think there can be any doubt of the exact 
parallel, in this connection, between Kant and Plato. 
In the Philebus the phenomenal world is composed of 
two factors, the Indeterminate (TO aireipov) and the 
Limit (TO Tr^oa?) ; the first corresponds to the contingent 
material of sensation, the second to the transcendental 
object. Then the cause of the Mixture, and not the 
Limit, 1 is what answers to the Ideas of Plato s earlier 
doctrine, and the Ideas are Kant s things in themselves. 
Since the Indeterminate has a nature of its own, the 
resulting mixture can only have a relative necessity. 
Phenomena are not indeed representations confined to 
an individual mind ; for consciousness implies a fixed 
order in representations, and we are therefore limited 
by the obligation to think in a certain way which is 

1 [To equate the Trepas with the Ideas, as e.g. Ritchie does (Plato, 
p. 117), would identify the Ideas with a purely quantitative concep 
tion. In favour of the view we have adopted, cp. the causal relation 
of Ideas to particulars in the Phacdo : T&lt; KaA&lt; vavra TO. KaAa 
yiyverai KaAa. 100 D.] 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 19 

universally valid for all minds. But this necessary 
connection in knowledge does not affect the original 
factor in sensations themselves. Kant only means that, 
to be our objects, sensations must have a certain limit 
imposed upon them in order that we may be conscious 
of our own identity, and all he wants to prove is that 
they are only our objects or phenomena. 

The consequences of this position now easily follow. 
The primary element in sensation, of which we can 
only speak as a presentation to consciousness, is not 
perceived by us as it is in itself. We could only have 
a real perception if the total conditions which make up 
a presentation were present to consciousness. But, as 
it appears to us, a presentation contains no more than 
the minimum conditions, which are necessary for the 
perception of ourselves as an abiding unity in a per 
manent order of relations. It may indeed be true, 
though Kant s theory would deprive even this assump 
tion of security, that the limited series of conditions 
which we perceive is a real part of the presentation, as 
the initial members in an infinite series of numbers may 
be judged to be continuous with the last term. But we 
are never able to follow the terms in such a series to 
infinity, and to do this a completely different order of 
perception from ours would be required. This is what 
the Understanding aspires to do in its role as Theoreti 
cal Reason, but all that it succeeds in procuring is an 
ideal sum to n terms, which is a very different thing. 
The qualification that the conditions appear to us in 
consciousness seems to constitute them into a different 
series, and the inference then follows that a perception, 
or a judgment of fact, contains no more than the mini 
mum of categorical truth contributed by the original 



20 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

shock of sensation, as it is expressed in the completely 
abstract and indeterminate judgment, something is. 
Kant frequently speaks in the Aesthetic of empirical 
judgments as if they were immediate and self-evident, 
and in our easier language this means that in simple 
perception we are in touch with actual fact and that our 
judgment is true without further condition. But this 
is denied in the Analytic, which shows that all judgments 
of fact are hypothetical. We are in touch with fact 
indeed, Kant would say, but only under the form of 
our perception ; as Mill afterwards maintained, the 
matter of sensation, which occasions our first contact 
with Reality, is not affected by our consciousness. 
Presentation is therefore not itself perception, but a 
suggestion which is constructed by our thoughts into 
that diluted kind of perception which we call appear 
ance. 

We quite mistake Kant s meaning, however, if we 
allege, as the reason for this conclusion, that the super 
sensible Thing cannot appear. I wish to insist on this 
point because it is of the first importance to the Critique 
of Judgment, which has for its problem, from one point 
of view, whether and to what extent the Supersensible 
can enter the realm of appearance without impairing 
its quality. Kant prefers to think that the limitation is 
due to the entire structure of our minds, not simply as 
Understanding, but also in their function as Practical 
Reason. Both in our Theory and Practice the same 
defect is exhibited. It is not the Supersensible that 
is inherently incapable of appearing, it is our minds that 
are not adapted for pure perception. This criticism is 
made of the Practical Reason in the Critique of Judg 
ment, 76. Like the Understanding, Practical Reason 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 21 

supposes two different orders of existence, the actual 
and the possible. The recognition of commands implies 
a distinction between what ought to be and what is. 
We are so made that we can think relations which are 
not actual, and enact moral decisions which cannot 
become effective until they are realised in sensible con 
ditions. For a higher order of mind there would be 
no such distinction ; what is thinkable would be a 
necessary perception, and a possible determination of 
will would also be actual just because it is good. The 
Will, however, is in its very nature more happily 
equipped than Intellect, and it is not without just 
reason that Kant gives it the primacy. To a certain 
extent it is able to overcome this dualism by pro 
curing its own sensible conditions. Volition is the 
concentration of the mind on an idea which it has 
united with itself completely and not in part, as 
happens when we only wish to understand ; and this 
continuous effort of attention can originate presen 
tations in the motor continuum without waiting on 
corresponding changes in the sensory continuum. We 
can will to believe that we shall recover from an illness, 
and in many instances we do recover, because the nerve- 
centres have been instructed to initiate those sensible 
conditions which would otherwise require to be passively 
supplied. But our success only reminds us of our 
defect, for it is achieved through a laboured process, 
and is not immediate as it should be in a mind for 
whom the possible is inherently actual. The Under 
standing, too, realises the same measure of success when 
it unites with the Will in that mixed practice which we 
may call pragmatical activity. But in itself it is par 
ticularly helpless, for the creative power which it does 



22 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

evince in synthesis has only application to possible 
relations and none whatever to actual conditions. 
And what spoils the Understanding is just this 
want of sustained attention, of which even the Will 
is only capable by an extraordinary expenditure of 
effort. 

Whenever a presentation occurs we inevitably wander 
away from it and begin to think of something else, 
because we can make nothing of it by itself. What is 
given is a mere blank point of sensation which we must 
think discursively by means of wandering adjectives. 
To make it intelligible at all, we are driven to think it first 
in the most general terms and we then advance to more 
conditioned thoughts, striving at each successive step to 
apperceive its meaning by affiliating it more and more 
closely with our notions of possible experience. What 
controls this process throughout are schemata, abstract 
thoughts which are the dynamic in all our thinking and 
have a natural tendency to what is actual. But they 
never do become actual of themselves ; not even as 
sensuous images can we perceive them. In Kant s 
somewhat artificial language, schemata have only the 
form of what is actual, and are nothing more than 
possible representations until they are applied to the 
matter of sensation. We are able, however, to detect 
their presence in the process by which we advance from 
thoughts which are relatively unconditioned to those 
which are more conditioned, until we finally reach those 
notions of similar presentations in our past experience 
which are most nearly akin to the objects of present 
attention. 

But clearly this is thinking the presentation in terms 
of others. Like the bee which goes from flower to 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 23 

flower, we gather our knowledge discursively and 
never exhaust a single presentation. Instead of dwell 
ing on what is actual until it tells us its story, we 
dissipate perception in external relations. To be inher 
ently perceptive the Understanding must be instinctive, 
but in such a way that it shall lose itself in the 
presentation without at the same time losing its self- 
consciousness. Then it would approximate to that 
ideal Understanding which is able to recognise sensa 
tion as its own product rather than as coming from a 
foreign source. Instinct has all the necessary equip 
ment for intensive insight because it is not self-con 
scious, but for that very reason it can never discover 
its secrets. Only self-conscious Understanding can 
ask the proper questions of a presentation to elicit 
its meaning, but this very habit of asking questions 
causes its attention to wander, and for that reason it 
will never find what it seeks. In M. Bergson s 
words : il y a des choses que r intelligence seule est capable 
de chercher, mats que&gt; par elle-meme, elle ne trouvera 
jamais. Ces choses, r instinct seul les trouverait; mats il ne 
les cherchera jamais}- If Understanding confined itself 
simply to asking questions, it would not go far astray. 
For if we can believe what George Meredith says 
in the fourth chapter of Harry Richmond, the quickest 
way of getting at facts is to leave off answering and 
limit ourselves to questioning one another ; at least he 
thinks that this is true of boys and women, and it is 
surely the same elemental kind of intercourse we must 
use in addressing a presentation. But the Understand 
ing insists on answers, and, if it gets no reply, it 
invariably inquires next door. 

1 V Evolution Creatrice, p. 164. 



24 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

It will be clear from what has been said that Under 
standing is a superficial faculty, because it has not 
sufficient sympathy to exercise patience in dealing with 
presentations. Our heads are too big and our eyes are 
too small, we can think more than we can see. But 
this is the failing of what is really a virtue, for we should 
be reduced to the level of animal instinct and could 
never extend our knowledge if our thoughts were not 
in advance of sensation. Whatever criticism may have 
to say in disparagement of knowledge, we find, on 
analysis, that it is not our making so much as it is due 
to the influence of a Power not ourselves, and may 
therefore be regarded as a secure basis for a deeper 
apprehension of Reality. It may be that the very same 
factors as are at work in knowledge may be so adjusted, 
that we can have a purer perception than an unequal 
mixture of thought and sense, which will approximate to 
that ideal Understanding whose thoughts are themselves 
perceptions. That these factors are heterogeneous is 
unquestioned, for how else could there be a problem of 
knowledge ? But it is all the more wonderful, just 
because it makes a problem for us, that an idea in my 
head should indicate an object outside of me. It is to the 
Supersensible that we owe our most ordinary knowledge, 
the immediate perception of an ordered world in space 
and time. For knowledge means synthesis, synthesis 
is the work of consciousness, and consciousness supposes 
connections which are already implicit in the very things 
which we unite, and this logically prior connection, or 
transcendental object, has a supersensible ground. We 
cannot have erred, then, in being under the influence 
of the supersensible Thing. 

And there is a further concession on the part of 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 25 

Nature. Phenomena are so intimately bound up with 
the consciousness of ourselves that they may be regarded 
as dependent on our consciousness. But the material 
of sensation is contingent and independent of our 
minds, so far as we know, for we have no means of 
determining whether the conditions under which sensa 
tions enter into consciousness, are also the real conditions 
under which they exist in themselves, or, what is the 
same thing, in a perfect Understanding. This means 
that our objects are never exhaustively defined. Now 
this is just what Theoretical Reason professes to do, 
and Nature helps us by yielding the presumption 
that the material basis of existence is also adapted to 
our Understanding. But this hypothetical knowledge 
is not different in kind from Understanding, its objects 
are not a different kind of perceptions but phenomena 
to the nth power. And although we spoke of these 
approaches on the part of the Supersensible as conces 
sions to our Understanding, this is only a manner of 
speaking and we must not mention them as favours. 
Rather they are a bare necessity, for, without these 
adaptations, there would be neither knowledge of 
phenomena nor thought of the Supersensible for us ; 
just as the adaptation of our eyes for sight is no 
argument for a special design on the part of Nature, 
because if we are to see at all, our eyes must be 
suitably adapted and they must be good eyes too. 
If the Supersensible would have us know that it is 
there, it is in its own interest to give us a lead. And 
all that it has done hitherto, both in the Understanding 
proper as the limited knowledge of immediate percep 
tion, and in its extended form as hypothetical Reason, 
without which the Understanding would have no 



26 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

security, is only what is strictly necessary for the 
coherence of our thoughts about Nature or, what is 
the same thing, the appearance at all of a uniform 
world. 

We are brought thus far by the Critique of Pure Reason. 
Nature is so adapted to our intelligence that our intelli 
gence can find itself in Nature as a logical system. 
Without this necessary hypothesis, there would be 
neither a Nature nor a coherent consciousness of our 
selves. The question now put forward in the Critique 
of Judgment is whether the Supersensible has any favours 
for us, and if so, whether we have a higher form 
of apprehension than the hypothetical Understanding, 
which will bring us into closer touch with the Super 
sensible in these gratuitous appearances. Kant finds 
three such favours in the phenomena of Beauty, 
organic forms and moral Man. To these orders of 
Reality the corresponding form of higher apprehension 
is Reflective Judgment. We are encouraged to look 
for these concessions, not only because the Super 
sensible has been the moving principle in our ordinary 
apprehension, but also because this apprehension is so 
remote from Reality and is shot through with the 
marks of imperfection. There is a lack of spontaneity 
in the way the factors come together, which make up 
both Theory and Practice. I have been careful in this 
discussion to include Practical Reason in the criticism 
which Kant passes on the Understanding as discursive. 
He only mentions it incidentally in the Critique of 
Judgment. But though the imperfections of the Under 
standing and of Practical Reason start from opposite sides, 
they are clearly parts of the same defect, and, without 
the reference to Practical Reason, Kant s argument would 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 27 

be incomplete. The third Critique, especially in its treat 
ment of the moral Ideal, makes an evident effort to 
improve upon the abstract exercise of Reason in the 
Categorical Imperative ; and Reflective Judgment is a 
form of apprehension which is intended to supersede 
both Practice and Theory. The whole structure of our 
minds is awry so long as they have no immediate con 
nection with feeling. Without this mark of spon 
taneity, we cannot have a sympathetic insight into 
Reality, and we are suffering in consequence from a 
sense of obligation. 

To take Knowledge first, it is true that we have an 
a priori apprehension of objects : we know that they 
must appear in space and time and in causal connection. 
But this simply refers to the form of apprehension, and 
only means that in no other way can they appear. 
That sensations should come to us at all and when they 
please, is completely beyond our control and we must 
simply take our cue from them. And even when we 
anticipate Nature, as we do in experimental science by 
making her answer our questions, and thus exercise an a 
priori apprehension of her material basis, these questions 
of ours are ultimately conditioned by Nature herself in 
the influence she exercises over us. We cannot escape 
the conclusion that knowledge, determinate or hypo 
thetical, is what we are compelled to believe. 

Obligation, again, lies in the very nature of morality, 
and it is not well to conceive of a transcendent ethic 
from which it has vanished. But in our naturality, this 
sense of obligation acts on us in the form of a foreign 
compulsion which is not good. Conscience, as the bare 
recognition of good and evil, evokes a spirit of antag 
onism, and, in appealing to the highest, rouses the worst 



28 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

passions in our nature. To use the language of St. 
Paul, the consciousness of Law works all manner of 
concupiscence in us and produces a state akin to death. 
In the days of his naturality, St. Paul was "alive without 
Law," a free, breathing animal (^^ ^") like Adam 
in paradise, but when the commandment came, sin 
revived and he died. (Rom. vii. 9 ; i Cor. xv. 45.) 
The self-realisation of Idealism endangers morality by 
giving the law completely into our own hands, and it 
can only deliver the commandment unimpaired on the 
precarious assumption that our nature is completely 
good. In confusing the psychical state with the content 
which it bears, it identifies psychology with metaphysics. 
In order that morality may be possible at all, its law 
must be realised in me, but while the way in which it is 
realised is mine, the content is not mine ; otherwise the 
whole conception of obligation is destroyed. Much 
worse is the self-assertion of Pragmatism, which has 
neither the power nor the wish to discriminate a lower 
from a higher self, as Idealism undoubtedly and most 
jealously does. 

There is more truth in Kant s ethic, notwithstanding 
its limitations, than his critics have been willing to 
recognise. He saw that Law puts such a strain on the 
rivets of pleasure and pain, to use Plato s expression, 
that morality as realised capacity is impossible in three 
score years and ten. And his theory moreover 
implies, what neither Idealism nor Pragmatism suffi 
ciently recognises but what is attested by the history of 
human experience, that unreasoned constraint remains 
a dominant factor in the best of lives, and that a 
complete acquiescence in the Law only comes in inter 
mittent flashes of the " faith which worketh by love." 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 29 

The divine command confronts us in majesty, and 
while it requires our loving obedience, does not explain 
the reason for its authority. The Law appears to us 
in its abstract totality, but systematic disposition of its 
parts in their relations there is none. And since the 
Law is not explicitly defined in Nature, our discursive 
method of interpretation must be supplemented by the 
feeling that Nature is a divine organisation in sympathy 
with our will ; and this is not a feeling that is readily 
acquired or easily maintained. 

From this universal criticism of the human mind a 
new problem arises. While the factors in experience 
are out of gear, unequally yoked and grasped in different 
ways, the unity conceived by thought, the parts per 
ceived by sense or imagination, our apprehension of 
Reality is one-sided and imperfect. We recognised at 
the outset two cardinal functions of mind, Understanding 
and Reason. Then from the combination of these two 
we deduced a third type of apprehension, which we 
fondly hoped would repair their inherent defects, by 
giving articulate expression to the unreasoned intuitions 
of the Will and a completely coherent unity to the 
fragmentary perceptions of Understanding. But we 
have found this principle of Theoretical Reason to be 
illusive, and incapable of anything more than a hypo 
thetical determination of the Supersensible. For while 
the elements of perception are apprehended in their 
discreteness, their unity is not perceived or imaged in 
the same way but imagined or conceived. To realise 
the total conditions which would make up the exhaustive 
unity of these elements, Understanding, in its hypo 
thetical function, must run into an indeterminate series 
which is impossible without antinomy, for the series 



30 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

may equally be regarded as finite or as infinite and the 
final sum is not actual but ideal. 

If now we could discover a greater degree of facility 
in the way these factors come together, this would 
undoubtedly argue a certain spontaneity in their relation, 
and we should confidently assert what Kant only ven 
tured to surmise, that sense and thought spring from 
a common root. It would be a real concession on the 
part of the Supersensible to our Understanding, or in 
Kant s own words, " a favour which Nature has felt for 
us." 1 Our thoughts would not be empty possibilities 
which can only be realised when they are limited by 
sensational shocks, but would be themselves interpreta 
tive perceptions which are able to dwell in the actual as 
a kindred element. Nor would the Understanding, a 
sober sentinel, restrain the spontaneity of Sense, calling 
after it, c Hold there, you have forgotten the categories/ 
but freely move with it in play. The whole is not 
produced in utter nakedness nor are the parts received 
in shreds, but an Individual of flesh and blood is revealed 
to our eyes. This disposition of material existence to 
our apprehension, in which the Supersensible may be 
said to rise to the surface, is found in Aesthetic and 
Teleology of Nature, and they have this at least in 
common that their problem is the Individual. But to 
compass this end we require a new principle. 

As I mentioned in an earlier part of this chapter, the 
search for a new principle arose naturally out of Kant s 
reflections on the hypothetical nature of knowledge. 
Both in the received Introduction to the third Critique 
and in the earlier sketch, now called J. S. Beck s 
Auszug, he distinguishes practical from pragmatical. 
1 Bernard, p. 286. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 31 

For himself the term * practical always signifies the 
pure activity of will, and of this alone can there be 
a philosophy. But he finds that people often use the 
term to denote the application of a particular science, as 
for example, mensuration the practical philosophy of 
arithmetic ; or we might speak of a practical geometry 
and a practical psychology. But this is misleading, for 
it implies that these applications are a distinct kind of 
Theory from the science in question, whereas they are 
only consequences of the same in the nature of a scholium 
or corollary. Under this false use of the term would 
fall the practical philosophy of Mr. Squeers. In his 
educational scheme, theory is exemplified in spelling 

* winder/ but if you wish to learn the practical philo 
sophy of the subject, you must go and clean the 

* winder/ 

These applications are but extensions of Theory and 
form no part of Practical Philosophy at all. In order, 
then, to avoid ambiguity, Kant proposes to call them 
technical, judgments of industrial art and skill "for they 
belong to art (technical), which is the procuring of what 
one wills a thing should be, and which is in each instance 
a mere consequence of a complete theory." The dis 
tinctive character of these technical judgments lies in 
the presence of human purpose. Although Technic 
involves the activity of will, it is not the pure exercise 
of will but of will as united with a "natural concept." 2 
In the application of theoretical principles to legislation, 
politics, industry and agriculture, the will is not actuated 
by a pure conception of duty, but by our own idea of 
what a thing should be according to the end we have in 

1 tJber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, Werke, i. p. 585. 

2 Bernard, p. 7. 



32 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

view. Precepts of morality, on the other hand, are 
" not merely precepts or rules in this or that aspect, 
but without any preceding reference to purposes and 
designs, are laws " ; l and it is their characteristic feature 
to exclude interest or purpose. The will is only 
supersensible when it represents an act simply in its 
intention as prescribed by the moral law, and " with 
out regard to the means whereby the object is to be 
realised." 2 

It is from this mixture of Theory and Practice in the 
execution of human purposes, over which the god of 
Pragmatism presides, that Kant takes his cue in the 
search for a new principle. Technical judgments follow 
naturally as corollaries from the whole body of theoretical 
knowledge, determinate and hypothetical. But they 
differ from their sources in an important respect. 
Theoretical knowledge is certain because it is inde 
pendent of experience, and, even as hypothetical, the 
regulative principles by which it guides the procedure of 
inductive science, are " immanent in their exercise and 
sure." 8 And Duty has no uncertain voice. But in 
Pragmatic, our will descends from its high eminence 
into the hands of natural concepts, our smiths, our 
shoemakers and builders. And we no longer hear the 
clear direction of a single voice, but a Babel of earth- 
born tongues which brings confusion. Kant has brought 
us to the strange conclusion that the realm of purpose 
is the realm of contingence. 

Now Kant proposes to use this term Technic to 
denote Reflective Judgment. But he makes it quite 

1 Bernard, p. 9. 

2 Ober Philosophic ilbcrhaupt : Rosen kranz, Werkc, i. p. 585. 

3 Bernard, p. 317. Cp. Appendix to Dialectic: Meiklcjohn, p. 394. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 33 

clear that it is only on the analogy of these technical 
judgments that we are to think of Reflexion. 1 For 
Reflexion is neither theoretical nor pragmatical 2 since it 
determines nothing either in the constitution or pro 
duction of objects, but is merely the way in which 
Nature is conceived on the analogy of technical art. 1 
And he further adds, it is not the reflective judgments 
themselves that we shall call technical but the whole 
reflective outlook, the Vrtelhkraft^ on whose laws they 
are based; and Nature also we shall call technical as the 
object of Reflexion. 3 This evidently means that the 
relation between Reflexion and Technic is a loose 
analogy. 

It is difficult to say what exactly we have learnt from 
this obscure language, and the reasonable doubt arises 
whether it contains a new principle at all. These 
technical judgments are easily confused, in a vague 
way, with the inductive procedure which Kant calls the 
hypothetical function of Reason, and he never clearly 
distinguishes Reflexion from hypothetical Reason. 
Thus in the Logic edited by Jasche he defines deter 
minant and reflective Judgment as deduction and 
induction respectively, the former proceeding from the 
universal to the particular, the latter from the particular 
to the universal. Only, Reflexion is here further defined 

1 Reflexion is a highly technical term in Kant s writings. I have 
therefore adopted this form of spelling to distinguish it from its use 
by other writers, e.g. Locke, who spells it Reflection. For Locke 
it only meant ordinary apperception, while for Kant it meant a 
higher apperception on the basis of the ordinary process. 

2 The text is : theorctisch noch praktisch (in dcr zuletzt angefuhrtcn 
Bedcutung) = technical or pragmatical. Cher Philosophic ilberhaupt : 
Rosenkranz, Werhe^ i. p. 585. Cp. Bernard, p. 19. 

U. ; Erdmann, Kant s Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 347. 
c 



34 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

as the wider process of arriving at certain general con 
clusions from particular concepts, with its two specific 
forms, induction and analogy : the former reasoning 
from many to all things of one kind, the latter reasoning 
from many features common to things of the same 
kind to the remaining features. 1 The point of dis 
tinction is so fine that it is hardly appreciable; and 
it raises the whole question, on which expositors are 
divided, whether Reflexion, apart from its aesthetical 
function, really goes beyond the Dialectic. So eminent 
an authority as Stadler, for instance, is decided that it 
does not. But I think the evidence in Kant s own 
writings is sufficient to make it worth our while con 
tending for a new principle. How could Reflexion be 
identified with inductive procedure when it is expressly 
based, as we have seen, on the analogy of what are 
direct corollaries of all Theory, including the hypo 
thetical principles of induction ? Technical judgments 
are but the application of these inductive principles in 
experimental science, or, as it is stated in the Critique of 
Judgment, Reflexion is based on the analogy of our 
causality according to purposes. 

Reflexion, then, as derived from this new principle, 
means that we think of Nature as an artisan. It will 
be said, however, that this is only another expression 
for the specification of Nature into genera and species, 
which is the very principle of hypothetical Reason. 
Undoubtedly ; but while the Dialectic only insists on 
the bare principle itself, we are here putting forward a 
new way of envisaging this principle, and we think of 
Nature not simply as an abstract quantity, but with the 
help of an anthropological conception derived from our 

1 Hartenstein, viii. pp. 128-9. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 35 

own experience. To put it briefly, the principle in the 
Dialectic is logical, while the new principle of Reflexion 
is psychological. And this is the significance of the 
analogy : while the experimental application of prin 
ciples brings us into the region of uncertainty, there is 
also the advantage of a more intimate knowledge. We 
never know exactly how a thing will turn out until it is 
completed, but also, as Kant says, " we see into a thing 
completely only so far as we can make it in accordance 
with our concepts and bring it to completion." And 
the reason for this insight is that the factors in experience 
develop simultaneously and are present in an equal 
degree of reality. 

Kant s definition of a purpose in this connection is 
very instructive. He says it is " the concept of an 
Object so far as it contains the ground of the actuality 
of this Object." 2 The concepts of Understanding 
only represent the possible existence of an object. 
But when a concept is the ground of its actual exist 
ence, we are not simply thinking it but bringing it into 
being. And there is no longer the discrepancy between 
possible and actual which we discover in theoretical 
knowledge, for the possible is restricted in its range and 
is only paid out in the measure that the parts emerge 
into existence. We have here no superfluous thoughts 
in advance of sensation which may only be possible ; our 
thoughts have the perceptive quality of instinct because 
they are genetic like the parts themselves. And while in 
Pragmatic, whole and part are apprehended incompletely 
in the same vague way, Reflexion will be that power 
of mind for which these factors exist in an equal degree 
of reality, but also in their completeness. In beautiful 

1 Bernard, p. 291. 2 Bernard, p. 18. 



36 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

and living forms the relation between whole and part is 
transparent, and we are not conscious of the one without 
the other. Now " we know in part but when that 
which is perfect is come, then that which is in part 
shall be done away." The parts are not perceived in 
their stark diversity, but as continuous manifestations of 
a single reality. And the moment we dissever a part 
from the whole, it loses its quality and becomes an 
unintelligible thing. As Aristotle said, a hand cut 
off from the body is no longer a hand, " except in 
an equivocal sense as we might speak of a stone 
hand." 1 

The discrete knowledge of the Understanding is no 
longer necessary, for Reflexion is itself the articulate 
expression of what is inarticulate for Understanding. 
Such was the love of the wild animals for the hermit 
of the Himalayas, in Kipling s * Miracle of Purun 

Bhagat : 

"we loved him with the love 
That knows but cannot understand."- 

If we try to explain our actions of whose goodness we 
are convinced, they lose their ingenuousness and become 
doubtful ; or if we seek to intellectualise our religious 
convictions, they lose their sanctity and become com 
monplace. As Goethe says, in one of those frequent 
perceptions which are so true to fact, " though my 
experience of the divine mercy has been of infinite 
importance to myself at the time of its occurrence, the 
detail would be insipid, and perhaps disbelieved, were 
I to specify individual cases." 3 In his poem on Loves 
Secret, William Blake gives a touching instance of the 

1 PoRtics, Bk. I., Ch. ii. 2 The Second Jungle Book. 

3 Wilhelm Meister^s Apprenticeship : Bohn, p. 361. 

&lt;! I 






THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 37 

blundering folly of Understanding when it attempts to 
articulate reflective experience : 

" Never seek to tell thy love, 

Love that never told can be ; 
For the gentle wind doth move 
Silently, invisibly. 

" I told my love, I told my love, 

I told her all my heart, 
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears. 
Ah ! she did depart ! 

" Soon after she was gone from me, 

A traveller came by, 
Silently, invisibly : 

He took her with a sigh." 

There is no text-book of Reflective Science. Its per 
ceptions are not scientific judgments which are true 
for all and therefore for no one in particular, but true 
for all because they are first true for the individual. 
Like the /mvo-r^piov of St. Paul, they are secrets which 
are revealed to the initiate. And though we do not 
see the face of the Supersensible, from the cleft of the 
rock we are touched by the glory of its presence while 
it passeth by, and it is by its hand that the eyes of our 
Understanding are covered. 

In the conception of Technic, then, we are brought 
visibly nearer to the Supersensible. Hypothetical 
knowledge only gives the thought of free, self-deter 
mined existence, but in Reflexion we have its presence 
and appearance. When the divine artisan was polishing 
the world before he launched it into space, he painted 
parts of it with the hues of the rainbow, and in other 
parts he set up magic mirrors in which the divine 



38 THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

activity is reflected. The first is the realm of the 
Beautiful, the second the realm of living forms, who in 
their purposive activity show forth the perfect freedom 
of God. These finishing touches Kant calls contingent, 
not at all in the bad sense of his predecessors, but as 
we should call an Egyptian mummy contingent because 
the art of embalming has been lost. Our Understanding 
has lost or never had the rule of interpreting these data. 
Such are the unaccountable phenomena of Nature for 
which there is no certain law discovered, such are the 
objects of inarticulate emotion and the unsearchable 
essence of life ; such also are the inscrutable ways of 
God by which He rules the world in righteousness. 
With the reverence of the Hebrew sage, Kant draws 
the veil over the appearance of the divine Majesty, 
and realises with him that " it is the glory of God to 
conceal." 



CHAPTER II. 

REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT. 

ALTHOUGH the Critique of Judgment has its place, histori 
cally, as an afterthought in Kant s system, the ideas it 
contains were present to his mind from an early date. 
As far back as 1764, there is the short essay entitled 
Eeobachtungen uber das Gefuhl des Schonen und Erhabenen, 
in which he gives token of an artistic turn of mind with 
which he is seldom credited. Here Kant suggests that 
even scientific pursuits have an aesthetical character, 
so that knowledge may become the subject-matter of 
Feeling and subordinate to it; thus he speaks of the 
charm of which a Kepler was capable, who would not 
have sold one of his discoveries for a kingdom. 1 In an 
article in the Kantstudien? there is an elaborated argu 
ment to show that as Kant s Aesthetical Philosophy is 
open to the charge of intellectualism, his Intellectual 
Philosophy is also influenced by aesthetical ideas, as 
when he follows his prejudice in favour of logical sym 
metry at the expense of truth. One might say that 
his elaborate trichotomy is the result of the free play of 
his Imagination with his Understanding. 

It may not be readily believed that Kant wrote poetry, 
but he actually did write five stanzas at least, each of 

1 Erlefwechsel : Kirchmann, p. 4. 

2 Band 2, Anna Cutler. 



40 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

which is devoted to the memory of one of five colleagues 
in Konigsberg University. 1 And the fact that Herder 
turned one of his lectures into verse, surely counts for 
something in favour of Kant s poetic turn of mind. 
One might also mention a remark of Schiller in his 
correspondence with Goethe. Writing of his impres 
sions after reading Kant s little treatise on Everlasting 
Peace, he says : " There is in this old gentleman some 
thing so truly youthful that it might almost be termed 
aesthetic." 2 It is difficult to say how we are to receive 
the extraordinary intelligence, which Schiller can hardly 
credit but which Goethe confirms, that certain artists are 
putting Kant s Ideas of Reason into allegorical pictures. 3 
Whether this is to be regarded as indicating the intrinsic 
poetry of Kant s thought or the madness of human 
nature, must be left to the judgment of the reader. 

Facts like these, though slight, are a sufficient proof 
in themselves, that this third faculty of the human mind 
was within the sweep of Kant s reflections before the 
Critique of Pure Reason was definitely planned. To 
these must be added as conclusive evidence, that he 
lectured on Aesthetic practically throughout his official 
career. The Critique of Judgment, then, does not answer 
a newly-born demand, so much as the renewed con 
sciousness on Kant s part of what he had already felt. 

These public lectures, however, as we have seen, were 
originally undertaken as a sidelight on Logic rather 
than as a distinctive treatment of Aesthetic itself. And 
in the letter to Herz of 1772, he has already lost sight 
of the independence of Feeling, for he brings it in 

1 Briejwechsel, p. 299. 

2 Correspondence of Schiller and Goethe : Schmitz, vol. i. Letter 367. 

3 Ibid. vol. i. pp. 144-51. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 41 

common with Morality under the heading, Practical. 1 
But in this letter he is concerned with the central pro 
blem of the Critique of Pure Reason, how an idea can 
refer to an object ; and, speaking roughly, one may say 
that from this time on till 1787, there are only two 
divisions of mind for Kant, the Theoretical and the 
Practical. In his anxiety to subordinate sensuous 
feeling to moral law, moreover, he does not wait to 
distinguish the finer and higher emotions from those 
which are lower. 

But after the Critique of Pure Reason was lifted off his 
mind, we find the distinction again forcing itself upon 
him in the Metaphysic of Ethics, where he distinguishes 
" practical pleasure " from " passive satisfaction " ; this 
latter is " not a pleasure in the existence of the object 
of the idea, but clings to the idea only," and this feeling 
of pleasure " we call Taste." 2 Moreover he goes on 
to say that such a thing as Taste can only be treated 
" episodically " in a Practical Philosophy, " not as a 
notion properly belonging to that philosophy," thus 
removing Aesthetic Feeling out of the region of the 
practical aspect of mind. And when, in the beginning 
of the year 1787, he sees his Critique of Practical Reason 
so far complete that he hopes to send it to press within 
a week, he intimates to Christian Gottfried Schiitz that 
he must set about his Critique of Taste immediately. 3 
It was finally in the same year, in his letter to Reinhold, 
that Kant made up his mind about the independence of 
Feeling. There he recognises three parts of Philosophy^ 
Knowledge, Feeling of pleasure and pain, Desire : and 

1 Brlefwechsel, p. 403. 

2 Introd. : Abbott, p. 267. 

3 Brlefiocchsel \ Kirchmann, p. 456. 



42 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

seeks to find a priori principles for the second as for the 
other two, though he formerly held this to be impossible ; 
he hopes to be ready with this by Easter under the title, 
Critique of Taste. 1 Here we have the Critique of 
Judgment coming to the birth ; it was published three 
years later in 1790. 

But though he now recognises three parts of Philo 
sophy, this does not mean three sets of doctrine : there 
are three Critiques, but only two of them are doctrines. 
He insists on this in the Introduction to the Critique of 
Judgment. 2 But while he was formerly inclined to give 
a subordinate place to Feeling, he now excludes it from 
the dignity of a doctrine in order to raise it to a higher 
plane. By the time Kant had settled the problems of 
science and morality, he began to tire of Definitive 
Judgment, Determination, and felt the need of a judg 
ment which could go as deep as the moral judgment 
and have all its immediacy, but be as disinterested as 
science without being science. 

Meanwhile, Aesthetics were clamouring for a separate 
treatment, and the unfinished woof of Teleology trailed 
across the warp of his system. Out of these coinci 
dences arose the Reflective Judgment, which for Kant 
means a form of experience which is not doctrine in 
itself but conditions whatever doctrine there is. It is 
Reflexion that has been guiding us all along. There is 
no knowledge but comes to birth with its inspiration in 
the anticipative feeling of unity with the object to be 
known ; and even morality is at best a form of reflec 
tive experience and only so far constitutive : " even 
Freedom ... is for us a transcendent conception, and 
is therefore incapable of serving as a constitutive prin- 
1 Briefweehselj p. 461. 2 Bernard, p. 16. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 43 

ciple for determining an object." 1 We must not say, 
then, that Reflexion is a loose and therefore useless 
form of Determination, scientific or moral ; it is Deter 
mination that is a fossilised or artificially restricted 
form of Reflective Experience. 

It is time that this Fountain of all Experience were 
" critically " examined. It had already come under 
Kant s notice as the hypothetical function of Reason, 
and Kant, in so many words, deliberately speaks of this 
Hypothetical Reason as the Urteilskraft^ the term he 
uses for Reflexion in general. 2 It is one and the same 
power of Judgment which we have in the Dialectic and 
in the Critique of Judgment. In this logical disposition 
of Nature (logische Beurteilung) the Urteilskraft exhibits 
a relation between Nature and the Supersensible : i.e. 
even in knowledge the Supersensible is present. But 
since the function of Urteilskraft is here purely hypo 
thetical and therefore negative, it does not need special 
justification ; it does not pretend to be a Science, it does 
not teach us nor equip us with knowledge, it is only an 
exercise of Reason (der Ver stand einer Belehrung und 
Aumlstung durch Regeln fahig, Urteilskraft aber ein 
besonderes Talent sei, welches gar nicht belehrt^ sondern 
nur geubt sein will}? It is the specific quality in 
so-called mother-wit, the want of which no school can 
supply, or, as he said in the Critique of Judgment, the 
Urteilskraft is just "Sound Understanding" {gesunden 
Verstandes)* Every one feels the Absolute, the Whole, 
breaking in upon one s relative knowledge ; one knows 
there is a whole somewhere, and proceeds on this 

1 Critique of Judgment: Watson, p. 336. 2 Bernard, p. 4. 

3 Hartenstein, Kritlk d. r. Vernunft^ iii. p. 138. 

4 Bernard, p. 3. 



44 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

assumption. This is the hypothetical function of 
Reason. 

But the need of a Critique arises when this reflective 
exercise of Reason actually assumes the form of Science, 
professing to determine objects of its own without fall 
ing into antinomy. Regulative Reason, whenever it pre 
tended to be constitutive of objects, fell into insoluble 
contradictions, and therefore its exercise never rises 
above a form of inspiration ; the Supersensible, in the 
shape of the Ideas of Reason, is present in us as the 
anticipative feeling of totality, indivisible unity, a 
feeling, however, which is dissipated, and with it the 
real unity, in the exercise of knowledge. As Kant puts 
it, " it has no immediate reference to the feeling of 
pleasure and pain." 1 But in Reflexion, as it appears 
in the Critique of Judgment, there is such immediate 
reference, the feeling of unity is not dissipated, and 
something, therefore, in the form of an object is deter 
mined by the Urteilskraft. " This reference is precisely 
the puzzle in the principle of Judgment, which renders 
necessary a special section for this faculty in the Kritik." 
Hence Urteilskraft in general, since it is purely hypo 
thetical and negative, needs no special justification ; it 
is the Judgment in the form of Immediate Feeling that 
must be established a priori. 

Deduction, then, of Reflexion is the proof of the 
validity of this primary immediacy of consciousness, 
which conditions all other forms of experience and is 
itself the highest form of experience. Of this Aesthetic 
provides the aptest illustration, but the problem itself 
is much wider. Reflexion, for Kant, covers all the 
different exercises of that free consciousness, C I think/ 

1 Bernard, p. 4. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 45 

which lies at the back of the mind all experience 
which is distinctively personal^ as distinguished from 
the impersonal experience of science. 

Kant s Deduction is characteristically peculiar. It 
consists in carrying back this primary function of mind, 
which is covered by such names as Reflexion, Purposive 
Activity and Feeling, to what he calls the Power of 
Judgment. Ostensibly he professes to find in the 
formal judgment of Logic a priori principles for this 
third faculty, just as logical concepts stood sponsor for 
the categories. If Understanding and Reason have 
yielded a system of synthetic notions for Knowledge 
and a priori precepts for the Faculty of Desire respec 
tively, "what more natural," he asks, " than to suppose 
that the latter (Judgment) will likewise contain prin 
ciples a priori for the former (Feeling of Pleasure 
and Pain) ? " J 

Such statements are not to be taken literally. Kant 
is dealing with Formal Logic as an analogy or type of 
the real activity, and this is shown by the fact that the 
formal concepts in the Critique of Pure Reason become 
added to and change, in the process of deduction, into 
principles of synthesis. Similarly we are to find the 
Formal Judgment in this last deduction, changing in 
process of proof into that original Free Consciousness 
which conditions all experience, mediate or immediate. 
Kant significantly names it Urteilskraft, the Power of 
Judging in general, though he sometimes uses Urteil as 
equivalent for Urteihkraft. 

There are two steps in Kant s curious proof. The 
one is found in the Introduction to the Critique of 
Judgment, the other in the Uber Philosophic uberhaupt. 
1 Uber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, Werke, i. p. 588. 



46 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

In the first step, Kant points out that Judgment and 
Feeling must be intimately related, because they bear a 
similar relation to the two remaining functions of mind 
in the respective groups to which they belong. He calls 
it a " new ground " l of proof. Feeling mediates in a 
very real sense between Knowledge and Desire, and also 
the Judgment similarly mediates between Concepts and 
Reasoning. The former had already been settled by the 
Wolffians and may be taken for granted, but the latter, 
which Kant simply states in the baldest way, does call 
for explanation. Probably the best way to account for 
Kant s statement is to say that here Logic is changing 
in his hands. If Judgment mediates in any real 
sense between the two, it must have a common nature 
with both; concepts, judgments and reasonings can 
no longer be distinct as was formerly assumed. A 
concept is a judgment from which the appearance 
of synthesis has vanished : reasoning is a form of 
judgment in which the original synthesis is further 
developed or explained. But surely that has the right 
to the name of Judgment par excellence which is the 
distinctively synthetic activity of mind, in which the 
relation of whole and part is seen in the making ? 
Understanding is for Kant the faculty of parts without 
the whole to determine the whole is to court anti 
nomy : Reason is the faculty of wholes without the 
parts there is no differentiation of content in the 
concept of Freedom, it is a case of all or nothing ; 
Judgment alone is the function of mind in which 
whole and part are first recognised in relation. The 
Judgment, then, may be said to mediate between the 
microscopic judgment or the Concept and the extensive 

1 Bernard, p. 14. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 47 

judgment or the Syllogism, because it is the original 
synthetic activity of mind. It is no longer the Con 
cept but the Judgment that stands first in the scale of 
mental activity. 

Now when Kant assigns to the Judgment this original 
power of synthesis, he does not mean a particular or 
actual synthesis that is a concept so much as the 
activity of synthesis itself in general, without reference 
to a particular product, in short, the Power of Judgment. 
He thus re-establishes the distinction between Concept 
and Judgment, but in a way which does justice to them 
both. They are no longer different in nature, for both 
are modes of Judgment. But Judgment may be of two 
kinds ; for while it is " the faculty of thinking the 
particular as contained under the universal," 1 this sub- 
sumption may come about in either of two ways. 
First, both particular and universal may be to hand 
when the particular given is only such as can be deter 
mined by concepts of Understanding ; this is the 
schematic judgment: "the law is marked out for it 
a priori, and it has therefore no need to seek a law for 
itself." Particular and universal are adapted to each 
other by the pre-established harmony of the " transcen 
dental object," and so the universal is applied to an 
intuition which can only be apprehended in that order 
which is necessary for determination by the categories. 
But, secondly, the particular alone may be given for 
which we have to seek a universal, and here the 
Judgment is no longer determinant but reflective. 
Thus, while the logical concept and judgment are both 
modes of judging, they are different, the one being the 
prototype of determinate, the other of reflectivejudgment. 

1 Bernard, p. 1 6. 2 Ibid. p. 1 7. 



48 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Why Kant calls it reflective is not exactly clear. 
Probably he just means the activity in which the subject 
reflects on itself and its processes. The best explanation 
is given in the Uber Philosophic uberhaupt. "To reflect," 
he says, " is to compare and hold together given repre 
sentations either with others or with the faculty of 
representation itself, in view of a problematical idea." 1 
That is to say, Reflexion is just the comparison of a 
representation with the apperceptive Imagination. 
Kant goes on to give it a very homely meaning. We 
may call it, he says, the Facultas Dijudicandi (Beurtei- 
lungsverm ogeri), the term Baumgarten used to denote the 
critical faculty, the power of discerning agreement in 
difference, the correspondence of means to ends. 2 Nay, 
Reflexion even happens with animals, Kant continues, 
" if only instinctively, i.e. not as if an idea were to be 
obtained thereby, but with a view to the satisfaction 
of some inclination : " 3 a sense of the term which seems 
identical with Aristotle s Suva^s KpiTiicq* 

In its basal form, then, Reflexion appears to be a 
sense of want. But this may be of two orders. You 
may know what you are wanting, and then the Judgment 
is determinant ; a category or " fundamental idea of the 
object prescribes the rule to the Power of Judgment," 5 
and therefore you no longer need a principle, its place 
being supplied by a rule. It is only for people who do 

^Rosenkranz, Werke, i. p. 589. Cp. Anthropologie : Hartenstein, 
vii. p. 452. 

2 Erdmann, Hist. Phil. ii. p. 240. 

3 Uber Philosophic iiberhaupt-. Rosen kranz, i. p. 589. 

4 &lt;cu i/Tai Se TOVTO ye TTOJCTLV VTrdpyov TOIS COOLS e^ei yap Swa/ztv 

ov KpiTiKrjv, r)v KaAowriv aivOrjariv Anal. Post. ii. 99 B. 

5 Uber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosen kranz, i. p. 589. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 49 

not know exactly what they are wanting that a principle 
is necessary. The artist, having a great notion in his 
head, yet not knowing exactly what it is, casts about him 
for a principle, and in so doing lets his mind run free. 
Kant gives an interesting illustration of this distinction ; 
the servant who is required to obey definite orders only 
needs Understanding, while the officer who only receives 
a general commission which he must interpret for himself 
in particular emergencies requires Judgment. 1 This 
free-play of the faculties takes place when the mind is 
undergoing experience for which there is no adequate 
category of knowledge corresponding, whether it be in 
the apparently passive contemplation of aesthetic per 
ception or in the originative activity of artistic creation. 
Nor do we need to know what we are wanting, even 
after it has been realised. In Reflexion, it is the 
satisfaction, not the definition, of purpose or interest 
that is essential ; the free-play of the faculties is its 
own end, the mind having no interest outside of its 
processes. 

The great difference, then, which Kant has in view 
between the Reflective and Determinant Judgment is 
that the one is free and works under a principle, while the 
other is not free and works under a rule which is fixed. 
Reflective Judgment is a "mere faculty for reflecting 
upon a given representation, for the behoof of a pro 
blematical idea " ; 2 i.e. an idea which may be the very 
thing you want and so an idea which is realised as the 
definite concept of a given representation, in which case 
the judgment would become determinant, both part 
and whole being to hand. Reflective judgment always 



ie^ 40 ; Hartenstein, vii. p. 514. 
2 Uber Philosophic uberhaupt, p. 589. 
D 



50 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

works with a view to the determinant, or as if a deter 
minant judgment were actually possible. 

It must be clear from the above that Reflective Judg 
ment is the wider function of which the Determinant is 
but a special case. All thinking is the subsuming of a 
particular under a universal, i.e. of a sense-datum under 
a form of thought. And Reflexion is subsumption in 
general, Determination is subsumption in particular. 
In the Determinant Judgment, Imagination, which is 
the highest faculty of Sense, subordinates itself to the 
law of Understanding. In apprehending a line, or 
drawing it even in thought, the imagination must keep 
reproducing the successive perceptions in order to main 
tain identity of consciousness and therefore the unity of 
the object : the object is cognised to order, it is what 
we are " obliged to think." But in Reflexion it is 
quite otherwise. Here the Imagination proceeds, not 
under constraint, but in free play with the Understand 
ing; the object is no longer what we are unconditionally 
obliged to think, but what we are constrained to think 
for higher reasons than the laws of Understanding. 

Now when Kant says that the Judgment ought to 
provide this reflective activity with a priori principles, 
he is looking to a certain feature in the class-judgment 
which may serve as type for the freedom of Reflexion. 
The judgment in Formal Logic abstracts from all con 
tent, and therefore exhibits a quite contingent relation 
between S and P ; and Reflexion is like to it in this, 
that the subject (Imagination) is not fixed down to any 
definite predicate (the Understanding), but maintains a 
free relation to it, whereas the transcendental or deter 
minant judgment has for its predicate a certain unal 
terable rule, e.g. the subject must come under the 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 51 

predicate of causal connection. But in the judgment 
of Formal Logic, S may come under the class P or P 1 
or P 2 . Kant expresses this distinction thus : " the 
Understanding is the Faculty of rules, the Urteilskraft 
is the Faculty of subsuming under rules, i.e. of discern 
ing whether something stands under a given rule or 
not." l Kant seems to speak here as if Reflexion were 
Formal Logic over again, but the latter is nothing more 
than a loose type of the former. For while the formal 
judgment abstracts from all content, Reflexion holds 
itself free rather because its content is so much deeper 
than that of the determinate judgment ; thus, in regard 
to a living thing, it would be a mistake to bind S down 
to the predicate of causality, for such a predicate may 
be quite inadequate to its content. 

This seems to throw light on the title of the book, 
Kritik der Urteilskraft. It is a point on which writers 
on Kant have loftily abstained from giving any satis 
factory explanation to the bewildered student, for it is 
not a little disconcerting to find that Kant, who had 
already used Judgment in a purely epistemological 
sense, should without further qualification or comment 
also use it to denote specifically the Reflective activity 
of mind. No doubt Judgment was the name he should 
naturally use to denote the faculty of Approval. And 
it is interesting to find how exactly this term was 
defined in eighteenth century usage, both literary and 
philosophical. Henry Fielding and Baumgarten are 
practically identical in their analysis of Judgment. In 
Tom Jones Genius is defined as the power, both of pene 
trating into the essence of things and of distinguishing 
their essential differences ; and these two powers " are 

1 Kritik d. r. Vernunft : Hartenstein, iii. p 138. 



52 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

no other than invention and judgment." But invention, 
he continues, " can rarely exist without the concomi- 
tancy of judgment, for how we can be said to have 
discovered the true essence of two things, without 
discerning their difference, seems to me hard to con 
ceive. Now this last is the undisputed province of 
judgment " (Bk. IX. Chap. I.). In precisely the same 
way, Baumgarten analysed the aesthetic faculty into the 
twofold perception of unity and diversity ; of these the 
first is called invention (ingenium or facultas identitates 
rerum cognoscendi) and the second a discriminating power 
(acumen sensitivum or facultas diversities rerum cogno 
scendi)^ This shows that Judgment was currently 
understood to be closely connected with Genius. But 
it does not explain the whole matter. The Critique 
of Pure Reason might well have been called the Critique 
of Judgment, for it deals with little else, but Kant has 
so consecrated the term to denote Reflexion that he 
speaks of the Critique of Pure Reason as dealing with 
Understanding alone " to the exclusion of Judgment 
and Reason." 2 The explanation, it seems to me, lies 
in this, that for Kant the common feature in both 
Reflective and Determinant Judgment is subordination. 
But the Reflective is the higher and wider type of 
subordination ; far from being the empty tautology of 
Formal Logic, it is the subordination of Nature to 
Freedom, whereas Determinant Judgment is but a 
subordination within Nature, that of Sense to Under 
standing. And it is Kant s final view that it is this 
wider subsumption of Nature under Freedom which 
makes possible the lower adaptation of sense to 

1 See Schasler, Kntische Geschuhte der Aesthetik, p. 349. 

2 Bernard, p. i. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 53 

thought ; determination, whether moral or scientific, 
is conditioned by Reflexion. Now the Formal Judg 
ment provides the type for this higher form of sub- 
sumption in the free relation it exhibits between S and 
P, and from it Kant would naturally take the name, 
Kritik der Urteilskraft. So we might read the above 
quotation as follows : the Critique of Pure Reason dealt 
with Judgment (i.e. subsumption in particular), to the 
exclusion of Judgment (i.e. subsumption in general 
without arriving at any particular determination) and 
Reason. Determination is fixed within definite limits, 
Reflexion is characterised rather by the absence of deter 
minate bounds ; the Determinant judgment is like a 
land-path definitely marked, the Reflective is like the 
roadways of the open ocean : 

" Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, 
and Thy footsteps are not known." x 

What Kant has secured for us, then, out of the Formal 
Judgment, is really a divine way of thinking, of which 
the forced subordination within Nature in the judgment 
of knowledge is but the shadow. Hence the truth of 
Hegel s dictum, Freedom is the truth of Nature. 

The second step in Kant s proof rests on the subjective 
character of both Judgment and Feeling : " there is here 
already a certain conformity of the Power of Judgment 
to the Feeling of Pleasure . . . that whereas Under 
standing and Reason refer their representations to 
objects . . . the Power of Judgment refers solely to the 
subject, and by itself alone produces no notions of 
objects." On the other hand, he points out, the 
Feeling of pleasure and pain is the only one of 

1 Psalm Ixxvii. 19. 

2 IJber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, Werke, i. p. 588. 



54 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

the mental powers which has nothing objective in its 
representations and is only a susceptibility (Empfang- 
lichkeit) of the subject apprehending. In the first step 
it was shown how Judgment and Feeling respectively 
mediate in a real way between corresponding functions 
of mind. Now it is argued that their relative positions 
in the respective groups is so similar, in respect of 
their subjective aspect, that they must form part of one 
and the same mental function : " if the Power of 
Judgment should at all determine anything for itself 
alone, it can be nothing else than the feeling of 
pleasure, and conversely, if this (feeling of pleasure) 
should have at all a principle a priori, it will be 
found in the Power of Judgment alone." 1 Thus 
the object of the Judgment in so far as it has one, 
seeing that it refers solely to the subject and the 
subjective determination which we call Feeling, are one 
and the same. 

But what exactly does Kant mean by the subjectivity 
of the Judgment ? To begin with, as we saw above, 
Judgment has come to mean for Kant the original 
synthetic activity of mind ; and although the Deduc 
tion in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason 
consists in the proof that the subjective reference in the 
Judgment presupposes an objective reference and is 
only possible through consciousness of objectivity, we 
must remember that, in spite of this, Kant makes a 
reservation ; he insists that the c I think, the subjective 
element in the Judgment, is itself an analytic proposition? 
He means that there is such a thing as Cognition in 
general, consciousness of the subject without arriving 

1 fiber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, Werke, \. p. 588. 

2 Watson, Selections, p. 69. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 55 

at any particular determination ; and further, it is this 
Consciousness in general which makes possible the know 
ledge of the Understanding. But this never means for 
Kant that a purely subjective function of mind lies at 
the basis of all knowledge. An enormous confusion 
arises for us here, because we are thinking of a totally 
different contrast from that which was before Kant s 
mind. Objectivity for Kant, it cannot be too strongly 
urged, means no more than the objectivity of external 
sense. The sensuous perception of Inner Sense, the 
sense of time in Imagination, is not for him objective ; 
the proof in the Analogies which appears to base outer 
on inner sense, the permanence of substance on the 
permanent in time, should not be regarded as an 
exception to this but as a fault in Kant s argument. 
What modern Logic means by * objective in the Judg 
ment, is what Kant has in view in the analytical 
consciousness, C I think : which differs from the objec 
tivity of the modern judgment only in this, that it 
is not itself so much a system of consciousness, an 
objective consciousness, as the basis of all objective 
consciousness. Kant s position nearly veers round to 
the Cartesian use of the contrast. 1 They called sub 
jective what is independent of individual mind, what 
underlies the sense-object ; and what is this but Kant s 
4 transcendental object ? And, as Kant admits, the I 
think of apperception is really indistinguishable from 
this independent or objective mind. We should, 

1 1 find that Cohen supports this view : " bei Kant bedeutet das 
Subjective ausschliesslich dasjenige, was dadurch gerade und zwar 
allein objective ist." Kants Begriindung der Aesthetik, pp. 103-4. It 
is of course recognised that, through Wolff and Baumgarten, Kant was 
the first to fix the modern sense of these terms. See Erdmann, Hist. 
Phil. ii. p. 238. 



56 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

therefore, hit off Kant s view more accurately, in view of 
the above confusion of terms, if we said that the *I think* 
of the Judgment is not subjective, for this implies a 
false contrast with objectivity, but personal as dis 
tinguished from divine or absolute mind. The I 
think shares the nature of the objective synthesis/ 
and therefore may be said to lie at the basis of all 
knowledge. It is subjective in the sense that it is 
personal and free from the obligation to think the 
objects of external sense. 

The student is more and more impressed with the 
intimate relation which the third Critique bears to the 
first. 1 This subjective character of the Judgment may be 
put in yet another way. It is the same feature Kant is 
hinting at in the contrast which he makes between Pro 
ductive and Reproductive Imagination, in the chapter on 
the Deduction of the Categories. The Reproductive 
function belongs to Psychology, the Productive alone 
to Transcendental Philosophy, and " its synthesis is the 
expression of spontaneous activity." Reproduction is 
an empirical synthesis of Imagination in accordance with 
the laws of association, but Imagination in its original 
function is the " faculty of setting before the mind in 
perception an object that is not itself present" :* i.e. 
though it may make use of association in its free 
activity, it is not led by it but leads it, " for unlike 
sense, imagination is not simply capable of being deter 
mined, but is itself determining." 4 There is no such 
thing as a purely contingent fancy which outrages all 
the forms of knowledge, and certainly Productive 
Imagination is no such contingent activity ; rather it 

1 Cp. Anna Tumarkin in Kantstudien, Band xi. 

2 Watson, Selections, p. 77. 3 Ibid. * Ibid. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 57 

conforms to the categories while it constructs its figura 
tions without reference to any definite object, i.e. 
without compulsion of external sense or fixed direction 
of association. Hence Kant calls it the " first applica 
tion " of Understanding to Sense, and so " the condition 
of all other applications of Understanding to objects 
that we are capable of perceiving." l 

There is, then, after all something profound in Kant s 
deduction of Feeling from the judgment. He begins 

o * o o 

with the judgment of Formal Logic, and this changes 
in his hands into the reality of which it is but the type, 
the Original Synthetic Activity of Mind. The proof 
is really reversed and is, that Determination is a subor 
dinate form of Reflexion. The usual criticism is that 
he has violated the nature of Feeling, particularly 
aesthetic, by reducing it to a form of intellectual cogni 
tion. In point of fact, he does quite the opposite. 
While in seeming he brings Feeling back to functions 
of knowledge, in the process of proof he lifts up 
knowledge into relationship with the personal, free 
activity of mind. Reflexion is not debased to Under 
standing but Understanding is elevated by its subor 
dination to Reflexion. Kant, indeed, suggests that the 
fixed forms of the Understanding were originally 
spontaneous in their activity. When we go beyond 
the limits of Understanding as it is now known to us, 
that is to say, beyond causal connection, and freely 
classify things as genera and species reflectively/ 
our reflexion is characterised by a feeling of Pleasure, 
the mark of spontaneity. And though we no longer 
feel pleasure in contemplating the fixed connections of 
Understanding, yet it must have been there " at one 
* Ibid. p. 78. 



58 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

time;" and "it is only because the commonest experi 
ence would be impossible without it that it is gradually 
confounded with mere cognition and no longer arrests 
particular attention." 1 Determinate judgments are 
fossilised reflexions upon Nature. These unchange 
able forms and connections of Understanding had to 
be discovered at one time, and their discovery was no 
doubt attended by the inseparable mark of all spon 
taneity, Pleasure. What takes place in the history of 
the sciences is repeated in the growing consciousness. 
For the child each established law of Nature, when it 
first secures the attention, is a lucky hit of Reflexion, a 
fresh discovery. 

There is a deeper suggestion here. The bounds 
of Understanding are not fixed but stretch with the 
advance of Science. Science progressively feeds the 
forms of Philosophy with their content. In the light 
of evolution, we should now add to Understanding 
part of those forms of teleology which for Kant were 
wholly contingent and reflective. Scientists largely 
destroy for themselves the pleasure which the forms 
of adaptation in Nature afford the unsophisticated mind, 
and later, through their knowledge, the general con 
sciousness comes to feel 

" that there hath passed away a glory from the earth." 
But there must be a limit to the encroachment of 
Understanding. If it be the case, as Kant suggests, 
that the original function of mind is the spontaneous, 
if Productive is the condition of Reproductive Imagina 
tion, if the free, personal consciousness, c I think, be 
the condition of consciousness of the objectivity of 
sense-perception and independent of it, then it must 
1 Bernard, p. 28. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 59 

lie in the power of this original function to maintain 
a distinct realm for itself; otherwise the Understanding 
would devour its parent. There is a limit to the 
encroaching of the land upon the sea, whose trackless 
ways best typify the judgment of Reflexion. There 
fore Kant is right when he makes Understanding, 
with its fixity, a distinct compartment of mind from 
Reflexion. He may have drawn the limits prematurely, 
but, in the long run, its kingdom has an end. It is 
not likely that the mind will surrender its spontaneity 
in the realms of the finer emotions connected with 
Art, Morality, and Religion. Teleology may linger 
between the two worlds of determined and free activity, 
and it cannot wholly surrender to Understanding ; the 
truth may be that it is the bond of union and transi 
tion between these two worlds. Kant seems to take 
this view in the half-hearted way he connects it 
with Aesthetic. But the objects of the fine emotions 
are the private grounds of the sovereign Freedom 
of Reason which Understanding invades only to court 
defeat. In this sense M. Basch is right when he says 
that knowledge and will are sterilised products of 
feeling : " the individual is more truly himself when 
he feels " : habit, without doubt, blunts " le timbre 
sentimental de la sensation." But, he concludes, there 
is one sphere where Feeling regains its ancient empire, 
where man is concerned neither to know nor to will, 
but before all to feel ; where representations become 
again what they have been from the beginning, the 
creations of Feeling, and that sphere is the Aesthetic. 1 

1 UEsthetique de Kant, par Basch, Introd. p. xiv. 



CHAPTER III. 

AESTHETIC AND THE FIRST CANON. 

WE are now in a position to understand how, in the last 
phase of his system, Kant sought to commend our con 
fidence in a deeper and more immediate interpretation 
of Reality. We are inclined to think of it as character 
istically critical because of the title which the three 
Kritiken bear. But the significance of the term c critical* 
is limited to Kant s age ; it is the sword which he carried 
in his left hand to drive away the Horonites of Ration 
alism, and we must not forget the new temple whose 
foundations he laid. This positive tendency is particu 
larly prominent in the thoughts of the third Critique, 
notwithstanding its polemical tone, and the function 
of criticism is little more than a concession to his logical 
scheme. The subject which forms the distinctive and 
greater part of the book, Aesthetic, did not need to be 
critically examined in the same sense as Knowledge and 
Morality, for its claims had not been exaggerated. The 
trouble rather was that its claims had hardly been 
advanced, and Kant s office was not to call it in question 
so much as to call it into existence. The exercise of 
his critical faculty, in this instance, seems to have been 
due to force of habit rather than to reasoned conviction ; 
for if he had examined with more care the views which 
he opposed, he should have found more cause to excite 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 61 

his admiration than his pity. Neither Burke nor 
Leibniz, the representatives of the complementary ten 
dencies in European thought which he opposed, is 
in effect less subjective than Kant himself. Neither 
says that Beauty resides in objects as a constitutive 
quality. On the contrary, they commit themselves to 
a subjective theory. For with Leibniz Beauty is a 
confused knowledge and therefore rests on subjective 
conditions, the difference between confused and clear 
knowledge being a matter of degree. And for Burke 
it consists in the comparative pleasure we enjoy in con 
templating different forms. For, notwithstanding his 
sensationalism in which the smoothness of objects is a 
prominent feature, his prevailing conviction is that Taste 
depends for its existence on our ignorance and the 
practice of deception in Art : " it is our ignorance of 
things that causes all our admiration." x It follows that 
Beauty is not a sensible quality in things which is 
passively received in sensation, so much as a subjective 
interpretation. 

Kant did not understand his authors so liberally. He 
goes out of his way to correct the Leibnizian theory in 
which he detected the shadow of a concept, however 
confused, and the theory of Burke whose physiological 
language alone was sufficient to favour sensationalism. 
But there is much more in the continental theory as it 
was developed by Wolff and Baumgarten than Kant 
was able to appreciate, and indeed it envisages a point 
of view to which he vainly sought to aspire. For when 
we candidly consider what is meant by the definition of 
Beauty as confused knowledge, we find that Kant s 
criticism loses much of its point. He makes out that 
1 Sublime and Beautiful, Part ii. 4 ; cp. 10. 



62 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

the knowledge of perfection, even while it is confused, 
remains a form of knowledge with an intellectual con 
tent ; and if this were strictly true, his criticism would be 
valid within its own limits. But an impartial examina 
tion shows that Baumgarten, at least, did not assimilate 
the Beautiful to intellectual form. This exception can 
hardly be made in favour of Leibniz, as we have seen, 
for his doctrine of continuity provides a complete 
thoroughfare between sense and thought. But Wolff 
and Baumgarten had advanced on Leibniz s position. 
Wolff had not indeed worked out a Logic of sense 
corresponding to the Logic of thought, but he recog 
nised a distinction between lower and higher forms of 
knowledge, and in his Psychology he gives a table of the 
obscure forms. It was left to Baumgarten to elaborate 
into a science, under the comprehensive title Aesthetic 
which originally means simple perception, those inferior 
modes of apprehension, including feelings and the 
obscure sense-impressions which are not accompanied 
by the reflective activity of thought. Beauty was thus 
defined as having its place in the region of confused 
knowledge (cognitio sensitiva), and this circumstance 
takes away our wonder that Kant should have employed 
the term aesthetic, both to denote the pure perception 
of objects in space without the activity of thought and 
artistic intuition. Now Baumgarten set out from this 
accepted distinction between unthinking perception and 
conscious apperception of objects. It means that mere 
sense-perception is possible, in the simple awareness of 
presentation, without identifying the object in the 
ordinary associations of apperception which we call 
knowledge. Probably this is what Kant meant, in what 
is a rather startling statement for the author of the 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 63 

Analytic, when he said : "we can represent a thing as 
given although we have no concept of it." * But, as 
the school of Wolff characteristically taught, the content 
in every form of mentality is perfection of some kind. 
Beauty is therefore the perfection of this obscure know 
ledge (perfectio cognitionis sensiti-vae qua tails}? And 
manifestly its content is more congenital to intellectual 
form than to any other, because perfection means the 
complete agreement of an object with its concept. In 
no other way is it possible to have a clear understanding 
of what perfection means. This statement at once 
reveals the strength and the weakness in Baumgarten s 
position, as will presently appear. 

But let me continue. By defining aesthetic percep 
tion as a lower form of knowledge, he appears only to 
have meant that the content, and not the type of appre 
hension itself, is of the same kind as in cognition. If 
his statements are literally understood, as frequently 
happens, it would mean that the Beautiful is a confusion 
of intellectual relations, which never comes to clear 
expression without ceasing to be beautiful, when it passes 
into knowledge. But this would be to suppose what 
is nonsensical, that Baumgarten saw the beauty of 
things in a different way from us, in a confused haze. 
However theories may alter, the experience of the 
beautiful remains essentially the same. It is sufficient 
to recall what Aristotle says, that " a very small animal 
organism cannot be beautiful, for the view of it is 
confused." 3 It was simply the inarticulate nature of 

1 Bernard, p. 315. 

2 Aesthefica, Part i. 14. ; quoted in Cohen s Kants Begriindung dcr 
Aesthetik, p. 34. 

9 Poetics, vii. 4 ; Butcher, p. 31. 



64 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

feeling that Baumgarten intended to convey in the 
definition of the Beautiful as confused representa 
tion. The object of Aesthetic would be for the 
intellect a complex of confused relations, but this 
does not imply that the aesthetic perception is itself 
confused; for, as Logic is the perfection of thought, 
Aesthetic is the perfection of sensible apprehension, 
and is therefore in its nature intended to have a clear 
expression peculiar to itself. In Baumgarten s phrase, 
it is the art of beautiful thinking (ars pukhre cogltandi]^ 
and this qualification is sufficient to constitute Aesthetic 
into a distinct type of apprehension from cognition. It 
is therefore misleading to say, without further explana 
tion, that for Baumgarten Taste is a faculty of know 
ledge. Every kind of perfection and therefore the 
perfection which we find in sensible knowledge, is 
a harmony of differences in unity ; but while the 
content of sensible knowledge is intellectually con 
fused, the aesthetic perfection is not itself confused, for 
the beauty of a representation consists in the degree of 
clearness with which it is apprehended, or, in Baum 
garten s words, it is the perfection of sensible knowledge 
as such. In the dim twilight of the intellect, aesthetic 
intuition is able to have a clear perception peculiar to 
itself. This interpretation is supported by Erdmann s 
significant statement, that the judgment of Taste "rests 
upon a perception that is (though clear) confused." 2 

Now it is the very same distinction that Kant sought 
to establish in his theory of indeterminate knowledge, 
or, as it is otherwise expressed, the consciousness of an 
end without any determinate end. This is identical 
with Baumgarten s confused or indeterminate perception 

1 Erdmann, Hist. Phil. ii. p. 239. 2 Hist. Phil. ii. p. 240. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 65 

of relations in a unity. But neither in Kant nor in 
Baumgarten does this mean a confused apprehension, or 
indeed an intellectual activity of any kind. I therefore 
think that Basch has misunderstood both his authors, 
when he criticises Kant on the same grounds as Baum 
garten. 1 Indeterminate knowledge does not mean for 
Kant a hazy conception, it does not mean knowledge of 
any kind, but the original mental disposition by which 
all determinate knowledge is conditioned, and which is 
more akin to feeling and conation than to cognition 
itself. Basch has certainly a strong case against Leibniz, 
when he observes that on his theory all confused repre 
sentations would be indiscriminately beautiful, which in 
fact they are not, and that therefore he cannot provide 
an aesthetical criterion. But this criticism hardly applies 
to Baumgarten with the same force. He could have 
replied that a confused representation which is not able 
to hold our admiration for any length of time without 
thinking about it is not beautiful, and that it is beautiful 
when we are able to dwell in the mere perception while 
the activity of thought is suspended. Nor is it neces 
sary to suppose, with Basch, 2 that on this theory the 
Beautiful would cease to exist with the completion of 
Science ; for the Beautiful is independent, even for 
Baumgarten, of the growth of Science, and it will 
remain for Science a confused representation so long as 
it is worth our while to think it beautiful. 

It is the content, then, that is intellectual for Baum 
garten in aesthetic intuition, but the type of appre 
hension need not itself be intellectual. It is the same 
content that is differently apprehended in Logic, Ethic 
and Aesthetic. As the Beautiful and the Good appear 

l UEsthetique de Kant, p. 186. 2 Ibid. pp. 186-7. 

E 



66 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

to the Understanding only as Truth, and as the 
Beautiful and the True are for the Will only the Good, 
so the True and the Good are for sensuous knowledge 
only the Beautiful ; just as a singing bird exists only as 
tone for the ear, and as colour and form for the eye. 1 
As Schasler says, this conception lifts Baumgarten at 
one stroke above the confusion of the Beautiful with 
the Good, which we find in Plato, and later in the 
English and French Schools. 

But we must not be misled by Schasler s generous 
appreciation. I have only contended so far that, in 
attributing an intellectual theory of Beauty to Baum 
garten, we should be careful to place the accent on the 
content apprehended rather than on the aesthetic appre 
hension itself. This latter he conceives, in the only 
way he could conceive it, in the form of feeling and 
indeterminate sense-perception. But this implies a 
contradiction, and it is here the real criticism falls. For 
it may well be asked if it is possible to apprehend 
intellectual relations, as such, in a form of apprehension 
which is not itself intellectual. For Baumgarten the 
content, not only in Aesthetic, but in every form of 
mentality, is primarily and essentially intellectual. His 
theory is based on the rationalistic assumption that 
the world is perfectly ordered by Reason, and is the 
best possible. He therefore does not mean, as we 
should say, that Aesthetic is the expression of the same 
content which in another form is expressed as Truth, 
but that it is the sensuous expression of that whose first 
and proper expression is Truth, and he therefore defines 
it as the Beauty of Truth (fulchritudo cognitionis). He 
has no idea of Aesthetic as the inevitable expression of 
1 See Schasler, Kritlsche Geschichte der Aesthetik, pp. 350-1. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 67 

a content which may indeed be described in intellectual 
terms, but never in a way that is adequate to its mean 
ing ; or, that Aesthetic expresses just that quality in the 
content of which we can have no clear conception. 

The real error in Baumgarten s theory, then, is the 
contradiction that an intellectual content can coexist 
with a form of feeling which is not itself an intellectual 
mode of apprehension, or as Wolff defined feeling, an 
intuitive mode of knowledge (cognitio intuitiva). Kant 
saw this clearly enough, but, instead of repairing the 
error by providing Aesthetic with a content peculiar 
to itself, he deprived it of all content whatsoever. 
Accordingly, where Baumgarten fell short in the lofty 
theory of Aesthetic with which he is accredited by 
Schasler, was in maintaining an assumption which is 
just the cardinal and intractable error in Kant s own 
position, that significant content must be intellectual. 
The only heresy which could call for Kant s serious 
criticism, and which he really thought to burn in the 
genial effigies of his predecessors, was not the view that 
Aesthetic is intellectual, but its rationalistic implication 
which had been nourished in mediaeval speculation, that 
Beauty is an evidence of the Divine Reason in a per 
fectly ordered world. This would make Beauty a part 
of the economy of Nature and degrade it into something 
that is good to eat. But such a "fat weed," even for 
Kant s remote observation, could hardly flourish in the 
clarified air of the Romantic Revival, which was nigh 
half a century old when he gave final expression to his 
opinions. 

Altogether we receive the impression that criticism 
has not the same original force in the third Critique as 
in the first. This is not to say that Kant has made no 



68 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

advance on his predecessors. We shall see presently 
that he was the first to place Aesthetic on a secure 
foundation. But the very points in which his criticisms 
appear to count are those in which he shares the same 
fault. Thus, while he sought to escape Baumgarten s 
contradiction by severing form from content, he fell 
into the same formal conception of Beauty as a symmetry 
of relations in his theory of pulchritudo vaga. It is in 
the implications of his theory which he neglected to 
develop that Kant outstrips his predecessors, and there 
fore our interpretation will be more successful if we 
consider his work as constructive rather than critical. 

I have already tried to explain what the new faculty 
means, which he calls Reflective Judgment. It will be 
sufficient to remember that it is not a judgment in the 
logical sense, although it has a certain affinity with logical 
judgment which Kant is quite able to justify. Reflexion 
covers the whole domain of feeling, intuition and 
unthinking perception, and its objects are just what is 
inarticulate for knowledge. And the problem is, 
whether these unthinking intuitions can be entertained 
with at least the same degree of reasonable conviction, 
as thoughts whose claim to truth can be demonstrated. 
Those contingent forms which the material substrate of 
Nature presents to our Understanding, are quite unlike 
the causal connection of phenomena. They constitute a 
purpose in themselves or in our apprehension of them 
which is not necessary, so far as we can see, to their exist 
ence as phenomena. Things do not need to be organic 
or beautiful in order to appear, but as phenomena they are 
necessary because completely dependent on our Under 
standing der Verstandist der Urheber der Natur. While, 
therefore, their existence as phenomena is necessary, 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 69 

their existence at all or their purpose is not necessary 
but contingent, and we can only regard them as emana 
tions of the Supersensible. Of these contingent forms 
the beauty of Nature, including its ideal imitation in 
Art, and the adaptation of means to ends in her organic 
forms, are the two outstanding instances. These are 
not matters of fact so much as favours of Nature in 
which the Unknown Matter disports itself before our 
eyes. But although they are both made intelligible by 
the same faculty of reasonable Feeling, they are yet 
very distinct ; and Kant has scarcely attempted to show 
what they can have in common to justify us in bringing 
them under the same principle. Whether and how far 
this is possible will form the conclusion to our study. 
Meanwhile we proceed to consider the first of these, 
and here Reflexion becomes the Aesthetical Reflective 
Judgment. 

Not so very long before the Critique of Judgment 
appeared, Kant did not think that a philosophy of the 
Beautiful was possible. He makes this admission in 
the Transcendental Aesthetic^ where he seeks to justify 
his use of the term c aesthetic to denote pure percep 
tion in space. The Germans, he says, are the only 
people who have availed themselves of this word to 
denote Philosophy of Taste, and they have done so in 
the mistaken hope, which Baumgarten entertained, of 
finding a rational basis for it and raising its principles to 
the dignity of a science. But all this labour is vain, for 
the principles which govern Taste are in their sources 
empirical and therefore cannot take the place of a priori 
principles, by which our judgment should be regulated. 
A judgment of Taste is rather the real touchstone of 
such a -priori principles. It is therefore advisable to 



70 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

reserve the term for what is true science, the pure 
forms of sense ; and in this we are much nearer to its 
original use among the Greeks, with whom aurBtjTa 
KOI vorjra was a prevalent division in knowledge. 1 

This was written in 1781 when the Critique of Pure 
Reason first appeared. He then thought that the Beauti 
ful could not rise above the low level of psychology, 
being only capable of empirical principles. Experience 
gave rise to certain rules, as conventional as the rules of 
Taste in wine or any other agreeable object ; it could 
not be said that in the very nature of the Beautiful 
there were principles which conditioned experience, 
corresponding to the constant and original factors in 
knowledge such as the principle that all sensible objects 
must have extensive magnitude. In the second edition, 
some six years later, he repeats this note with the 
significant alternative, that Taste may share the name 
Aesthetic with speculative philosophy and then Aesthetic 
will be received partly in a transcendental, partly in a 
psychological sense. 2 But the second edition intro 
duces other modifications which Hartenstein apparently 
thought were original. Instead of saying that the 
principles of Taste are empirical in their sources, Kant 
now says that they are only empirical in their main 
sources (vornehmsten Quellen) ; and it is not a priori 
laws that we cannot discover in Aesthetic but determinate 
a -priori laws (bestimmten Gesetzen). 3 All these little 
things count. It means that he does not despair of the 

1 Hartenstein, iii. pp. 56-7, note. 

2 See Hartenstein s remarks on above citation. 

3 Kuno Fischer, Kant und seine Lehre, ii. pp. 408-9. Cp. Erdmann, 
Kanfs Kritlk der Urteilskraft, Einleitung, xvii ; C. T. Michaelis, Zur 
Entstehung von Kanfs Kritlk der Urtei/skraft, p. 7. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 71 

sources. What appears impossible is not to discover 
a priori principles but determinate a priori principles 
corresponding to those in science, and in his most 
mature conclusions in the Critique of Judgment he never 
aspires to determinate principles. 

Then in the well-known letter to Reinhold, already 
quoted, and written in December of the same year 
(1787), he advances his new confidence in an under 
taking which he formerly held to be impossible, with 
engaging candour : " I can assure you without being 
guilty of self-conceit, that the further I advance on my 
way, the less concerned I am that any contradiction, 
or (as is not unusual at present) an alliance even, 
should do considerable damage to my system." The 
alliance he contemplates is evidently the adoption of 
Taste into his system of philosophy. He has an 
inner, growing conviction that even in researches in 
which he does not know his way, he has only to 
glance at his table of the Elements of Knowledge to 
get an opening. 1 He is convinced that no realm of 
Nature is accidental. We may not have a certain 
knowledge of the Beautiful, perhaps it is not even 
desirable, but we can and must have a reasonable 
appreciation. It is possible to show that the aesthetic 
sense is an activity of the Human Spirit as primary and 
essential as knowledge or morality, so that without it 
we are not complete. Indeed Kant ultimately shows 
that in Aesthetic we make the nearest approximation 
to divine Understanding, for its objects are those which 
our mind would create for itself if it had creative power. 
It is true that Taste is formed in society and modified 
by the growth of civilisation, but it is not therefore 
1 Briefwechsel i Kirchmann, pp. 460-1. 



72 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

formed contingently at the wish and will of circumstance ; 
for the Human Spirit has already its idea of what the 
Beautiful should be. No account of Taste is satis 
factory which explains it in terms of other mental 
functions, and assimilates it to these. 1 It is not a 
derivative but an original faculty. It is neither a modi 
fication of knowledge nor of volition nor of sensation. 

He begins his proof by laying down as the First 
Canon that the Judgment of Taste is disinterested 
(phne alles Interesse). This is an unfortunate expres 
sion and foreshadows all the false formalism in Kant s 
theory. But particularly with this author, we must 
take one step at a time and content ourselves mean 
while with his narrowest meaning. All he should intend 
to say is that Aesthetic has no interest in the existence 
of its objects. In this respect he compares it favourably 
with the Pleasant and the Good. It should be said at 
once that these contrasts are miserable and are never 
clearly defined. We shall have to notice them later, 
but this much at least should be said now, that while 
the contrast with Pleasure is notorious, the contrast 
with the Good is not so obvious. In the first place, 
we hardly expect it from Kant for whom the Will has 
no interest of any kind, not even personal, in its objects. 
But the change of opinion which we are now remarking, 
just indicates the modifying influence of his later reflec 
tions on his moral theory. He now seems to speak of 
the Good loosely, as one would speak of good things ; 
he states explicitly, however, that he does not mean the 
useful only but also " that which is good absolutely and 

1 Cp. Uber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 586, where he 
deprecates attempts to reduce Knowledge, Feeling and Volition to a 
common principle. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 73 

in every respect." 1 He appears to have felt the need of 
explanation, for he adds in a note, that pure moral 
judgments " may be quite disinterested, but yet very 
interesting, i.e. not based upon an interest, but bringing 
an interest with it." 2 But in this theory of the Good 
there is nothing to constitute a contrast, such as he 
has in view ; for it is eminently true of the Beautiful 
also that an interest follows our judgment. Kant, 
however, meant it seriously, and it is the burden 
of his third canon which will be discussed in its proper 
place. 

The Beautiful, then, is occupied only with the form 
of things. But this proposition is not identical with the 
ordinary distinction between form and matter, on which 
Kant s doctrine of phenomenalism rests. For in the 
Beautiful even the pure representation of space, which 
is the form of phenomena, is excluded because it is 
an ingredient in cognition. 3 By the form he means 
rather the way in which the thinking subject is affected. 
Beauty is not a perceived quality in the object but 
exists in our minds. It was well said by Hegel 
regarding this canon that it is the first rational word 
concerning Beauty, and it is Kant s single triumph 
over Baumgarten though he did not use it to great 
advantage. He showed for the first time that the 
outlook in Aesthetic is peculiar to itself and that 
the activity in aesthetic perception is of an order 
distinctly its own. In this sense it may be said with 
truth that there is no natural beauty, for beauty does 
not consist in the fact of impression but in the con- 

1 Critique of Judgment, 4 : Bernard, p. 53. 

2 Ibid. 2 : Bernard, p. 48. 

3 Ibid. Introd. vii. : Bernard, pp. 29-30. 



74 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

templative state which accompanies the impression. 
This is proved by the fact that our artistic impressions 
of the same objects vary, and sometimes do not return 
to us at all; they are not constant effects like the 
impressions in sense-perception but depend altogether 
on the state of the subject. It was to ensure this con 
dition that Kant called aesthetic perception a form of 
Judgment, for which he has been severely criticised as, 
for instance, by Victor Basch. 

But Kant has certainly something to say for himself. 
In the first instance Aesthetic is perception, as the 
word originally means. But if it is to be anything 
more than a mechanical consequence of sensation, the 
impression must be mediated through some form of 
reflective activity akin to the process in logical judg 
ment. A savage cry of pleasure is not aesthetical, 
because it is an immediate effect of sensation. Now 
Kant noticed, that while the basis in an aesthetical 
judgment must be sensation (Empfindung), for other 
wise it would not be aesthetical, " there is only one 
single so-called sensation which can never be an idea 
of an object, and this is the feeling of pleasure and 
pain"; 1 and it is this sensation alone, and not any 
other, that forms the basis in aesthetic perception. 
Aesthetic is thus brought at once into line with logical 
judgment, for the feeling of approval or disapproval is 
decidedly an apperceptive function, or as Kant would say, 
the distinctive mark of an aesthetical judgment consists 
in the comparison of a representation with other repre 
sentations and with the whole reflective faculty. While 
therefore Aesthetic is primarily sensuous, there must 
also be the activity of Understanding. 

1 "Ober Philosophie iiberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 598. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 75 

At this point Kant has brought himself into difficulty. 
He saw that there is a spurious kind of judgment which 
is at once aesthetical because its basis is sensation, and 
also a reflective activity akin to judgment, because 
its basis is just that peculiar form of sensation in 
which all sensation is apperceived. Let it be said here 
for the sake of clearness, that the immediate sensation 
of pleasure or pain is not the same as the feeling 
of pleasure or pain ; the former is reflex emotional 
expression while the latter is a function of conscious 
apperception. Well, this spurious judgment is no 
other than that abhorred brood, the Pleasant. In the 
judgment, Wine is pleasant, the basis is not immediate 
sensation but sensation as it is mediated through our 
appreciation, and therefore "an aesthetical judgment of 
sense (asthetisches Sinnenurtheil} is possible." - 1 Now 
Kant is bound over not to admit the aesthetical judg 
ment of sense to the same rank as Aesthetic proper, 
and he therefore distinguishes the latter as the aesthe 
tical reflective judgment. But the distinction which he 
makes is nowhere satisfactory. The point of difference 
for him is that the aesthetical judgment of sense does 
not involve a process of comparison, and that in con 
sequence it cannot pretend to the universality of the 
aesthetical reflective judgment. 2 But this admission 
cancels the peculiar character of pleasure-pain as distinct 
from mere sensation, and indeed this is what happens, 
for we find him saying that the basis in an aesthetical 
judgment of sense is " that sensation which is immedi 
ately produced by the empirical perception of the 
object." 3 The truth is that the Pleasant is not so 
conventional as Kant imagined. 

1 Ibid. p. 597. 2 Ibid. p. 599. *lbld. p. 598. 



76 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Let us now return to the more important question 
which will bring us on to the main track again, how 
we are to distinguish the aesthetical from the logical 
judgment, or what is the same thing, Reflexion from 
Knowledge ; for the logical judgment is pre-eminently 
apperceptive, the synthetic unity of apperception being 
the supreme principle of Understanding. In the judg 
ment, 4 Rust is a form of the process called oxidation, 
the presentation first receives adequate meaning in 
being assimilated to a general process, which is of the 
same kind in the burning of a candle, an explosion, 
or the physiological function of respiration. But 
while in this instance the associations which make the 
presentation intelligible are necessary connections in 
experience, and may therefore be said to be reproduced 
in imagination, the apperceptive function in Reflexion is 
productive, because the associations are ideally selected 
from the necessary context in experience and placed in 
a new relation. The process in aesthetic perception is 
on a parallel with what takes place in reminiscence. 
Our memory of the past is always an ideal unity. Dis 
severed from the pragmatic interest which we felt at the 
time and which is now diminished in intensity or for 
gotten altogether, events are reproduced selectively with 
the impersonal regard of a dispassionate spectator. 
Even excessively painful occurrences, which are fresh in 
recollection, are subject to the same principle. For we 
either seek to banish them from our minds as intolerable, 
or the acuteness of recollection is so modified that we 
are able to retain them as detached from our immediate 
well-being, and then our interest is no longer personal 
but dramatic, and we contemplate them with the sublime 
pleasure that we feel in tragedy, 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 77 

It is the same kind of activity that is at work in 
Art with this difference, that we detach ourselves from 
events which are present while in reminiscence the 
events are past. It is true that knowledge is also 
selective. The impressions of sense which rain down 
upon us are not passively received, but organised 
with a methodical intention into the unities which we 
call objects. Our selective interest, however, is con 
fined within very narrow limits, being determined by 
the systematic connection of experience ; the associations 
reproduced are strictly those which contribute to the 
existence of the object, and our purposive activity is 
restrained by the end of knowledge as a system of 
necessary relations. But in Aesthetic our activity is 
purposive without being controlled by any determinate 
purpose, for it has no end beyond the harmony of its 
own processes ; it is the thinking part of our mind working 
unconscious of its accustomed end, or in Kant s words, it 
is the free play of Imagination and Understanding. 

If Kant had developed the principle contained in this 
canon to its full consequences, he would have practically 
included all the essential principles in a philosophy of the 
Beautiful. If Aesthetic is an activity akin to judgment 
and yet, unlike judgment, takes no cognisance of 
existential relations, it will be the exercise of an ideal 
Understanding, and therefore a truer and purer inter 
pretation of Nature than is given in science, without 
itself being science. But the unconscious Understand 
ing as it appears in Productive Imagination is for Kant 
a more general and abstract faculty than the Under 
standing itself, and consequently its objects are not the 
ideal forms of Nature stripped of their contingencies in 
the conditions of existence, but a more remote description 



78 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

of Nature which is so general that it has no meaning 
at all. His principle that every ingredient of cognition 
must be excluded, should mean no more than Oscar 
Wilde s aphorism, in his preface to Dorian Gray, that "all 
art is quite useless." As in Aristotle s view the useful 
Arts, political, economic, industrial, bring to complete 
ness the ends which Nature can only realise imperfectly; 
so the Art of the Beautiful envisages the ideal intention 
of Nature, but with this difference which Aristotle 
appears not to notice, that unlike the useful Arts the 
end of the Beautiful is exhausted in the harmony of our 
own subjective processes, and we have no purpose of 
bettering Nature or anybody else. 

It is interesting to find Oscar Wilde anticipated in 
Kant s Logic Lectures of 1772, where he says: Das 
Sch dne soil immer ungebrauchlich sein. 1 But Kant took 
so seriously what has only truth as an aphorism, that 
his theory of the Beautiful is useless for the aesthete as 
well as for the scientist or moralist. He appears to 
speak of the Beautiful as if it were subjective to the 
second power and so at two removes from Reality, 
phenomena being already subjective representations ; and 
the Sublime should consequently be regarded as a third 
degree of abstraction. But his position that the ele 
ments of beauty which we find in objects exist in our 
minds and not in the objects themselves, must be under 
stood as a peculiar consequence of his theory of know 
ledge. As Giinther Jacoby says, to condemn the 
subjectivity of Kant s Aesthetic is to raise the whole 
question of his statement of the problem, whether 
Aesthetic is capable of a priori principles. 2 A harmony 

1 Schlapp, Kants Lehre vom Genie u.s.w. p. 65. 
2 Herders und Kants Asthetik, p. 255. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 79 

of relations like every appearance of purpose in Nature, 
organic or inorganic, is in Kant s opinion contingent for 
Understanding, because we cannot see that this character 
in phenomena is necessary to their existence as objects 
of knowledge. But on the other hand the Subjective in 
all its forms, moral, aesthetical and teleological, has for 
him more worth and reality than the objective region of 
science; the one misfortune is that its reality cannot be 
demonstrated. And it is specially important for us to 
carry his principles to their farthest limits, wherever he 
gives us encouragement to proceed, because we are not 
immediately concerned with his aesthetic theory except as 
it sheds light on the interpretation of his whole system. 
The value of his aesthetic principle consists in the 
discovery of different planes in Subjectivity. The 
modern commonplace that there are degrees in Reality 
would be expressed by him as degrees in Subjectivity. 
And in his theory of Genius he shows, if only inci 
dentally, that he had a true conception of what is meant 
by the subjective quality of Aesthetic. For Genius does 
not reproduce Nature according to a rule of Under 
standing, but works up the material supplied to it 
according to the law of association " into something 
different which surpasses Nature." 1 It is not an imita 
tion, but an ideal imitation ; for example, when Aristotle 
says that dancing imitates character, emotion, and 
action, he is using the term imitation as equivalent to 
expression. 2 The original elements of Beauty must no 
doubt be found in Nature, and in this sense Beauty 
does reside in Nature ; yet it is not these elements as 
they are scattered and dispersed in Nature, or as they 

1 Critique of Judgment, 49 ; Bernard, p. 198. 

2 Poetics, i. 5. 



8o THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

are imperfectly organised into appreciable unities which 
are hampered and obscured by contingencies, that the 
artist depicts, but as they are ideally selected to form 
that aesthetic semblance which their appearance suggests 
to the artistic mind alone. What he imitates is not the 
actual but what Nature tried to express and failed. This 
is the proper and only sense in which a work of Art should 
be true to life. What the poet represents is not what is 
but what may be, and even what ought to be if with 
Schiller we conceive of Beauty as an imperative "a duty 
of appearances." l All Art seeks to give to the soul of 
things the expression which is most fitting to its nature. 
So far it will be a reproduction of what is actual, but, 
as Aristotle says of portrait-painting, it is a representa 
tion " which is true to life and yet more beautiful." 2 
For the first time Nature becomes beautiful when she 
is interpreted by artistic genius. It is not a reproduc 
tion but a production, not an imitation but a creation. 
And what takes place in the mind of the artist is 
enacted by the ordinary consciousness in a less degree. 
To have aesthetic perception is to exercise in limited 
measure the creative activity of Genius. 

A clear understanding of the intention in Art is the 
only standard of criticism. Otherwise we shall oppose 
the products of Genius as realistic or idealistic in the most 
bewildering confusion, the former alone being regarded 
as true. The truth is that realism and idealism in Art 
are not so different in their interpretations of life as 
their standpoints are opposite ; for while the idealist 
represents the universal as it may exist in conditions which 

1 l)ber Anmuth und Wiirde : Werke, xi. p. 402. Cp. letter to 
Korner of Oct. 20, 1794. 

2 Poetics, xv. 8. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 81 

it chooses for itself, the realist indeed represents what is 
actual but at the moment when it is most expressive of 
the Ideal. Or, if the realistic expression should be 
completely wanting in and even hostile to ideal sig 
nificance, it will at least be capable, if it is Art, of 
suggesting by sympathetic reaction the sublime meaning 
of life. The intention of Art in Dickens is the same in 
effect as in Balzac and Tolstoi. The characters in Dickens 
move in an atmosphere of such august universality that 
they barely touch the ground, but if Mr. Micawber, Mrs. 
Gamp, the brothers Cheeryble, Mr. Mantalini or even 
Captain Bunsby, are hardly capable of existing in sensible 
conditions, it is not because they are unreal but because 
they are too true to life. And, on the other hand, a 
realistic writer like Balzac betrays this common intention 
in Art by overstraining realism as, for instance, in Old 
Goriot; for it is not necessarily the actual as it exists 
that he is describing but as it is most representative of 
what may be. A crucial instance for the unsophisticated 
mind is George Meredith. Here is an artist who can 
be indifferently regarded as realist or idealist, the former 
because he dissects the most delicate and intricate 
operations of the human heart with so fine a touch that 
the ordinary mind cannot perceive them, nor even 
believe that they are actual when the author tells them 
so ; and for this very reason he may be regarded as 
idealist. The same principle applies to Painting and 
Statuary. Turner is popularly called an idealist, but 
in Ruskin s opinion he was the most realistic painter of 
his age. There remains the subsidiary but important 
criterion of poetic truth that it must be internally con 
sistent or have ideal necessity; otherwise, even as 
fiction, it will be alike improbable and impossible. 



82 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

This conditional necessity is what Kant s Fourth Canon, 
the modality of the aesthetical Judgment, means when 
adequately interpreted. It is really a corollary to the 
Second which treats of the universality in the Judgment, 
and it would be pedantic to take it separately. 
We therefore propose to restrict ourselves to three 
canons. 

Kant s principle is capable of a further and final 
application which brings it to the test, and which raises 
the whole question of imitation in Art. If the space- 
form, as an ingredient in cognition, be excluded from 
Aesthetic, what has he to say of those objects which are 
nothing but representations in space ? I mean geome 
trical figures. This is discussed in the opening pages 
of the Teleology, 62. As might be expected, he 
wavers and gives no satisfactory reply. He refuses to 
call aesthetical a simple figure like the circle, because it 
is capable of many intellectual combinations. He will 
not even call it intellectual Beauty, because this would 
destroy the proper meaning of Beauty as free from 
every notion which contributes to the existence of an 
object, and he prefers to regard it as a relative Perfection. 
In short, it is classed with the objective-formal type of 
Teleology. It is also discussed in 22, where he gives 
his unqualified opinion that our interest in geometrical 
figures is not properly aesthetical but intellectual. His 
point is that we cannot think of a circle or cube 
without a/ concept of mathematical necessity, which puts 
a constraint upon Imagination ; only those drawings 
can be beautiful which are the work of free fancy, such 
as arabesques and bizarre decorations of like kind, and 
which do not serve any intellectual purpose. Here we 
see the sinister intention in Kant s first Canon ; he 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 83 

could not understand how an intellectual interest can 
be compatible with aesthetic feeling. 

But it is really not important what he says. I have 
only mentioned his opinion in order to introduce a 
wider problem. There are certain geometrical figures 
such as the ellipse, Zeising s golden section and 
Hogarth s undulating line, which are acknowledged 
to be simply beautiful apart from any mathematical 
implications. And the question is, if these representa 
tions whose significance is exhausted in their linear 
form have nothing to offer which Art can improve, 
whether the artistic imagination is not restricted in its 
activity to imitation in the literal sense of reproduction. 
Even here Kant s principle still holds in spite of his own 
opposition. Expressed in its most general terms the 
question is, as Signer Croce has recently been reminding 
us, whether all intuitions, as the adequate expression of 
impressions, are not aesthetical. Here there is implied 
a distinction between Beauty and Art which may be 
differently conceived and which must be more or less 
artificial. Stated abstractly, it is the difference between 
the Greek conception of Beauty as formal symmetry and 
the Romantic as characteristic expression. Aesthetic 
is manifestly more than Beauty in the narrow sense, 
for it includes the ugly, the sublime and tragic repre 
sentations which are not immediately pleasing in their 
form. The dwarfs of Velasquez are not beautiful men, 
but they do give aesthetic pleasure because they are 
made perfect of their kind ; they are not beautiful in 
their form, for this is repulsive, but in their typical 
expression of what a dwarf should be. The difference 
is seen in the different kinds of pleasure. The per 
ception of formal symmetry is merely contemplative, 



34 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

or, to use another phrase of Kant s, it is what pleases 
in "the mere act of judging"; 1 while the pleasure in 
sensuous expression as the perfect embodiment of an 
idea is expansive, soaring, dynamic. Kant himself indeed 
had observed a distinction between Beauty and Art 
which has become notorious in criticisms of his theory, 
but he drew the line at the wrong point. He main 
tained that while Art has intention, pure Beauty has 
none, and therefore Art cannot be beautiful. We 
should rather say that while a representation which 
has no meaning at all may be considered beautiful, the 
typically beautiful is only found in Art. 

Now the question is not whether certain intuitions 
as the simple but adequate expression of sense-impres 
sions may be beautiful. This is admitted. The ellipse 
has undoubtedly acquired content as the orbit of the 
heavenly bodies and may now be regarded as the 
aesthetic symbol of infinite spaces, but before this 
astronomical discovery was made it was beautiful, as 
a Greek vase is beautiful of which it is the geometrical 
form. A Greek vase is not beautiful because it is the 
perfect embodiment of an idea, for there is no good 
reason why a vase should be elliptical. The same is 
true of flowers, musical melodies and harmonies which 
are only made to please. The question rather is 
whether this narrow conception of Beauty is not the 
whole of Art as Art for Art s sake, in the " decadent " 
use of the aphorism. For Signor Croce the distinction 
only means the difference between simplicity and com 
plexity in expression, while Tolstoi drastically cuts 
the knot by excluding the Beautiful as meaningless 
expression from Art, which must always be infectious 
1 Bernard, 5 and 45. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 85 

expression. Happily we are not called to enter further 
into this unsettled problem, and may content ourselves 
by observing that the limits of the discussion are fixed 
for us in the opposing views of Lessing, who made 
expression subordinate to Beauty, and Tolstoi, who 
subordinates Beauty to expression. We may fearlessly 
admit that simple intuitions can be aesthetical without 
the least danger of degenerating into a mimetic theory 
of Art. For if our perception is aesthetical, it is never 
mere reproduction in imagination. The representation 
is beautiful, not because we simply perceive it, but 
because we perceive the very form we should produce 
ourselves if our imagination were free to create its 
own objects. The test of its aesthetic quality is that 
our perception is of the same productive nature as 
the creative activity of Genius. For the first time 
the form receives its aesthetic sanction from artistic 
imagination. Thus a photographic reproduction may 
have aesthetic quality, for though it is received as 
Nature gives it, it is not because Nature gives it ; it is 
chosen. As Kant says, the important point is not 
what Nature is, "but how we take it." 1 And these 
simple intuitions which Art cannot improve are 
aesthetical, because our choice rests on grounds which 
are the same in kind as those on which subjects are 
chosen from Nature for artistic treatment. 

We have already recognised that the elemental 
source of the Beautiful is Nature herself. Without 
actual perception of form, colour, sound, emotional 
expression and character as it is enacted in life, the 
works of Genius could never arise. In this elementary 
sense Nature is the beginning of all Art. Kant did not 

1 Bernard, p. 246. 



86 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

take this into account in his official theory, where he 
seems to speak of the Beautiful as the mere subjective 
product of our own minds. But he otherwise does 
recognise the Supersensible, in the disposition of Nature 
to our Understanding, as the ultimate source of these 
favours : were it only what he says in contrasting it 
with the Sublime, that " we must seek a ground external 
to ourselves for the Beautiful of Nature." l We have 
now to acknowledge a further concession on the part of 
the Supersensible. In striving to equip herself to the 
best advantage, Nature gives token that she is capable 
of artistic treatment by throwing out, as it were by 
accident, certain symmetrical collocations, which have 
this at least in common with the products of Art, that 
they are wholly undesigned. And just as, in Aristotle s 
opinion, certain historical facts may be legitimate sub 
jects for Poetry whose criterion of truth is quite 
different from that of History because they are capable 
of adapting themselves to the ideal conditions of poetic 
truth ; so do those meaningless symmetries commove us 
to aesthetic admiration, because, in their utter destitution 
of significance, they simulate the ideal conditions of 
artistic truth. As by-products of Nature they have only 
hypothetical necessity, and by this circumstance they are 
detached from the actual world and claim affinity with 
Art. Both St. Augustine and Schopenhauer have inde 
pendently remarked how plants invite our admiration, 
as if they would compensate for their want of conscious 
ness by becoming known. 2 It is their very poverty of 

1 Bernard, p. 104. 

2 Schopenhauer : The World as Will and Idea, Haldane and Kemp, 
i. p. 260. St. Augustine : The City of God, xi. 27 " ut, pro eo quod 
nosse non possunt, quasi innotescere velle videantur." 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 87 

meaning that gives rise to an aesthetical illusion in 
which we think them capable of more than they are, 
and perhaps their barren beauty is best described as due 
to a kind of aesthetic pity. Certainly to one who has 
the acquired insight of a botanist or the independent 
and intuitive insight of Genius, the flower in the mossy 
dell may be a pure aesthetic symbol as the typical 
expression of its kind ; and our contemplation is 
capable of a still deeper poetical emotion. But this is 
not the place to introduce the fine sentiments of Schiller 
and Wordsworth, for these are sublime rather than 
beautiful, and the Sublime forms a separate part of our 
study. Taking the problem at its lowest, we are asking 
ourselves just now what happens when a person, who 
has no scientific apperception and a minimum of poetical 
feeling, pronounces a flower beautiful in all its sim 
plicity. In Signor Croce s words, it is a perfect 
expression of impressions, and is it therefore aesthetical ? 
A Greek vase is beautiful because its form is elliptical, 
but why should that which is nothing but a representa 
tion in space, apart from all astronomical implications, 
be beautiful ? I think the true reason is that, by their 
appearance of ideal necessity, they decoy into activity 
the same mental powers as are at work in genuine 
Art, holding out the hope that something will come 
of it, which hope is vain. In the smell of a rose and 
in the simple sight of it, there is an indeterminate fore 
boding of significance which may only arise from sheer 
nonentity and which we fondly imagine to contain a 
fearful depth of inexhaustible reflection ; but we have to 
turn away from it unsatisfied, or we turn and fall to again, 
and every time, like Sancho Panza, are robbed of our 
feast. But once the Powers have begun to move, there 



88 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

is no going back ! Our aesthetic appetite once whetted, 
we in desperation want to eat the rose or shed its glory 
with our hands. The truth is that we are gently flattered 
by these empty presentations into an incipient aesthetic 
emotion, and in virtue of that strange contradiction 
which pervades human nature, we maintain the double 
consciousness of truth and error. Our conclusion, then, 
is that the formal representation of unity in variety, 
which is destitute of meaning, is not the Beautiful itself 
so much as its shadow or reflection. 

There is thus no place in Aesthetic for mere imita 
tion, whether we speak of Taste or Productive Art. 
Even when a presentation which claims to be beautiful 
has nothing to offer which artistic perception can 
improve, it is apperceived by Productive Imagination, 
if only incipiently and negatively, and there is no 
question of mere reproduction. Photography can be 
aesthetical when it is not a random reproduction, but 
the choice of what is representative and recurs most 
frequently in a landscape, and which is so far ideal that 
it can stand out from its actual context with increased 
significance ; or, again, photography may be able to catch 
the typical expression in a face. On this ground alone 
can it aspire to the dignity of Art, and even this is a 
modest claim, because its selective choice is restricted 
to the field of vision and does not extend to particular 
features, except in so far as these can be modified or 
eliminated in the negative. But as an imitation of 
Nature, which is faithful to the minutest detail, it is a 
second-hand copy which falls far short of the original. 

This is the truth in Plato s mimetic theory, in which 
the artist has less to say for himself than the carpenter, 
and is at three removes from Reality. Art shows its 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 89 

superiority in recognising its inevitable limitations. It 
knows that the actual can never be reproduced in its 
wealth and complexity of detail nor with the original 
thrill of sensation. For while in Nature form and 
matter are germane to each other. Art must fashion a 
body for the soul which it imports from another world 
out of a foreign substance. What have pigments, 
marble, or words in common with aesthetical ideas ? 
From the point of view of Art, of course, the medium 
peculiar to each art has everything to do with it. There 
seems to be a natural affinity between the marble with 
its " bluish veins of blood asleep " and the conception. 1 
But this is only to say that, as the elements of sem 
blance, matter and form are congenital. Out of this 
unequal mixture of heterogeneous elements one Nature 
more of the same kind could not be reproduced, but 
only an aesthetic semblance which cannot compete with 
the substantial entelechies in Nature. No painting can 
compare with natural colour, no description can ade 
quately translate the verve of action. Indeed, as R. L. 
Stevenson observes, literature is not the imitation of 
life, but of speech ; and the nearest approach to a 
reproduction of life is to be found in the stories of the 
first men, seated around the savage camp-fire. 2 No 
Pygmalion can ever again feel the hard marble of his 
statuary yielding to the pressure of his hand and chang 
ing into living flesh and blood. Recognising this 
limitation, Art contents itself with an independent and 
ideal imitation, knowing that out of its indifferent 
material it can never reproduce a second Nature. The 
artist s one method, to quote Stevenson again, is " to 
half-shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of 
1 See Browning s Pippa. Passes, ii. 2 Memories and Portraits, xvi. 



90 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

reality " ; and in surrendering all pretension to the 
actual, it not only rises superior to photographic imita 
tion, but within the confines of its independent world 
outrivals even Nature : perfecting the actual in the 
higher nexus of imaginative truth, transforming the 
contingent events of history into the reasonable sequence 
of ideal necessity, and interpreting the motiveless 
passions of men as the inevitable consequences of ideal 
grounds, in a world where character and circumstance 
are congenital factors in the same causality which makes 
up human destiny. Othello was " not easily jealous," 
but in his unsuspecting nature lago found his oppor 
tunity, and the tragedy consists in the fatal adaptation 
of apparently contingent circumstance to character. 
&lt; It is impossible but that offences will come, but woe 
unto him through whom they come." The brute 
necessity of fact is translated in the world of poetic and 
religious truth into a moral causality. 

But Photography has been hitherto condemned to an 
inferior place, because it is obliged to attempt what true 
Art never dreams of doing to rival Nature. In still life 
it is more successful as a reproduction because the features 
of Nature are relatively constant, though even in this 
instance it is at a disadvantage, for Nature is never really 
the same. The difficulty of the painter is to catch the 
representative moment in the ever-changing tints of 
light which to the ordinary eye are a constant impres 
sion, while Photography, because it is instantaneous, can 
only be successful by a happy accident. But when it 
attempts to reproduce the mobile, the result is not so 
satisfactory. Photography is supposed to have proved 
that no artist has ever been able to catch the exact curve 
of a horse s legs in motion. But this does not indicate 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 91 

that Art is inferior as an interpretation of the actual. On 
the contrary, it is Photography that is unreal because it 
is subject to the risk of choosing a moment that is not 
capable of continuity with the flow of living being. 
Such a beautiful sight as a flock of gulls makes a dis 
appointing photograph because it takes in too much 
from the point of view of Art, and too little from the 
point of view of Nature. No gull ever exists in such a 
moment of isolation ; the phases which Photography 
abstracts are never meant to be stationary, which they 
must be when the impression is instantaneous. We 
have all seen the Prime Minister or some other notable 
person on his way to the House of Commons in the 
Daily Mirror. What a leg the man has ! stuck up 
behind him at an angle of forty-five degrees like a 
hen in cogitation. Surely he does not exist in that 
way. The moment of impression must have been very 
inauspicious. But any instantaneous moment would be 
equally unreal, for the moments in the mobile do not 
exist as discrete successions but as continuous transitions, 
like the flow of water, in the ever-changing stream of 
life. And it is the genius of Art that it is able to pre 
serve this original continuity of existence in an impres 
sion which purports to be a single moment of time, but 
which has really nothing to do with temporal succession 
at all. To use a simile of M. Bergson s, Experience is 
not like the steps of a stair but a gentle declivity (pente 
douce}?- no section of which exists in isolation, and of 
which Time with its discontinuous moments of succes 
sion is the destroyer. If, therefore, the most fleeting 
moment in this indiscerptible continuity be represented 
in the form of temporal succession, it must be shorter 
1 V Evolution Creatrice, p. 3 . 



92 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

than the shortest conceivable moment, and so will 
escape the most instantaneous photographic impression. 1 

Art does not seek to imitate the continuous duration 
of the actual, but represents the mobile in a timeless 
symbol, or to come back to Kant again, every ingredient 
of existence in the object is excluded. But this is its 
gain and not its loss. For Time as the endlessly 
divisible is never actually present, while the moment of 
Art, in being timeless, is also Present as only the 
absolutely durationless is present, and as that which is 
truly now, the revelation of the eternal. In the words 
of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, " the Present in the 
sense of durationless is shorter than the shortest con 
ceivable moment, and longer than all conceivable 
eternity." 2 Like the moment of the Beautiful in 
Faust^ it is at once fleeting and imperishable. 

We have now pushed Kant s principle as far as it will 
go and have found it capable of a reasonable interpreta 
tion. I wish to close this chapter with a brief notice of 
a fairly recent criticism of the principle as it has passed 

1 Our discussion appears to blench before the extraordinary advances 
of the cinematograph. The growth of a flower as represented by 
this instrument, is one of the most divine sights the eye can witness. 
The unfolding of these god-like creatures in the space of a few 
seconds, suggests an anticipation of the tardy processes of Nature in a 
pre-existent state, and produces a feeling in the mind akin to the 
affection induced by the call of the mothers to the unborn children 
in Maeterlinck s Blue Bird. But as a medium of representation, the 
cinematograph suffers so much from want of light and from the con 
stant impression of confusion that, in its present state at least, it can 
hardly be allowed to compare with Nature and Art. This, however, 
is a question for experts, and what is said in the text must be read 
within the narrow limits of the intention with which it was written. 

*Die Grundlagen des xix Jahrhunderts, Band ii. p. 953. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 93 

into aesthetic theories generally. Kant practically says 
that no intuition can be aesthetic unless we are able to 
forget that it is an intuition. To this Signor Croce 
stands opposed, and maintains that all intuitions as the 
adequate expression of impressions are aesthetic. 1 Intui 
tions are this lake, this brook, this rain, this glass of 
water (p. 36). Aesthetic is thus the science of Percep 
tion and unites in one the two kinds of perception which 
Kant had treated separately under the same name. To 
be true intuitions they must have successful expression ; 
imperfect expression is no expression at all, it is pure 
sensation (pp. 13, 129). The distinction which we 
make between simple apprehension and artistic intuition 
is for Croce only quantitative, the former being simple, 
the latter complex. If now we look away from the 
method he has chosen and try to appreciate the motive of 
his work, we are held with admiration. Somewhat in the 
spirit of Tolstoi, he seeks to reclaim the outlying region 
of common experience which has been banned by aristo 
cratic Art. He refuses to recognise a double order of 
imagination and thinks it impossible to define the limits 
between intuitions which are artistic and those which 
are not. Even the utterance of a syllable, if it is 
perfectly expressed, is aesthetic. This is a praiseworthy 
intention, but Signor Croce is quite unable to maintain 
his position. Indeed his book is to be enjoyed as a 
piece of literature rather than studied as a philosophical 
criticism. I only wish to indicate that his opposition 
to our principle is superficial, and that he really veers 
round to Kant s standpoint. If he were taken seriously, 
we should understand him to say that besides intuitions, 

1 Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic : translated 
from the Italian by Douglas Ainslie, B.A., Oxon. 



94 THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

which are all aesthetic, there is nothing else but pure 
sensation. Yet he admits that though all impressions 
can become aesthetic expressions, " none are bound to 
do so " (p. 30). Must they, then, remain impressions 
meanwhile, which cannot be organised into simple per 
ception unless the expression is completely successful ? 
And in his c Address to the Third International Congress 
of Philosophy/ he gives away his whole case. He admits 
that the perception of a physical object is not a pure 
intuition but a construct, an impression with an abstract 
concept, and therefore not aesthetical; and we could 
only have pure intuitions if objects were things in them 
selves (p. 398). Thus it turns out that, even for Croce, 
aesthetic intuitions are not so plentiful. They only 
become intuitions when we refuse to recognise their "un 
successful expression" in knowledge and give them form 
in aesthetic imagination. That objects shall be things 
in themselves and not abstract conceptions of impressions, 
is indeed the criterion of aesthetic intuition, and in Kant s 
theory aesthetic perceptions are things in themselves 
because they are the objects of an independent order of 
imagination, which transcends the opposition of thought 
and things. It is a weak evasion when Croce protests 
against this dualism, the admission of which destroys 
his theory of Art as pure intuition (p. 398). The 
dualism is there, whether it be ultimate or not, and is to 
last out our phenomenal term of life. So long as there 
is unsuccessful expression, there are phenomenal con 
structs which are not mere sensation, and these carry in 
themselves an inevitable distinction between Appearance 
and Reality. 



CHAPTER IV. 

AESTHETIC AND CAUSALITY THE SECOND CANON. 

IN the realm of the Beautiful the old things have passed 
away and are become new. But in the rigorous pursuit 
of his first canon Kant has slipped his moorings. He has 
cut us adrift from the familiar roadsteads, and we are 
floating outwards on the open sea. Every ingredient in 
knowledge, every character in objects by which they can 
be recognised as existing parts in a common world, has 
been sacrificed, and we are landed in a region where there 
is no knowledge. It would seem that the Beautiful is 
purely subjective and only exists in imagination. But 
this is the conclusion which Kant expressly sought to 
avoid. At some considerable risk to the security of the 
Beautiful, he maintained its complete independence of 
cognition in order to vindicate its distinctive position as 
an original, and not a derivative, type of experience. 
He must now look around and provide in a new way 
the universality which he wilfully threw overboard. So 
the Second Canon ordains that the Beautiful must also 
be universal. 

As Kant himself thinks, this canon follows naturally 
from the first ; because, when our contemplation is disin 
terested, the pleasure we feel is of such a kind that it 
can be shared with all, while in the case of the Pleasant our 
private interests render community of taste impossible. 



96 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Although this may be accepted as a convenient con 
trast, it is not fair to the pleasurable feeling which is 
more than sensation but is not admitted to the rank of 
Aesthetic, and altogether it only yields a favourable pre 
sumption. Kant, however, states it more precisely in a 
technical form which is quite misleading, and it is a good 
illustration of the way in which his theoretical assump 
tions impaired the expression of his thought. He 
observes that an aesthetical judgment in its very nature 
must be singular because it is a judgment of perception ; 
thus, the judgment, This rose is beautiful/ is aesthetical, 
while the judgment, All roses are beautiful, is purely 
logical. But it is peculiar to the aesthetical reflective 
judgment that it is at once singular and universal, for 
it is not based on a feeling alone, but is at the same 
time instructed by the intellectual faculties. 1 The italics 
are Kant s. It is otherwise with the aesthetical judg 
ment of sense. The judgment, This rose is pleasant, 
is singular, and because it is singular and nothing more, 
it is said to be without universality. 2 This is false. 
Kant is here confusing logical universality with tran 
scendental universality or the a priori in knowledge. 
The logical judgment, All roses are beautiful, does not 
contain a more constant factor than the singular judg 
ment. Indeed its transcendental quality may be regarded 
as secondary, for as Kant himself says in this section, it 
is an aggregate of singular judgments. The universality 
in the logical judgment is only numerical, and does not 
affect the a priori validity of experience. In the judg 
ment, The earth goes round the sun, there is no 

1 "Ober Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 599 ; Hartenstein, 
vi. p. 389. 

2 Bernard, 8. Cp. pp. 101, 153, 158, 165. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 97 

numerical quantity at all, and yet it has transcendental 
universality. The difference between a universal and a 
singular judgment, in respect of logical quantity, is that 
the one is a complex and the other a simple synthesis. 
Each is a synthesis of elements which is given in 
experience ; but the constant factor in cognition, which 
enables us to recognise the synthesis as necessary, and 
therefore not as conditioned by but as conditioning 
experience, is the same in both. 

The real contrast which Kant had in view in this con 
fusion of logical with transcendental universality, is his 
old distinction of the Prolegomena between judgments 
of perception ( W ahrnehmungsurtheile) and judgments of 
experience (JLrfahrungsurtheile}?- A judgment of per 
ception is, This room is warm, or, This is sweet,* and 
Kant says that it can never become a judgment of 
experience because it is confined to individual feeling. 
This is a distinction which of course cannot be main 
tained, for it is flatly contradicted by the central 
argument in the Analytic^ that not even the perception 
of a pure representation in space is possible without the 
original mental synthesis which makes experience pos 
sible. Kant, however, clung tenaciously to this artificial 
distinction, as is evident when we consider- that it appears 
both before and after the decisive proof in the Analytic. 
Before he has come to grips with his main problem he 
says there, that "objects might certainly be presented to 
us, even if they were not necessarily related to functions 
of Understanding, as their a -priori condition." 2 Then 
there is the later passage in the Prolegomena^ and also the 
still later statement in the Critique of Judgment^ already 

1 Mahaffy and Bernard, p. 55 ; Hartenstein, iv. 18. 

2 Watson, Selections, p. 54. 

G 



98 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

quoted, " that we can represent a thing as given although 
we have no concept of it." 1 But the point of the con 
trast here is quite proper, because the basis of comparison 
between the two judgments is their transcendental 
universality, and there is no question of logical quantity 
at all. 

And still this is not Kant s problem, which is much 
more subtle. To understand his position we must turn 
to the Uber Philosophic uberhaupt, which is rich in sug 
gestion on this as on many other points. What he has 
to prove is a peculiar kind of transcendental universality, 
whether there is a constant and spontaneous factor in a 
form of judgment which is neither a judgment of per 
ception nor a judgment of experience, and it is in respect 
of this reflective universality that the comparison between 
the Pleasant and the Beautiful must be made. A judg 
ment is aesthetical when it has for its basis not a 
sensation to which there is an object corresponding but 
merely an affection of the apprehending subject, the 
feeling of pleasure and pain. But of this there are two 
kinds : the aesthetical reflective judgment, as when I 
say, This rose is beautiful, and the aesthetical judgment 
of sense (Sinnenurtheil^ as when I say, This wine is 
pleasant. In neither is there any reference to the 
constitution of an object. Now Kant wants to believe 
that the aesthetical reflective has universality while the 
aesthetical judgment of sense, or the Pleasant, has none. 
To put it briefly in our own words, he says that while 
in the case of the Beautiful the elementary apperceptive 
function of pleasurable feeling is extended to the intel 
lectual faculty not in the form of particular representa 
tions for then it would be ordinary apperception, but to 
1 Bernard, p. 315. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 99 

the faculty itself as the condition of knowledge in general 
the Pleasant somehow never gets beyond the bare 
feeling of pleasure and pain. 1 

So far this distinction is plausible enough and sug 
gestive of very fruitful ideas. It could mean that our 
experience of the Beautiful has significance while pleasant 
experience has really none at all. In the former kind 
of apperception it is our whole personality that is called 
into activity in the harmonious play of sense, thought 
and will ; but the latter can only be named appercep 
tion out of courtesy, for it is a meaningless reiteration 
of the same feeling which never gets beyond itself. All 
people who are destitute of ideas are limited to this low 
kind of aesthetic approval, if aesthetic it may be called. 
The gourmand smacks his lips and keeps telling himself 
and others how good it is, lest the counterfeit moment, 
which has no soul to stay and never is, should take its 
flight ; the unlettered plutocrat and the crassa minerva 
alike betray their anxiety to keep up the show of 
apperception, in chasing round the fruitless feeling with 
which we approve a mere sensation. After seeing some 
grand sight, they want to tell you it was fine, and again, 
That was very fine, you know, and yet again but this 
time in lowered accents and with some show of caution, 
for the moment has no stuff to feed on and is going, I 
tell you that was fine, and don t tell me. They try to 
make up for depth of feeling by a prolonged vigil, 
while the true artist in a flash of intuition gains the 
still Beautiful, and is content to know that it can 
never die. The Beautiful has indeed the preference in 
point of universal appeal, just because it has a signifi 
cance which the Pleasant never has. If we wish to 

1 See Rosenkranz, i. pp. 598-9. 



ioo THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

maintain that this is true, however, we must not restrict 
the Beautiful to aristocratic Art, but define it with 
Tolstoi as the infectious expression of the elemental 
bond of sympathy among a people, as it is found in 
their religious feeling. Apart from particular criticisms 
which will no doubt be challenged by those who are 
competent to speak, Tolstoi may be said to have 
wrought out in prose, in his book What is Art? the 
lesson of Browning s poetry that Art is love. When, 
in his vision of Easterday, Browning volunteered to give 
up the realms of earthly delight, of Art and Mind in 
succession and made love his final choice, he did not 
meet with the approval he had expected from the Spirit, 
who rather reproached him that he should choose at 
this late hour what he should have found long ago in 
the pursuits of his soul : 

" Now take love ! Well betide 
Thy tardy conscience ! Haste to take 
The show of love for the name s sake." 

What gives its worth to the show or the aesthetic 
semblance is the Name. If it be not the joyous 
expression of self-effacement. Art is a tinkling cymbal 
for it is wanting in that which makes it the common 
possession of all. 

But, as was noticed in the previous chapter, Kant 
made the distinction between the Pleasant and the 
Beautiful altogether too sharp. The consequence is 
that the peculiar privilege of an aesthetical judgment, 
whether of sense or reflexion, that it is based, not on a 
sensation, but on that form of feeling in which all 
sensations are apperceived, seems to be destroyed ; and 
then the aesthetical judgment of sense is practically 
identified with an ordinary judgment of perception. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 101 

And so Kant says that the aesthetical judgment of sense 
is determined by " that sensation which is immediately 
produced by the empirical perception of the object." 1 
As a judgment of perception it is based, of course, on a 
judgment of experience, and though no longer aesthetical 
it should at least have some degree of universality. 
But Kant will not admit that a judgment of 
perception always implies systematic experience, and he 
is consequently compelled to regard the aesthetical 
judgment of sense as a purely subjective modification. 
As we shall presently see, there is truth in Kant s 
statement. After all concessions have been made in its 
favour, the Pleasant remains subjective in a way that is 
quite peculiar to itself alone. But the Pleasant is not 
to be put down so easily as Kant thought. It is futile to 
deny that it implies systematic experience and therefore 
has universality. When it is said that a certain wine is 
pleasant, the judgment is not confined to individual 
feeling ; for this pipe of wine cost more than others, 
and this argues a corresponding consensus of opinion 
in the public taste. Even a pure sensation is not 
incommunicable feeling, except in the sense that all our 
thoughts and feelings are our own and cannot be 
experienced by anyone else, for it is a sensation which 
all the world would feel under the same conditions. 
Since Mr. Bradley 2 exploded the categorical nature 
of the singular judgment, it has been recognised that 
the demonstratives in the judgment, 4 this and that, 
are really kinds of universals ; they are particular 
expressions for all particulars, and so when it is said, 
4 This is a sensation of coldness, the use of the 

1 Rosenkranz, i. p. 598. 

2 Principles of Logic, Bk. I. ch. ii., 20, 76, 77. 



102 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

universal form this which can apply to anything 
indifferently, intimates that this particular sensation is 
open to all. If the wild vagary of a dream is totally 
confined to our experience and cannot be reproduced in 
another person, it is because the same conditions cannot 
be realised. Similarly the Pleasant, regarded as a judg 
ment of perception, is universally valid provided that 
the same conditions, in a given instance, are present to 
all ; and this is a provision which conditions every kind 
of perception. What constitutes the peculiarity of the 
Pleasant is the fact, that while it is a universal form of 
experience it has only a minimum of significance^ and in 
this sense it may quite properly be distinguished as a 
subjective modification. 

Kant himself, with all his puritanic rigorism, was 
no stranger to the all-pervading Pleasant. Wasiansld, 
who would seem to have kept a record of his master s 
breathing, if we may judge from the painfully minute 
account he gives of his death-bed, says that Kant s 
health was so exquisite that his sense of organic 
pleasure was positively acute. 1 Obviously this was 
a well-grounded sensation, and Kant could not think 
of keeping it all to himself. But the question to be 
considered from the point of view of Aesthetic is, 
whether there is anything in this sensation worth 
communicating to others which will infect them with 
genuine appreciation. When a man begins to dis 
course on his organic sensations, his audience intimate 
by their stony looks that they do not wish to 
understand him. But Kant would naturally take a 
different view of the matter. Here is a sensation 

1 The last Jsys if Kant. DC Quincey s translation in Blatkw9of s 
Magazine, vol. IE. 1827. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 103 

which all should be anxious to experience by taking 
pains to cultivate the required conditions ; and it is on 
record that when he was packed up for the night by 
Lampe, " swathed like a mummy " or " self-involved 
like the silkworm in its cocoon," he would often say 
to himself aloud, as if for the profit of mankind in 
general, " Is it possible to conceive a human being with 
more perfect health than myself?" Moreover he was 
aware that he had pushed the contrast too far, 1 and he 
recognised that the Pleasant may have a relative uni 
versality. He would probably admit that whoever has 
cultivated a good taste in wine, communicates his pleasure 
with a disinterested intention which has some aesthetic 
quality. In his astonishing statement that the Pleasant 
is not sociable, it is surely Kant the German who 
is speaking and not the Kant of Scottish ancestry. 2 
Anyone who has attended a students Kneipe knows 
that it is not conducive to conviviality ; it is a 
solemn conclave of taciturnity and devout sentimen 
tality, an aggregate of units under martial rule, who 
stand to sing their songs at the stroke of the 
hammer, and do everything to order except drink 
very different from the hilarious arid roaring fun of 
Tam O Shanter. The tippler insists on others sharing 
his pleasures ; he regards it as a maxim that private 
pleasure is a contradiction, and when he is compelled to 
enjoy himself alone, he addresses himself as an indepen 
dent personality. Kant would have succeeded much 
better if he had straightway acknowledged the uni 
versality of the Pleasant as communicable. For by 

1 Bernard, 7. 

2 " Das Angenehme ist nicht gesellschaftlich." Lectures on Anthro 
pology, 1793-4, Schlapp, Kants Lehre vom Genie, p. 395. 



io 4 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

making unreserved concessions, he could have covered 
it, heaped coals of universality on its head, until it 
finally disappeared as an independent type of experience 
and stood declared for what it truly is, a parasitic con 
sciousness which feeds on the bodies of sensations, an 
empty form of apperception in which we approve sen 
sations without getting beyond them, a threadbare 
warp of feeling which, if it be not fed with the woof 
of mind, becomes indistinguishable from sensations 
themselves. 

But although Kant did not develop his position nor 
even define it clearly, it is important to understand his 
meaning ; for the distinction he sought to establish 
between the Pleasant and the Beautiful really turns 
on what is known as the doctrine of the aesthetic senses. 
The feeling of the Pleasant is the aesthetic apperception 
of sensation, but in the Beautiful the elementary apper 
ception in the feeling of pleasure is only the occasion 
of the aesthetic process, or in Kant s words, it is the 
sensation which gives rise to the harmonious play in 
the subject of Imagination and Understanding. 1 The 
Beautiful has only to do with the form of things, while 
the Pleasant is more immediately connected with the 
matter of sensation ; therefore the aesthetical judg 
ment of sense may be said to contain material, but 
the aesthetical reflective judgment formal, teleology. 2 
Now this distinction between the form and the 
matter of sensation, which is characteristic of Kant s 
whole position and was afterwards developed to great 
advantage by Schiller, is properly a distinction among 

1 ~0ber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 598 ; Hartenstein, 
vi. p. 389. 

2 Ibid. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 105 

the senses themselves. All the senses are avenues of 
sensation, but some of them are more easily detached 
from the sensational stimulus. Particularly in sight 
and hearing, we are not conscious of the affection of 
the organ as we are in touch, taste and smell ; and 
therefore these two senses have been distinguished as 
intellectual, disinterested and sociable, and have become 
known as the aesthetic senses. Kant himself was aware 
of this ; he isolates sight and hearing as " the only 
sensations that imply not merely a sensible feeling but 
also reflection upon the form of these modifications of 
Sense." 1 We may say with Schopenhauer, that the 
other senses are identified with the feeling of the whole 
body and are subservient to will ; 2 or with Spencer, 
that they are immediately connected with the further 
ance of the life-serving functions, particularly taste ; s 
or in Schiller s rhetorical style : " importunate matter 
is repelled from the senses by the eye and ear, and the 
object with which we come in direct contact through 
the lower senses, is placed at a distance the object of 
touch is a force which we suffer, the object of the eye 
and ear is a form which we create." It should be 
said, however, that the modern tendency is to extend 
the number of the aesthetic senses. Schopenhauer 
recognised that there may be a touch which is neither 
pleasant nor painful. The feeling of velvet gives in 
a way peculiar to the sense of touch the same dis 
interested perception that we have of peachy skin, 
which is an element inseparable from feminine beauty. 

1 Bernard, 42, p. 181. 

2 The World as Wilt and Idea : Haldane and Kemp, i. p. 259. 

3 Principles of Psychology, ii. chap. ix. 

4 Aesthetical Le Hen : Weiss, p. 156. 



io6 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

And even the sense of smell has been championed. 1 
Taste is undoubtedly the Caliban of the senses, for it is 
immediately connected with the life-promoting functions. 
From this distinction between the senses as they are 
immediately or indirectly identified with sensation may 
be said to arise the comprehensive principle recognised 
by Spencer and Grant Allen, that Aesthetic is the 
pleasurable state of feeling in which there is a maximum 
of stimulation with a minimum discharge of nervous 
energy. 2 It is a higher rate of apperception. 

Having cleared the ground, we may now state the 
problem. As Kant says, we must not "grope about 
empirically among the judgments of others " and base 
our judgments on a collection of their suffrages ; our 
idea of the Beautiful must arise spontaneously within 
ourselves. 3 The problem, then, is the same as in the 

\ Critique of Pure Reason on a different plane, how are 
synthetic judgments a priori possible ? The point in 
this time-honoured formula is that we are not to be 
dependent on experience. It does not require that in 
order to be a priori^ our judgment must be free from 
all mixture with empirical elements, but only that it 
shall have a more original sanction than the conventional 
congruity which is produced by repeated associations. 
Our aesthetic sense must be logically prior to and coin 
cident with experience. The question, then, is whether 
the feeling of Beauty is an acquired sense or whether 

there is not some original direction of our mind which 
gives the lead to experience. Is it only an aimless 
voice crying in the wilderness which awakens no echo 
in our soul, or is it not rather the reasonable expression 

1 See Tolstoi, What is Art ? chap. ii. 

2 See Spencer, op. cit. p. 644. 3 Bernard, pp. 153-4. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 107 

of our own nature which is able to prepare the way ? 
What occasions a problem is the conjunction of the 
two factors, synthesis, which is a posteriori because it is 
the putting together of apparently unrelated elements, 
and analysis, which is a priori because it is the breaking 
up of a whole in which the particular elements are 
originally connected. The judgments of Geometry 
and Arithmetic are easily synthetic a priori and do not 
constitute a problem, because the synthesis, though 
real, is made by ourselves. Geometrical relations are 
purely logical and have nothing to do with actual 
succession in time ; the elements being connected in 
the relation of ground and consequence, the judgments 
are incontinently true. But it is very different when 
we have to pronounce upon the succession of events in 
time, for these are real changes which we do not make 
and which do not follow one another with the logical 
certainty of a geometrical consequence from its ground. 
These changes simply happen as matters of fact, and 
unless we had an a priori conviction that every change 
must have a cause, the synthesis in experience would 
have no necessity and our judgment would be purely 
empirical. To be synthetic a priori^ there must be a 
veritable connection of elements which we could not 
manufacture for ourselves but which must be presented 
in experience as an independent fact, and yet it must 
be a result which we can approve with absolute confi 
dence as if it were the product of our own thought. 

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant showed that our 
knowledge of objects is a priori, because we realise 
beforehand that they must be presented as extensive 
magnitudes and as parts of a necessary system in 
reciprocal relation ; and when they are so presented, 



io8 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

our conviction amounts to the belief that it is we who 
put them in their places. Now the forms of experience 
which make up aesthetic feeling are combinations of 
elements which are brought into quite a new relation, 
something in advance of what our knowledge gives. 
They are not representations in space as these are 
simply perceived but as they are felt ; and the question 
is whether there is a new kind of a -priori to validate 
these syntheses. Let us keep in mind the entire extent 
of the problem. On the one hand, they are real 
syntheses which are not made by us any more than 
rocks are. They are not even made by Genius, they 
are discovered. They are facts of Nature, whether we 
speak of natural or artistic Beauty, which are not the 
products of mechanical association nor of contingent 
fancy, but combinations which have significance as 
objective and outside of us as if God had made them 
beautiful by His own hand. They are not obvious 
analyses, synonymous expressions for what we know 
already, they are a new language with a real synthetic 
element which strikes us forcibly : " they go beyond 
the concept and even beyond the intuition of the 
Object, and add to that intuition as predicate some 
thing that is not a cognition." l As free productions 
of the human spirit, they have yet all the appearance of 
having been predestined. 

This objective character of the Beautiful is seen most 
of all where we find the greatest freedom in aesthetic 
experience. Nothing is withdrawn of what has been 
said of the creative factor in Aesthetic, its complete 
subjectivity, its disregard of existential relations. The 
marvel in Aesthetic is that it can combine this freedom 

1 Bernard, 36. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 109 

with a new objectivity, as independent and as factual as 
any given synthesis in Nature. The work of Genius, 
while it appears to be the facile play of capricious fancy, 
conceals a serious purpose of Understanding. The 
more we dwell upon it, the more it is found to embody 
a coherent unity of meaning. The numbers flow spon 
taneously from the lips of the poet, while every verse 
bears the stamp of perfect workmanship. A musical 
composition comes warm from the brain of Genius as 
the free creation of his mind, while its structure is 
conditioned by mathematical rules. As Kant says 
in a striking passage, " Taste, like the Judgment in 
general, is the discipline of Genius ; it clips its wings, 
it makes it cultured and polished, it gives guidance as 
to where and how far it may extend itself if it is to 
remain purposive. And while it brings clearness and 
order into the multitude of the thoughts, it makes the 
Ideas susceptible of being permanently and, at the same 
time, universally assented to, and capable of being 
followed by others, and of an ever-progressive culture." 1 
Imagination in its greatest freedom conforms to Under 
standing, for it is Productive Imagination, and this is 
just unconscious Understanding. 

On t the other hand, besides this synthetic element, a 
genuine a priori factor is discovered. The Beautiful 
appears as if it were the transparent analysis of a whole 
known to us already, for it conceals its art and looks 
like Nature : "Art can only be called beautiful if we 
are conscious of it as Art while yet it looks like 
Nature." It is familiar without being obvious, new 

1 See Bernard, 50. I have made a few slight omissions in 
quoting this passage. 

2 Bernard, 45. 



no THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

without being strange. The more we feel its influence, 
the more does it realise for us the inarticulate, shadowy, 
forms of our spirit which we have sought to express in 
vain. It is ourself, for we find ourselves reflected in it. 
It repeats itself without ceasing to lose its interest for 
us, because it was not made but always is. As Schiller 
says in his poem, An die Freunde, it is only what has 
never happened anywhere that never grows old : 

" Alles widerholt sich nur im Leben, 
Ewig Jung ist nur die Phantasie ; 
Was sich nie und nirgends hat begeben, 
Das allein veraltet nie." 

The Beautiful is a real association of elements which 
yet has never anywhere come to pass in mechanical 
Nature. Can this a priori be justified ? 

Technically Kant s proof is very simple. What he 
calls the deduction, a term borrowed from jurisprudence, 
is little more than an appeal to what was already 
proved in the Critique of Pure Reason \ it is the justi 
fication of synthetic judgments a priori in Aesthetic. 
In his analysis of Aesthetic, which practically contains 
all that he has to say in the special proof, he carries it 
back to the groundwork of cognition. This need not 
mean, as Basch seems to suppose, that Aesthetic can 
only acquire universality by becoming intellectual, when 
it ceases to be feeling altogether. Kant saw that know 
ledge " is the only kind of representation which is valid 
for everyone." ] With a certain latitude of meaning, in 
the sense of language as articulate expression, this state 
ment may be allowed to stand. But he also perceived 
that a community in representations implies a common 
mental disposition (Gemuths%ustand) which is not itself 
1 Bernard, 9, p. 64. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY in 

intellectual. This original disposition is the purposive 
activity of the same faculties as are at work in knowledge 
but without arriving at any particular determination ; it is 
not knowledge but the transcendental, that is, the original 
and at the same time immanent, conditions which make 
knowledge possible, not representations but the mental 
powers themselves by which representations are pro 
duced ; it is a kind of knowledge in general (Erkennt- 
niss uberhaupf). In this medium lies the peculiar 
function of the Urteihkraft or indeterminate Judgment. 
And Kant s argument is that if knowledge be a fact, 
this indeterminate mental process must be a fact too. 

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant showed that 
Imagination and Understanding, or the faculties of 
Sense and Thought, must be united in every act of 
perception. But in this case the faculties are compelled 
to unite in a fixed relation, for the associated elements 
which go to make up a perceived object must be repro 
duced in Imagination in a determinate order; otherwise 
we should lose consciousness of ourselves, our perceptions 
would have no necessity and would be the capricious 
play of mental images. Conceive now the faculties of 
knowledge delivered from this compulsion and united in 
a free relation. A mechanical illustration may be taken 
from the common steam-crane. By means of the con 
trivance called the clutch, the side cog-wheels can be 
detached from the main axle. And as these run in free 
play, still in conformity to mechanical law, it is true, but 
without arriving at any particular determination, so do 
the Powers, released from the serious business of Under 
standing, revolve at a higher rate of apperception. To 
use a phrase of Plato, our perceptions are no longer 
" bound by the tie of cause," and yet they do not walk 



ii2 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

away. This is quite a fair description of Kant s theory 
on its negative side. He thought that we are only 
aesthetically free when our minds are off the clutch, 
and the state of pure aesthetic contemplation, as he 
conceived it, hardly rises above the disinherited reflec 
tions of a person idling in his chair and twirling his 
thumbs. But meanwhile we are concerned with his 
general and more positive interpretation of the aesthetic 
state. This state is a fact because it is a necessary 
implicate in the most ordinary knowledge ; it is " a 
procedure of the Judgment which it must also exercise 
on behalf of the commonest experience." 1 All know 
ledge is conditioned by purposive processes of indeter 
minate attention, of which we may be aware as a feeling 
of harmony. No doubt, in the great part of ordinary 
cognition, this feeling can hardly be said to exist at all. 
We experience no agreeable excitement in becoming 
aware that 2 + 2 = 4. But " tms pleasure has certainly 
been present at one time, and it is only because the 
commonest experience would be impossible without it, 
that it is gradually confounded with mere cognition and 
no longer arrests particular attention." 2 This original 
factor is most easily discovered when our knowledge is 
of a more primitive and genetic order. When we are 
not able to make up our minds about an object, our 
apprehension is of such a kind that it cannot be said to 
have a definite content, but what Dr. Stout has called 
an intent 3 or indeterminate content which specifies itself 
in tentative judgments. To this order of apprehension 
the forecasts of induction belong, whereby we seek to 
organise the contingent relations of material existence 
into the systematic unity of teleological judgments; and 
1 Bernard, p. 169. 2 Bernard, p. 28. 3 Personal Idealism, p. 9. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 113 

these are " the ground of a very marked pleasure, often 
even of an admiration." 1 But whenever a definite 
object emerges, the attention is shifted from the process 
to the object of thinking, the anticipative feeling of 
pleasure dies away, and the infinite possibility of choice 
is checked by a certain, determinate judgment which we 
are obliged to accept. The reflective, free spirit, rang 
ing at large, must at length rest in a concept which is 
strictly limited by presentation. It is the double nature 
of Judgment that Kant has in view ; it is both logical 
and psychological, a content or meaning and a process 
of thought. If we devote exclusive attention to the 
thought, the judgment is logical and our consciousness 
of the activity is suppressed ; if we withdraw ourselves 
from the thought, the process of thinking comes into 
prominence, and then the judgment is psychological. 

Now in Aesthetic it is not the object as the logical 
definition of a content that occupies us, but the way in 
which we are affected, or, more simply, it is not the 
object as it is perceived or thought but as it is felt. It 
5s true, as we shall see later, that Kant does not succeed 
in providing a new significance peculiar to Aesthetic 
itself. And the general criticism that his theory is 
intellectual, is incontestable in so far as he appears to 
think that there can be no coherent meaning which is 
not expressed in logical definition. But it is a different 
matter, and, I think, quite unfair to say with Basch that 
Kant is interpreting Aesthetic as a form of knowledge 
(cest-a-dire un connaitre}? The subjective conditions of 
knowledge surely do not need to be themselves any 
kind of cognition. The significance of Kant s deduc 
tion is that if knowledge is an a priori function of 
1 Bernard, p. 28. 2 UEsthetique de Kant, p. 181. 



ii4 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

mind, this original disposition must also be universally 
communicable, and may be said to be a sensus communis. 
And in fairness to Kant, it ought to be said that in a 
decisive passage, such as that in which he discusses the 
delicate problem whether the pleasure precedes or 
follows, he is careful to use the specific term Eeurteilung 
to denote the aesthetical judgment, a term which is 
synonymous with Mendelssohn s faculty of approval 
(Billigungsvermogeri). 1 What calls for criticism, then, is 
not so much the aesthetical deduction itself as the 
original deduction in his theory of knowledge. 

Probably there is no part of Kant s system which is 
so hard to interpret. The Critique of Judgment gives no 
adequate explanation of the aesthetic process, and we 
are left to conjecture what takes place from what we 

.know of the mental procedure in cognition. The Play 
of the Powers (Spiel der Krdfte) seems the most natural 
conception in the world, but it is the most elusive 
and puzzling to anyone who has tried to understand 
Kant s theory of knowledge. The aesthetic powers of 
which he speaks in so prodigal a fashion are discovered 
to be simply the two cognitive faculties, Imagination 
and Understanding. Sometimes he practically reduces 
them to a single power, as when he speaks in a more 
concrete way of the Representative Powers (Vorstellungs- 
vermogen), for this expression, which is needlessly sug 
gestive of a plurality, indicates a special order of 

Imagination which includes the activity of Under 
standing. Perhaps we should avoid confusion by 
refusing at this stage to identify the cognitive faculties 
(Erkenntnissvermogeri) with the mental powers them 
selves (GemiUhskrdfte\ of which they are only a specifica- 

1 Hartenstein, v. 9, p. 222. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 115 

tion as Cohen seems to do. Rightly regarding it as a 
defect of method on Kant s part that he should restrict 
the aesthetic powers to Imagination and Understanding, 
Cohen makes them co-extensive with the entire range 
of mental powers as the Bewusstseinskrdfie, which is just 
another name for the Gemilthskrafte} He evidently 
implies that the behaviour of the powers in Aesthetic is 
more catholic and objective than the limited and sub 
jective direction which they receive in knowledge, in 
their specific form as the Erkenntnissvermogen (vom 
gleichsam subjectiver Seite zusammengefassi)." This is 
indeed the intention in Kant s theory, as we hope to 
show. But if we straightway identify what are only 
faculties of knowledge with the mental powers them 
selves, we shall miss the point of his deduction. 

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Imagination and 
Understanding are distinct forms of mental activity, 
the one being sensuous, the other conceptual. If 
knowledge is to be possible at all, there must be a 
mediating factor which is at once sensuous and con 
ceptual. This is the transcendental Schema. In no 
other way can we understand how an abstract thought 
should represent an individual object. Kant s definition 
of the Schema as distinguished from an image is careful 
and acute. It can never appear as an image, and exists 
" nowhere but in thought." 3 Again, it is not an image 
but " the consciousness of a universal process of 
imagination, by which an image is provided for a 
conception." The distinctive nature of the Schema is 
seen most clearly in those representations where an 
image fails us. If we are to think of a very large 
1 Kant s Begrundung der Aesthetic, p. 252. * Ibid. p. 173. 

3 Watson, Selections, p. 86. 



n6 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

number say, a thousand we cannot have an image of 
a thousand points in succession, and our thought is 
rather of the method of counting. The Schema is this 
rule of procedure in Imagination. It is not even the 
most attenuated form of a generic image ; it is the bare 
consciousness of possession. 

Now I think it is misleading to say, without qualifi 
cation, that this is simply psychology and has nothing 
to do with the problem of knowledge. It has every 
thing to do with it. The criticism is certainly obvious 
that the process in which we come to apprehend, does 
not affect the metaphysical relation between our know 
ledge and an object. But Kant evidently intended the 
Schema to be a transcendental element, without which 
no knowledge would be possible. His general account 
of the Schema, indeed, is the denial of a psychological 
explanation. His observation that schemata and not 
images lie at the foundation of our pure sensuous con 
ceptions, evidently announces the doctrine of Implicit 
Apprehension formulated by Dr. Stout. 1 When we are 
listening to a speech, we do not apprehend the meaning 
by the revival of distinct images corresponding to each 
word, but by a kind of divination which is no other 
than the transcendental Schema or dynamic faculty of 
representation. The Schema is of course not required 
when our apprehension is completely implicit and does 
not anticipate the tendency of our thought. But when 
We can be said to understand to any purpose, we are in 
a creative mood and our apprehension is schematic. 

So far, then, Kant rules out psychology from 
the problem of knowledge ; for the Schema, thus 

1 Analytic Psychology, vol. i. bk. i. chap. iv. Cp. Bergson, Matter 
and Memory, English Translation, p. 1 26. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 117 

understood, is not itself a process of consciousness 
but the governing consciousness of a process. But 
he failed to maintain this level and drifted into what 
looks very like psychology, because he assigned to 
the Schema an utterly false role as having a peculiar 
affinity for succession in time, and in consequence 
practically identified it with what is really a discursive 
process. It will be noticed that all his schemata are 
time-implications, as he expressly remarks : thus, the 
Schema of Quantity is number, " the idea of the succes 
sive addition of homogeneous unit to homogeneous 
unit " ; even the Schema of Negation can only be 
thought as the gradual ascent from the vanishing-point 
to an increasing degree of continuous reality in time ; 
the Schema of Substance " is the permanence of the real 
in time " ; the Schema of Cause is " the real which is 
supposed never to exist without being followed by some 
thing else." l These are the chief, and in all of them 
temporal succession is said to be a necessary implicate, 
positive or negative. The simple insistence on time 
need not in itself excite serious criticism, for it might 
only mean that the discursive process which is initiated 
by the Schema, and not the Schema itself, is in time. 
But Kant meant to contrast schemata with the pure 
conceptual categories which are themselves inapplicable 
to experience, just in respect of this very feature of 
time-implication, and then he falls into confusion and 
talks of mysteries. The contrast which he really had 
before his mind was quite different. It was from 
mathematical conceptions exclusively that he originally 
drew his definition of a pure category. This defini 
tion he extended without warrant to abstract ideas 
1 Watson, Selections, pp. 88-9. 



ii8 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

such as Substance, which are already genuine schemata 
but which Kant thought required a sensuous modifica 
tion. The first transcendental discovery he made was 
the pure category as the conjunction of Understanding 
with the pure forms of intuition, particularly space. 1 

Now there is a very rigid distinction between these 
geometrical conceptions which only determine the formal 
aspect of experience, and the principles we apply to 
concrete experience. In Kant s own terms, the former 
are mathematical, the latter are dynamical, categories. 
A mathematical category contains the synthesis of its 
elements analytically, a given antecedent being the 
ground of its consequent ; thus, in an equation of pro 
portions, the fourth term may be inferred if the other 
three are known. But when we are dealing with actual 
changes in experience, which are not the timeless rela 
tions of geometry but real successions in time, our 
category is dynamical ; because we cannot infer with 
mathematical precision what the required term will be, 
and can only state that there is such a term. Experience 
alone can tell what particular effect will follow a given 
antecedent. On the basis of this valid distinction, Kant 
should have recognised different orders of schemata 
which are distinguished by the nature of the objects to 
which they apply. But, instead of doing so, he con 
trasted schemata with pure conceptions, as figurative 
with purely intellectual forms of synthesis. Thus the 
pure conception of a plate would be "the pure geometri 
cal conception of a circle," and he says that the empirical 
conception of a plate, or just its image, is homogeneous 
with this pure geometrical conception. 2 But in the 

1 See Analytic, bk. i. chap. ii. 24 ; Meiklejohn, pp. 92-3. 

2 Watson, Selections, p. 84. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 119 

very next sentence he proceeds to say that a pure con 
ception is quite heterogeneous from an empirical 
conception, and requires a mediating term before it 
can ever be realised in an individual perception. Evi 
dently he has drifted away from his special discovery in 
transcendental philosophy, that there are conceptions 
which are immanent in sensuous experience, into 
Platonic Idealism. He has quite forgotten that the 
categories are already limited by the forms of sense and 
are not notions in general. He speaks as if the Schema 
for the first time imposed a limit on the pure concep 
tion, and favours the suggestion that these pure con 
ceptions " hold true of things as they really are, while the 
schemata present them only as they appear" 

Let it be observed once more that a mathematical 
category, such as the pure conception of a circle, is the 
only pure category which is in question ; and if the 
image of a plate is already homogeneous with the pure 
conception, no schema is required. Kant was aware of 
this and he seems to have reasoned in the following 
way : I see that mathematical conceptions apply immedi 
ately to individual objects. Now the kind of experience 
to which dynamical categories apply, is quite different 
from mathematical objects. But if I can show that the 
mathematical and dynamical categories have something 
in common, namely, an essential implication of time, I 
can then assume that there are schemata corresponding 
to the dynamical categories, and which apply to 
actual changes in time with the same immediacy as 
mathematical conceptions apply to the logical relations 
of ground and consequent. Then events will be 
determined a -priori in the relation of cause and 

1 Watson, Selections, p. 91. 



120 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

effect with the same necessity as we find in mathe 
matics. 

But this is as false as it is needless. The schema of a 
geometrical figure has no peculiar connection with time. 
It certainly takes time to draw the figure on paper or 
even in thought, but this does not make the a priori 
intuition of the figure a time-relation, any more than 
the fact that it takes time to pass from the major 
premiss to the conclusion affects the timeless nature of 
the syllogism. Thus the category of Quantity has 
number for its schema, and Kant says that number 
manifestly implies succession in time. Certainly the 
process of enumeration is in time, but the schema itself 
is the feeling of number which is not a succession in 
time at all. M. Bergson gives a good illustration of the 
way in which number is felt as a quality rather than 
perceived as a quantitative succession. The bell of a 
neighbouring clock is sounding, but he has not noticed 
it until several strokes have sounded. Evidently he 
cannot be said to have counted the number of strokes, 
and yet he is able to infer from his sense of duration 
the exact number of strokes which he never heard. 
Suppose that four strokes had sounded before his atten 
tion was arrested ; if he counts backwards to three 
strokes, he feels that there must be one more, because 
the total effect of three strokes is qualitatively different, 
like a kind of musical phrase, from his actual sense of 
duration. 1 The Schema precedes and conditions the 
consciousness of succession. In a communication to 
Goethe about the psychical origin of a drama, Schiller 
shows the difference between the schematic conception 
of a drama and the successive experience in which it is 
1 Time and Free-mil, pp. 127-8. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 121 

represented. " With me," he says, " the conception has 
at first no definite or clear object ; this comes later. A 
certain musical state of mind precedes it, and this, in 
me, is only then followed by the poetic idea." l Ned 
Dennis, the hangman in Earnaby Rudge^ had a pro 
nounced schema for " working people off." No doubt 
this schema would be a tendency in consciousness 
towards varied activity in a specific direction, a proce 
dure in imagination which is eminently suggestive of 
succession in time. But it was Ned and not his schema 
who wanted to be in time. 

And this device is also unnecessary, because schemata 
do not need to be derived from pure conceptions. 
Among psychical elements, there are five possibilities 
open to our choice. We may have a full-blown 
image, a generic image, a verbal or other attenuated 
sign, a schema, or a pure conception. At once the 
most elemental and virile of these is the Schema, 
it is the nerve of thought. There remains to decide 
its relation to a pure conception. A conception may 
be of two kinds : first, it is completely empirical in 
origin, being an abstraction from particular images, and 
as an implicit form of apprehension it may or may not 
be attended by a generic image ; secondly, it is an extinct 
schema which has lost its light like what are known as 
dark stars in the sky. I call it an extinct schema when 
it is a concept whose content is exhaustively specified, 
such as the concept of a cone ; for the sections of a cone 
are demonstrated to be these and no others. The con 
ception will be schematic to one who approaches the 
study for the first time, but for the practised mathema 
tician it is a case of completely implicit apprehension or 
1 Schmitz, Correspondence, Letter 161. 



122 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

automatic analysis. Such also would be the category of 
Causality, if it were true that this category completely 
specifies all the different causal connections in experience. 
But it remains a schematic conception because it does 
no such thing. It only announces the bare principle 
that every change must have a cause ; what the particular 
cause or effect shall be, is in either case decided by 
experience alone. 

From this it is evident that, in so far as the categories 
of Understanding are taken to be determinate principles 
which exhaustively specify the individual instances in 
experience, the proper place for schemata is not among 
the principles of Understanding but among the regula 
tive Ideas of Reason. Kant gives a crucial instance of 
a conceptual category as distinguished from a schema : 
" substance, for instance, viewed apart from the sensuous 
determination of permanence, simply means, that which 
can be thought only as subject, never as the predicate 
of anything else. But such an idea has no meaning for 
us." J On the contrary, it may have a world of meaning 
for us. What lies at the root of the philosophy of the 
Upanishads, the Pure Being of Parmenides and the God 
of Spinoza, is the mystical schema of a subject which 
can never be the predicate of anything else. If there are 
such things as Platonic Ideas, it is because there are 
schemata, like the concept of the Beautiful, in the Phaedo, 
which generates what beautiful things there are. Platonic 
Ideas as they were interpreted by Realism are schemata 
whose original force is spent, without duration or change. 
But the fate of Platonism is the destiny which awaits 
the history of the human mind. With every increase 
of detail in the exact sciences, the possible range of 
1 Watson, Selections, p. 91. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 123 

presentations is further restricted, the content of our 
schemata is more and more exhaustively specified, until 
at last they lose their dynamical character and become 
fixed concepts. Our pure schemata are going the way 
of the dark stars, and what remains is little more than 
their reflex activity. In his Romanes Lecture of 
November, 1909, Mr. Balfour raised the interesting 
question why our aesthetic pleasure should diminish in 
intensity with age. Why should he have read sen 
sational stories in his youth with a more vivid pleasure 
than the greatest works of Art can minister to-day? 
It is because our schemata are freezing before the 
mustering ranks of presentations which despoil them 
of their spontaneity. The mental life of youth 
is a presentational continuum with a conceptual 
background, the mental life of age is a conceptual 
continuum with a presentational background ; in the 
former our thought is predominantly implicit and 
therefore schematic, in the latter explicit thought 
occupies the foreground and is decreasingly schema 
tic. Him illae lacrymae. Thanks be to Pragmatism 
for helping us to regain possession of our wasting 
inheritance ! 

But Schematism, as Kant conceived it, is a con 
stituent part of his system, and not less essential to his 
theory of Aesthetic than to his theory of knowledge. 
The difference between Aesthetic and Cognition is, 
that in the latter Imagination is reproductive but in 
the former productive. In its reproductive function 
the Imagination is subject to a fixed rule of Under 
standing, without which the associated elements would 
never constitute an object or necessary synthesis. But 
while in Aesthetic the Imagination is said to conform 



I2 4 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

to Understanding in some mystical way, it is not 
subordinate to Understanding, and it would seem that 
its elements are not associated in any necessary order. 
There are thus within the same medium of Imagina 
tion two distinct orders of consciousness, the one 
the necessary consciousness of our own identity in 
systematic experience, the other a mystical kind of 
consciousness or Inner Sense, in which we are not 
properly conscious of our states, and can only be 
said to be aware of them. Perhaps it will seem strange 
to identify Productive Imagination with the fictitious 
faculty of Inner Sense, for the one is an active power 
and the other is expressly understood to be a passive 
receptivity. But where else are we to put it ? Prob 
ably the fact is that what Kant at first called an Inner 
Sense, simply to maintain the parallel in his view of 
Psychology as co-ordinate with Physics, each having a 
receptive faculty and material of intuition given, he 
now introduces in its real character under the name 
Productive Imagination. And this would be natural 
enough, for the contents which are peculiar to mental 
life may at once be described as spontaneous products 
and as our affective states, as if they were modifications 
of an internal sensibility. 

In the earlier part of his system, Kant would appear 
to favour the Cartesian position that the immediate 
data of consciousness are our own affective states, for 
in order to be objects of consciousness phenomena 
must be mental syntheses or objects in consciousness. 
But this is only half his position. His completed view 
stands opposed to the Cartesian doctrine that the 
knowledge of objects in space is an inference from 
the prior consciousness of ourselves. Rather it is the 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 125 

knowledge of our own states that is an abstraction 
from our consciousness of objects, as he shows in the 
second edition of the Deduction and in the Paralo 
gisms. And he never succeeded in evading this abstract 
view of mental life, as the external reflection of con 
sciousness upon a contingently associated manifold. It 
is surely what Plato calls a bastard kind of thinking that 
can be aware, without integrating the material of in 
tuition into coherent unities. Probably Kant was never 
quite satisfied with this position. If we may infer the 
tendency of his thought from a passage in his Posthu 
mous Work, he seems to have believed that the 
synthetic process by which objects are determined, 
does constitute a knowledge of ourselves as object. 1 
But this is of merely historical importance. The 
consequences of Kant s doctrine of Inner sense are 
inevitable so long as we apply the same method to 
psychical events as to physical objects. If we are 
to look for the same kind of objectivity in both, it is 
obvious that our method will fail just where the criterion 
of permanence in physical objects is absent, namely, the 
qualification of space. The conclusion is inevitable, 
that " in the internal sense no permanent intuition is to 
be found." : But what right have we to suppose that 
mental states should conform to this criterion ? Does 
not the distinctive circumstance that they are the states 

1 " Denn das Subject ist diesen Formen nach ihm selbst Sinnenobject. 
Das Subject, welches sich die Sinnenvorstellung von Raum und Zeit 
macht, ist ihm selbst in diesem Act zugleich Object." Vom *0ber- 
gange von den metapbysischen Anfangsgriinden der Naturwissenschaft zur 
Physik : herausg. von Albrecht Krause, p. 29. 

2 General Remark on the Principles of Understanding : Meiklejohn, 
p. 176. Cp. Transcendental Aesthetic, p. 30. 



126 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

of a conscious subject, require a different method and 
a different kind of coherence ? It is an unmeaning 
question to ask if we can be conscious of them when 
it is already of their essence that we should be conscious 
in them. Kant is right indeed when he urges that the 
source of the categories cannot itself be determined by 
the categories. But is it needful or even desirable that 
it should be ? And still we are not reverting to the 
Cartesian position when we immediately identify our 
mental states with the primary fact of self-conscious 
ness ; for Kant s principle remains true that the 
consciousness in our states presupposes our conscious 
ness of objects. To take the problem at its highest 
level, the world of Poetic Truth -is indeed independent 
but has only a meaning in contrast with the world of 
Fact, and would not be possible apart from this basic 
implication. 

What then are we to make of this lawless activity of 
Productive Imagination ? Strictly understood, Kant has 
made no provision even for that primary synthesis of 
mental states which is necessary to the consciousness of 
our own identity. He felt that it would be a contradiction 
to say that the Imagination in its freedom is subject to 
the fixed procedure of Understanding, and proposes 
instead the evasive and mystical formula that it con 
forms to law without a law. 1 And yet even the most 
contingent vagary of fancy must be governed, within 
limits, by the determined sequence of fact. For 
example, I am chased by a bull in a dream and run 
away, when suddenly the chase stops and I turn 
round to confront a zinc-pail. But while the chase 
lasts, a kind of causality must be maintained. Must 

1 Bernard, 22, pp. 96-7. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 127 

I not reproduce my steps in consciousness in order 
to keep up my own identity ? There must be con 
nection and coherence up to a certain point in our 
thinking even when it is not conditioned by actual pre 
sentation, though the kind of connection is certainly 
different from that which we find in the systematic 
knowledge of objects. 

Now it is impossible to believe that Kant thought of 
psychical events as undetermined in time. However 
contingent the play of our affective states may be, they 
always presuppose the consciousness of an order which 
is not contingent and therefore the necessary con 
sciousness of ourselves. And in his more sober 
moments, he would not countenance this unreal dis 
tinction in the procedure of Imagination. In the 
Critique of Pure Reason he presents it as a concrete 
faculty with a lower and a higher form of activity : 
" imagination can give a perception corresponding to 
the conceptions of Understanding, only under the 
subjective condition of time. Imagination therefore 
pertains to sensibility. At the same time its synthesis 
is the expression of spontaneous activity ; for, unlike 
sense, imagination is not simply capable of being 
determined, but is itself determining." l In another 
passage he speaks of " the empirical faculty of produc 
tive imagination " as synonymous with Reproductive 
Imagination, and he even defines a schema as the 
product of pure a priori imagination. 2 Above all, we 
must not forget the supreme function of Productive 
Imagination in his theory of knowledge. As he says 
in the first edition, " there is thus in us an active 
faculty of the synthesis of this manifold, which we 
1 Watson, Selections, p. 77. 2 Watson, Selections, p. 87. 



128 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

call Imagination and whose immediate exercise in 
perception I call apprehension." And in a note to this 
passage, Kant practically claims to have been the first 
psychologist to discover that Imagination is an essen 
tial factor in perception. It had escaped the notice of 
former psychologists, partly because they restricted 
Imagination to reproductive activity, and partly because 
they believed that sense in its receptivity alone is able 
to unify impressions into objects, which is impossible 
in Kant s opinion without synthesis of Imagination. 1 
Why then does he appear to make a qualitative dif 
ference in the Critique of Judgment between the 
Productive and Reproductive Imagination ? 

The answer is not far to seek. It is because deter 
mined succession in time was the only criterion by 
which he could identify the actual knowledge of objects 
as distinguished from cognition in general (Erkenntniss 
uberhaupt). In the case of coexistence in space, which 
forms the subject of the First Analogy, it is quite clear 
that the consciousness of our own identity in time 
proves an objective order in our representations. If 
there were no such order, our successive perceptions 
would be discrete units without connection in conscious 
ness. But Kant has undertaken to prove more than 
the permanence of a world coexistent in space, and it 
is not by any means clear what this proof has to do 
with Causality. If we wish to understand what Kant 
thinks of Causality, which is undoubtedly the pons 
asinorum in the Critical Philosophy, we had better set 
aside the proof in the Second Analogy. His normal 
view is contained in incidental passages scattered 
throughout the Critique, and is quite unpretentious. 
1 Hartenstein, iii. Nachtrage aus der ersten Ausgabe, p. 579. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 129 

He is prepared to acknowledge with Hume, that by no 
analysis can we ever resolve a causal connection into 
the identical relation of Ground and Consequent. 1 It 
is a relation of fact which Reason cannot justify. But 
he went beyond Hume in asserting that the category 
of Causality must be a priori, because we could not be 
aware of qualitative change unless the events were so 
related that in apprehending them we could maintain 
the consciousness of our own identity. 

This is a modest claim. There is an open appeal to 
experience. Let it be carefully observed that the fact 
of change is presupposed as given ; and the proof con 
sists in the principle that causal connection, though 
given independently in experience, is more than em 
pirical, because it has some necessary connection with 
our consciousness of Time. Two passages may be 
cited in evidence : in the General Remark on the 
System of Principles, the representation of motion in 
space is required as the intuition corresponding to the 
category of Causality ; 2 and in the Critique of All 
Theology it is said that the category becomes syn 
thetic only in experience, and apart from experience has 
no significance at all. 3 This principle is not so gratui 
tous as it looks, and may be justified in the following 
way. In reply to the elementary question, How is 
knowledge possible at all ? Kant showed that the con 
ception of an ordered World is contained in the analysis 
of consciousness itself. The crowning feature of self- 
consciousness is the consciousness of Time, and this 

1 See his * Attempt to introduce the Conception of Negative 
Quantities into Philosophy : Wallace s Kant, p. 127 ; Hart, ii. 
p. 104. Cp. Meiklejohn, p. 465. 



Meiklejohn, p. 176. 3 Ibid. p. 390. 



130 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

implies a permanent background in Space. There 
must, then, be a transcendental ground of connection 
which conditions the entrance of sensations into con 
sciousness. Obviously this transcendental ground need 
not imply causal connection. It only indicates the 
permanence of coexistence. The sole merit in the 
Second Analogy is the clear distinction drawn between 
a succession in our perceptions and a succession in the 
presentation itself. To take Kant s example, I have 
successive perceptions in perceiving a house, but this 
does not imply that the parts of the house appre 
hended are themselves successive. The true direction 
of Kant s argument in favour of Causality seems to 
start from this point. Over and above coexistence 
in Space, there are real sequences in Nature and 
not simply successions in our perceptions. In the 
first instance these are simple changes which do not 
call for a causal explanation, like the motion of a boat 
down a stream. This example is not an illustration 
of the special kind of connection to which Causality 
gives its name, and the same is true of Kant s other 
example, the successive perceptions of water in its 
liquid and its frozen state. 1 The position of the boat 
at any moment is not the cause of its position lower 
down ; it is a simple succession of events. Now when 
we consider the absolute continuity of Space and there 
fore also of Time, these simple sequences may be run 
back as corollaries to the elementary proof for coexist 
ence. However these changes may arise, they need 
not put us out of our reckoning, for they obviously 
suppose the permanence of coexistent elements in Space. 
Further, there are qualitative changes which come under 

1 Meiklejohn, p. 99 ; Hart, iii. p. 133. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 131 

the special relation of cause and effect. This is a 
particular conjunction of elements, in which the effect 
emerges as a quite different event from the cause for 
example, a chemical transformation. But again we con 
sider the continuity of Space and Time, and think it 
impossible that these conjunctions of events should 
stand in singular isolation from the simple sequences 
and coexistences which are only quantitative. Thus 
Causality will be run back to the argument from Self- 
Consciousness which proves the possibility of knowledge 
at all ; and the conclusion will be, not that Change is 
unreal, being ultimately explained in terms of coexist 
ence, but that every instance of sequence and all 
coexistence are due to a form of synthesis, which in 
the long run is similar in kind to that form of connec 
tion which we observe in Causality. 

But in his official proof as it is contained in the 
Second Analogy, Kant steps beyond this reasonable 
position. The special significance of this proof for our 
discussion is its connection with Inner Sense. His 
argument now turns wholly upon Time, and Causality 
is defined as the law of invariable sequence in Time. 
In itself this may not appear to be different from the 
principle we have just considered. But observe the 
point of emphasis. While, in the former proof, Caus 
ality is represented as a corollary to the elementary act 
of cognition in coexistence, and has only hypothetical 
validity, being as much a regulative Idea of Reason as 
Organic Teleology, he now seems to discover a purely 
a priori criterion for Causality in the consciousness of 
Time, and which is quite independent of intuition in 
Space. He thus confuses two different propositions. 
We can say that an event can only form part of experi- 



132 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

ence if it comes under the dynamical relation of cause 
and effect j 1 if it were wholly contingent as that which 
is preceded by non-existence, it would be something of 
which we cannot be aware. On the other hand, we 
might say that the simple consciousness of determined 
succession in Time is itself an indubitable evidence that 
our perceptions are events which stand to each other in 
the relation of cause and effect. Kant s conclusion may 
be described as an instance of the fallacy, * illicit process : 
the consciousness of Time in the one case being only 
a factor in Causality, while in the other it contains 
Causality eminently. Given the perception of change, 
we can then say that the events must stand in necessary 
relation, for otherwise we should not have been con 
scious of them. But it is a different proposition if we 
say that from the bare consciousness of Time we can 
anticipate the perception of change with a priori certi 
tude. And this is Kant s conclusion in the Second 
Analogy. 

Now the reason why the real prop in this argument, 
an intuition in Space, is only covertly acknowledged in 
the Analogies although it is explicitly stated in the 
following * Remark on the Principles, 2 is Kant s 
adherence to his doctrine of Inner Sense. He saw 
that the real difference between inner and outer objects 
is the form of space. But, in the Inner Sense itself, it 
was necessary for him to establish a difference among 
representations, apart altogether from the qualification 
of space ; otherwise he should have to explain how 
there can be, in the same medium of Inner Sense or 
Time, two different kinds of content, the one realising 
itself in space-relations, the other being a mere play 

1 Meiklejohn, p. 478. 2 Watson, p. 127 ; Meiklejohn, p. 176. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 133 

of representations in perpetual flux. While the con 
tents of inner and outer Sense are held to be the 
same, as is maintained in the Transcendental Aesthetic^ 
no explanation would be necessary. But Inner Sense 
has a peculiar content of its own thoughts, feelings 
and desires, which have nothing to do with position in 
Space and may never be realised in space-relations. 
As they are defined in the Anthropology, the contents 
of Inner Sense are affective states arising from the 
play of our thoughts (Gedankenspiel)? The difference 
can now be explained only by discovering a mark 
of distinction in the Inner Sense itself, and this 
mark Kant finds in determined succession. That is 
why he says with an air of finality, as if he wished 
to prove a point, that all schemata are " in some way 
relative to time." * We are to understand, then, that 
schemata, as principles of determined consciousness in 
Time, have no serious application to the peculiar con 
tents of Inner Sense, and that consequently we have 
no coherent consciousness of them but only a vague 
awareness. Perhaps the clearest statement is contained 
in the section on The Application of the Categories 
to Objects of Sense. The Inner Sense is always to 
be regarded as " the passive subject." When there 
is genuine synthesis, the internal sense is said to be 
affected by the transcendental act of Imagination 
" which I have named figurative synthesis," that is, the 
transcendental Schema. On the other hand, Inner 
Sense contains merely the form of intuition in the 

1 " In the internal intuition, the representation of the external 

senses constitutes the material with which the mind is occupied." 
Meiklejohn, p. 40. 

2 Hartenstein, vii. p. 473. 3 Watson, Selections, p. 90. 



134 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

empirical representation of Time as a continual flux, 
"without any synthetical conjunction of the mani 
fold therein, and consequently does not contain any 
determined intuition." 1 What makes all the difference 
is the Schema. In the one case the Schema effects 
a synthesis ; in the other, the Schema simply ignores 
the contents of Inner Sense, which therefore remain 
an undetermined succession in Time. There is thus 
no apperception of our affective states. 

It might be urged in favour of Kant s impossible 
theory, that as the pure, analytic unity of apperception 
is not a fact of consciousness so much as a scientific 
ideal for knowledge, the incoherent consciousness of 
Inner Sense may also be regarded as the lower 
limit of synthetic unity in empirical science rather 
than as an existing mental state ; for however clear 
to ourselves our affective states may be, they can 
never be defined with the precision of objects in 
space. But Inner Sense is too deeply embedded in 
Kant s philosophy to be dismissed so lightly. Since 
it was necessary to make the distinction within the 
Inner Sense, he inclined in the Second Analogy to 
suppress the appeal to space-intuition, and threw the 
whole weight of the proof on sequence in Time. It 
only remained to cover his traces by illegitimately con 
secrating the consciousness of determined succession 
in Time to causal connection, while to the other order 
of succession in Time he denies the authentic recogni 
tion of consciousness. Inner Sense is the surd in 
Kant s Epistemology. 

We can now understand the hopeless position in 
which his theory of knowledge has placed him. It is 

1 Meiklejohn, p. 94. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 135 

not by any means clear how Aesthetic may be demon 
strated by a simple appeal to the theory of knowledge. 
The doctrine of Schematism was the discovery of a 
radical difference in nature between two orders of 
mind : the Pure Understanding whose principles only 
contribute to a knowledge in general, and the Applied 
Understanding whose schemata can procure determinate 
knowledge of objects. And the cardinal feature of 
distinction between them is the implication of Time. 
On this basis he is able to maintain a boundary between 
the Reproductive and the free or Productive activity 
of Imagination ; and the inference is inevitable, that 
the Productive Imagination obtains its freedom in 
Aesthetic by forfeiting all implication of succession in 
Time. 

This is a strange conclusion, but it is a fair inference 
from the confused ideas which Kant has thrown out. 
Whatever we may think of Kant s doctrine of Inner 
Sense, it is certain that our aesthetic states fall within 
the region over which this mysterious and sleeping 
partner of our consciousness presides, a region which 
corresponds exactly to what Spinoza 1 calls the Affects 
and to Locke s ideas of Reflection. And while the 
Inner Sense is for Kant the very and only faculty of 
Time, it appears that the affective states peculiar to 
Inner Sense cannot be identified as elements in Time 
at all. Here we are left entirely to conjecture his 
meaning. A little light may gather if we carry into 
the region of Inner Sense, the distinction which he 

1 For the parallel with Spinoza, see the reference to the Anthro 
pology just cited : " Der innere Sinn ist nicht die reine Apperception, 
ein Bewusstsein dessen, was der Mensch thut, denn dieses gehort zum 
Denkungsvermogen, sondern was er leidet" Hart, vii. p. 473. 



136 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

applied to coexistence and succession in Space. Perhaps 
he thought of our affective states as reversible. What 
our Inner Sense observes as an external succession 
may only have psychological significance ; the elements 
do not need to appear in that or any other order 
and may never recur again. In spite of the fact 
that they are the objects of a sense, they are nothing 
more than a conceptual play (Gedankenspiel). There 
is a certain amount of truth in this, which no one 
will deny. The connection of ideas in a dream or 
meditation is certainly not the same as what we find in 
objects of Nature ; even our artistic impressions are 
variable, and may never recur to us again in the same 
order of association. But whatever the difference be, 
it does not lie where Kant has placed it. He believed 
that schemata, or, more simply, our principles of 
thought, only realise significance when they are supplied 
with sensations, or, what is the same thing, when the 
contents of inner and outer sense are the same ; with 
the solitary exception of a moral event, he regards 
nothing in the nature of a fact which does not resonate 
against the sounding-board of Space. But these floating 
images are not secondary affections of our Self in its 
passivity, produced by the friction of apprehended facts; 
they come to us unbidden with all the force of the 
actual, and are as objective and outside of us as stones 
and rocks or the motion of a train. The birth of a 
poem is as actual as a splash of colour or a fall over a 
precipice. Indeed they are more aggressive and inde 
pendent of our control than the objects of sense, for 
we can escape from these by suspending our percep 
tion ; we can shut our eyes and think away a world. 
But if I am possessed of an idea, whither shall I flee ? 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 137 

What is remarkable, however, in the Critical 
Philosophy is that it provides an antidote, like the bark 
of the cinchona tree, in the immediate vicinity of its 
infected areas. Already in the Second Analogy we find 
the corrective to this false theory of our affective states. 
Kant has a double view of Time. On the one hand, 
there is the empirical representation as a succession of 
continual changes, and this, in Kant s later opinion, is 
the only perception of Time which we can have. On 
the other hand, there is an absolute Time which 
" remains and changes not," a permanent substrate. If 
we did not postulate this absolute Time as what is not 
itself affected by succession and change, we should have 
to think of another Time in which this Time came to 
be 5 and still another Time and another unto infinity. 
Therefore all succession and coexistence are only so 
many modes or determinations in absolute Time. 
Here Kant breaks with his early view in the Tran 
scendental Aesthetic, that Time is a whole of perception 
corresponding to the perception of an empty Space ; for 
he repeatedly asserts in the Analogies that " Time in 
itself cannot be an object of perception." But his posi 
tion has not really changed. What he renounces in his 
earlier view is the perception of Time as a quantitative 
whole of which the successive times are limitations ; 
otherwise he contends, as in the Analogies, for an 
original consciousness of Time as "unlimited" or 
absolute, and this Time " does not change." * The 
Time, then, which we perceive always under the form 
of representation in Space, is only appearance ; the real 
in Time is not thus perceived but felt as the conscious 
ness of absolute duration. This is the distinction 
1 Watson, Selections, pp. 30 and 36. 



138 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

within the Inner Sense which Kant ought to have made, 
and not the unreal opposition of determined succession 
and an anomalous succession which is no succession, in 
which we cannot have authentic consciousness of our 
selves. This absolute duration, and not the spurious 
flux of Inner Sense, which is conceptual rather than 
sensuous, is the medium of Productive Imagination. 
In it alone does true Time exist, while determined 
succession is a phenomenal translation of Time into the 
language of Space, and never is but always is to be. 
Kant is right in saying that we do not and cannot 
perceive real Time in this sense, for, like the musical 
state of which Schiller tells us, it is felt before it is 
noticed. 

And now, when we turn to the Critique of Judg 
ment, we find that the factors which Kant employs in 
Aesthetic are not a timeless Imagination and a dis 
inherited Understanding, but these faculties as they 
exist in their most concrete form. What does a faculty 
of representation in general, as distinguished from 
particular representations, mean if not a schema ? The 
whole point in the conception of a schema is the dis 
tinction between discursive processes and the intuitive 
or dynamic element which cannot itself be representa 
tion. It is schemata that are at play in Aesthetic, and 
these schemata exist in the medium of qualitative Time 
whose faculty is Feeling. Thus all the forms of human 
activity, in science or in conduct, may be regarded as the 
raw fibre of Aesthetic. Their schemata foregather on 

o 

the common ground of elemental play ; like the Gods of 
Greece, their foreheads are smooth, clear of the furrows 
of toil and serious care, knowing neither the compulsion 
of external force nor the constraint of moral laws. There 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 139 

are a few passages which can bear this schematic inter 
pretation of Aesthetic. It is said that the Imagination 
"schematises without any concept." 1 More explicit is 
the passage where Kant speaks of aesthetic pleasure as 
involving causality : " maintaining without further design 
the state of the representation itself and the occupation 
of the cognitive powers." We are able to " linger over 
the contemplation of the Beautiful, because this contem 
plation strengthens and reproduces itself." 2 But Kant 
has no real title to this interpretation unless he revise his 
doctrine of Inner Sense. He believed that schemata 
do not seriously affect the contents of Inner Sense 
because he misconceived the function of schemata, and 
regarded the ambiguous product as merely ideal. But 
it would be quite as true, perhaps more true, to say that 
the determinate perception of objects in space is merely 
actual. Since he denies objective reality to what he 
calls the mere contents in time, it follows that there can 
be no science of Psychology. And this is true, if it be 
meant that it has no objects corresponding to those in 
Physical Science. But if there be no science of Psy 
chology, neither can there be a theory of Aesthetic ; 
for the objects of Aesthetic, according to his first 
canon, have no ingredients of cognition, are not sup 
ported by the form of Space as such, and exist 
exclusively in Imagination. And it is not only Kant 
who says so. No sound aesthetic theory will deny 
at least this difference between perception and aesthetic 
intuition, that in the latter the objects of perception 
are sympathetically interpreted : our cold scientific 
interest gives way to personal interest ; we confer 
our emotions and life upon objects, until finally 
1 Bernard, 35. 2 Bernard, 12. Cp. p. 197. 



140 THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

we are able to ignore their symbolic character and 
persuade ourselves into the belief that they are im 
personations of ourselves. This is entirely the work 
of Imagination. The objects presented to us, whether 
they are in Space or only arise within our own minds, 
are the materials of this supposed Inner Sense. They 
are, moreover, objective syntheses as factual as anything 
in Nature, although they are not Nature. They have 
for us the significance of objects ; they have more 
meaning for us than objects in Space. 



CHAPTER V. 

ANCIENT AND MODERN THE THIRD CANON. 

KANT S doctrine of Inner Sense was favourable to the 
eighteenth-century theory of Freedom, which affected 
his whole philosophy. On the other hand, he had a 
genuine, if fugitive, insight into the positive expression 
of Freedom, although he refused to recognise it in the 
life and works of his contemporaries. This opposition 
is most sharply announced in his Third Canon. It 
says that the Beautiful is the representation of a purpose 
without a purpose. 1 In itself this canon is little more 
than a repetition of the first and second ; for it excludes 
an interest, and it might also be taken as synonymous 
with the formula in the second, that the aesthetic state 
is conformity to law without a law. But it was con 
venient and even necessary that Kant should bring it 
forward, as indicating a further stage in the proof. The 
universality of Aesthetic was based upon the con 
ditions of knowledge; and it is hard to forget that 
knowledge in any form, however undetermined, is 
still a modification of cognitive processes, employs con 
cepts, observes relations among elements, and has a 
final end in view. He must therefore insist in yet 
another canon, that Aesthetic has the universality of 
knowledge without being knowledge, or that it is a 
1 Bernard, 10-17. 



142 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

purposive (zweckmdssig) activity without intending any 
purpose at all. This completes the argument. Obvi 
ously this moment in the Beautiful is capable of a double 
interpretation. It may be understood in the sense of 
implicit intention or as the absence of intention altogether. 
It is not difficult to decide which of those views Kant 
really entertained. His negative conception is in great 
part theoretical, and, as in the proof for Causality, 
his true position is obscured by his illustrations. A 
superficial reading of eighteenth-century literature is 
sufficient to understand this opposition in Kant s mind. 
The eighteenth century is known in European Litera 
ture as the Age of the Individual. The quantity of 
autobiographies, for which Rousseau had set the fashion 
in his Confessions^ and the dislike of all corporations and 
guilds, in which individual freedom is hampered by the 
collective will, are characteristic of the spirit of the age. 1 
The lifeless orthodoxy into which the Reformation had 
hardened, enslaved both mind and conscience, and it 
was in emancipating the individual from dogmatic 
authority that the Aufkldrung had its first significance. 
An enlightened Pietism revolted against a form of 
religion, whose votaries, in some instances, sought to 
accentuate the supremacy of faith over works by making 
a parade of loose living. 2 As Paulsen says in his 
Life of Kant, Pietism was Luther rising up against 
Lutheranism. And it should be remembered that, how 
ever defective Rationalism may have been in Germany, 
it made common cause with Pietism, and was thus 
distinguished from the materialistic phase of the move 
ment in France by an earnest moral theory, although 
it did not go very deep. But while it was undoubtedly 

1 Erdmann, Hist. Phil. ii. pp. 284-5. *Ibld. p. 288. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 143 

an age of Humanism, it was old before its time. It was 
the Humanism of the Renaissance without its youthful 
vigour. It glorified the individual and made his happi 
ness the chief end of existence, but it was the indifferent 
individual of abstract thinking, not the historic indi 
vidual of Rousseau, Lessing and Kant. The Humanism 
of the eighteenth century only simplified the achieve 
ments of a former enlightenment, it did not interpret 
them with a deeper significance. It was the momentary 
appearance of the mild light of Mediaevalism which had 
lived secure on the treasures of past ages, and the same 
degenerating tendencies which characterised mediaeval 
times now threatened to corrupt German life. It was 
not the healthy enthusiasm which attends every re-birth 
of the human spirit, as it is challenged by the wealth of 
conquests to be won ; it was the much less worthy, 
though more pleasing, Humanism of the spirit tolerating 
itself. It was comprehensive and ambitious at the cost 
of being shallow and pretentious. 

We are not surprised, then, to find this movement 
offending in the very faults which it sought to amend. 
A false conception of human brotherhood, in the vague 
latitude of an indiscriminate, cosmopolitan culture, pre 
ceded the birth of a national spirit which alone is able 
to justify the cultivation of cosmopolitan feeling. To 
become citizens of the world, we must first be true 
citizens of the city in which we were born. Now 
Germany did not awake to the consciousness of 
her national unity until the year 1806, when at the 
decisive battle of Jena the Prussian forces were routed 
by Napoleon. She still cherished the idea of the Holy 
Roman Empire ; but while each separate principality 
was governed by its autocratic prince, supported by his 



144 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

unscrupulous minister and all-powerful favourite, no 
national conscience could exist. The want of a national 
spirit is nowhere illustrated so clearly as in the person 
of Frederick the Great, himself the incarnation of 
Enlightenment. He hated his own language and would 
hear of nothing but French literary models, which all 
ran on the traditional lines ; and by withholding his 
encouragement, he all but stifled the first beginnings of 
the German Drama. But a very curious phase in this 
cult of Reason is the exercise of authority which qualified 
the supposed indulgence of illimitable freedom. It is 
recorded of Frederick that he threatened to dismiss one 
of his officials if he should refuse to visit the theatre. 
And in his famous dictum that the King is the first 
servant of the State, we may readily believe that the 
accent was placed on premier rather than on domestique. 1 
These are characteristic indications that the boasted 
emancipation of Reason was an ill-concealed dogmatism. 
The philosophy of Wolff which gave intellectual expres 
sion to the spirit of the age, undertook to demonstrate, 
by the cogency of Reason alone, the existence of every 
thing from God down to municipal regulations ; and 
wherever this facile solvent failed, the law of identity 
was replaced by the dogmatic assertion that it was the 
best possible which God could have made, and there was 
an end of the matter. Like every imperfect phase of 
development, the age was marked by a double and 
contradictory character in its strange fascination for 
logical consistency and inconsequent freedom. The 
individual of the eighteenth century, unfed on the 
riches of Nature, at length grew dizzy on an empty 
stomach with the whirling revolutions of his reasoning 

1 Erdmann, Hist. Phil. ii. pp. 301-2. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 145 

processes, and, losing his vaunted self-control, showed 
his true nature in the irresponsible freedom of the 
French Revolution, which sought its demonstration in 
blood, not in syllogism. The individual, which it took 
for its ideal, was little more than the wraith of the 
lusty individual which came to life at the Renaissance. 
In spite of national differences the broad principles of 
Enlightenment are the same, whether we look to the 
Deistic School in England, to Voltaire and the Ency 
clopaedists in France or to the Rationalism of Wolff in 
Germany. The solutions by which it offered to explain 
all things in heaven and on earth, were far too simple 
to be true. Life was represented as being much more 
easy than it is actually, and an unreal optimism lent a 
false glow to the darkest problems of existence. In his 
little essay on the question What is Enlightenment ? 
Kant had gauged the situation correctly : if it be asked 
whether we are now living in an enlightened age, the 
answer is, "No, but in an age of Enlightenment." 

It was against this complacent criticism of life that 
the Age of Genius, inaugurated by Schiller and Goethe, 
rebelled. The last quarter of the eighteenth century 
leaves a confused impression on the mind which it is 
difficult to analyse with clearness. Probably this counter 
movement is best described as a revolution within a 
revolution. Historically judged, and in spite of its 
reactionary appearance, it was a further development 
of the Era of Enlightenment. The latter had preached 
liberty of conscience, political freedom, happiness in 
time and eternity ; but society was not reformed. To 
this reactionary criticism Kant had made the most per 
manent contribution in his monumental works. Fichte, 

1 Hartenstein, iv. p. 166. 
K 



146 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

following on his lines, required that the particular should 
be reinforced by the universal. But the universalised 
particular may be as abstract as the particular itself. 
It was Schiller who first grasped the philosophical 
significance of the Aufkldrung^ and up to the last his 
romantic ideas were restrained by a lingering conserva 
tism. In the individual of Rationalism he saw at least 
the type of true freedom, the ideal of the Greek ; and 
while he acknowledged a qualified allegiance to Kant s 
moralism, the early influence of Shaftesbury, who echoed 
the ethical optimism of the Aufklarung in the union of 
virtue and happiness, had made a more favourable 
impression on his mind. The regeneration of the 
individual, through the aesthetical harmony of Sense 
and Reason, is for him the final end of culture. 

In the mad pranks enacted by the Storm and Stress 
party under Goethe s revolutionary influence at Weimar, 
Schiller took no part. With the sanction of their genial 
patron, the Duke Karl August, court etiquette and 
dress were disregarded : blue-coat, yellow waistcoat and 
high boots were affected ; long walks into the country, 
perilous rides, skating-parties at night and dances in the 
country with peasant maidens, formed part of their 
programme. 1 Goethe did not like to look back on these 
early days of boisterous exuberance, and it soon sobered 
down into serious devotion to classic form. Now, what 
grated on Kant s puritanic sense was the literary and 
romantic affectation which followed in its wake, such as 
anacreontic odes and the night-singers. In the closing 
decades of the century, a sentimental cult was in vogue 
which took the form of excursions into the country, in 

1 Scherer s History of German Literature : translated by Mrs. F. C. 
Conybeare, vol. ii. p. 145. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 147 

feeble imitation of Saussure s travels in the Alps, an 
account of which first appeared in 1779 and for which 
Kant professed the highest admiration. 1 Another, and 
perhaps the more immediate source of inspiration, was 
Sterne s Sentimental Journey. In what is an evident 
allusion to this movement Schiller says in so many 
words, that this sentimental taste is not by any means 
the same as a love of Nature for her own sake. 2 And, 
so far, Kant was justified when he reproached his con 
temporaries with trifling and wantonness : " our age is 
the century of pretty nothings, bagatelles or sublime 
chimeras." 3 He found the true standard of Taste 
among the ancients alone, for they were nearer to 
Nature. 

This was a criticism, moreover, which Schiller candidly 
acknowledged. While his aesthetical education of Man 
has the forward view, it has also, from another side, a 
retrospective aspect. The regeneration of humanity is 
the becoming again what it was, a return to Nature as 
she was known to the childhood of the race. In his 
c Naive and Sentimental Poetry, he contrasts Goethe as 
na ive with himself as sentimental poet. The difference 
between the two orders of poets is this. In Goethe s 
Olympian nature Schiller saw one for whom the Ideal was 
already actual, and in this naive character he resembled 
the Greeks ; for the divine Ideal with them was no 
remote conception but an embodiment in individual 
form. In a very fine passage, he describes this perfect 

1 Bernard, 29. 

2 \jber naive und sentimentalischc Dlchtung. Siimmtliche Werke (1836), 
xii. p. 200. 

3 Tragmente aus dem Nachtassc. Kirchmann, Vermischte Schriften, 
P- 331- 



148 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

union of Grace or humanity with Dignity or deity in the 
Greek statues : " with softened splendour the Freedom 
of Reason rises in the smiling mouth, the gently animated 
glance, the serene brow, and, sublime in its setting, 
Natural Necessity subsides in the noble majesty of 
countenance. On this ideal of human beauty are the 
antique statues modelled, and one recognises it in the 
divine form of a Niobe, in the Apollo Belvedere, in 
the winged genius of the Villa Borghese and in the 
muse of the Palazzo Barberini." l But while the 
naive is already natural, the sentimental poet strives 
to become natural by realising the Ideal. It is the 
difference, conceived in an abstract manner, between 
Hellenic and Romantic art. Schiller naturally wavers 
between these conceptions of the Ideal, in a way 
which corresponds somewhat to the vacillating move 
ment between aestheticism and moralism, throughout his 
poetry and prose. In his poem The Pilgrim, the only 
possible conception of the Ideal is the sentimental ; for 
the heavenly goal recedes ever and ever farther from 
the pilgrim who embarks on the rolling sea of life, in 
search of the Ideal. In The Ideal and Life published 
in the Horen the same year as Naive and Sentimental 
Poetry, 1795, he recognises the naive conception ; for 
beside the world of pure spirit there is the Olympic 
world of Beauty which exists within the sense-world as 
the mirror of man s perfection. 

But Schiller does not mean by this contrast that 
Nature was known to the Greeks alone. On the con 
trary, it could be said with equal truth that they never 
knew Nature at all. In either case Nature has a 

1 Vber Anmuth und Wiirde. Sammtliche Werke, xi. (1836), p. 457. 
This translation was revised by Prof. Hoernle. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 149 

different sense, and the conclusion of his argument is 
to co-ordinate the naive or Hellenic, and sentimental or 
Romantic, attitudes to Nature as complementary. Thus, 
arguing from the other side, and this time in defence of 
the Greek conception, we find him saying in a letter to 
Goethe, that the distinction between characteristic and 
formal Beauty is only logical ; and he thinks that the 
absence of characteristic expression in the Greek concep 
tion of Beauty has been overstated by critics. In his 
opinion Aesthetic is at once the serious pursuit and the 
serene, unthinking possession of the Ideal, 1 or, to adopt 
the words of the adage, Art is at once ernst and heiter. 
What, then, is the difference ? Why, he asks, are we 
so different from the Greeks ? They describe Nature 
as they would a mechanical product or any work of 
technical art ; they have no sentimental feeling for 
Nature, while we worship Nature. The answer is that 
the Greeks worshipped the human form, but Nature 
was in the human form for the Greeks as it is not for 
us ; and they had no eyes for unconscious Nature, only 
because their connection with her was so close as to 
admit of no intermediary reflection. It was not Nature 
in her passivity that they saw, but Nature as animated 
by the very human form they worshipped, in the shape 
of Nymphs, Naiads, Satyrs and Fauns. For us, Nature 
has disappeared from Humanity and we must seek her 
again in the unconscious world. 2 

But Kant had no proper understanding of this con 
trast between ancient and modern, as Schiller saw it. 
While he professed veneration for the ancients as 

1 Schmitz, Correspondence, Letter 342, vol. i. p. 378. 

2 l}ber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Sammtliche Werke, xii. 

(1836), p. 222. 



150 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

having been nearer to Nature, there is no evidence 
in his writings of appreciation of Homer or of the 
sublimity of Hebrew Poetry, the two great models of 
antiquity. In the early struggle of his countrymen 
towards a national literature, he failed to distinguish 
the substance from the shadow. It should have been 
enough for him, one would think, that in the Age of 
Genius the dissolving criticism of Voltaire had been 
exchanged for the naturalism of Rousseau, and that, in 
the love of Nature for her own sake, man might regain 
the naive conception of his humanity which he had lost. 
These, then, were the alternatives presented to Kant s 
choice. The rationalistic and romantic conceptions of 
Freedom were both untempered and irresponsible, but 
in very different ways. The ebullition of the Sturm 
und Drang was a genuine renaissance of the human 
spirit ; as the first phase of a constructive movement, 
its extravagant expression had an implicit intention. 
But the Aufkl&rung was the passing of the human spirit 
through a destructive moment ; its conception of 
Freedom was contingent, and by a natural transition 
pretentious Reason completed its course in the passional 
abandon of the French Revolution. Yet it was in the 
latter of these that Kant sought the type of aesthetic 
freedom. 

Consequently, the exposition of his third canon turns 
on a sharp distinction between Free and Dependent 
Beauty (pukhritudo vaga and pulchritudo adhaerens]. In 
the Dependent type of Beauty Kant has in view the con 
fused representation of perfection, which was received in 
the Wolffian School as the definition of the Beautiful. 
It is the Beauty of whatever exhibits intention, external 
or internal. All objects of industrial Art, and Kant 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 151 

would include Beautiful Art, may have this kind of 
Beauty. In these the intention is external, it is wrought 
into them, and their Beauty will consist in the relative 
perfection with which they embody this imported pur 
pose. There are also objects which have an internal 
purpose, namely, the products of organic Nature ; plants, 
animals and, highest of all, man, realise the idea of 
their kind, and are judged aesthetically in the degree 
that they approximate to the generic idea. Thus a 
flower, although it is Kant s stock example of Free or 
Independent Beauty, may from another side be taken 
as Dependent, when it is the object of intellectual satis 
faction to a botanist who knows its history and structure 
and can appreciate how far it fulfils the idea of its kind. 
The judgment of the botanist is teleological, and what 
ever Beauty he sees in the flower is mixed with intellec 
tual ideas ; it is therefore said to be impure or dependent 
because it is not inherent but adherent. This relative 
perfection Kant calls the Normal Idea ; it is the generic 
image such as is obtained by stereoscopic observation 
or by Galton s process of generalised photography. 

But he goes a step further. It seems that in the earlier 
editions of the Critique of Judgment 1 he considered the 
Normal Idea as the highest type of Dependent Beauty. 
Now, however, he sees that it is quite inadequate and 
only provides the necessary conditions for realising the 
highest perfection. It is so far indispensable that when 
the expression is extravagant and does violence to the 
Normal Idea, it becomes caricature. But when indi 
vidual character is suppressed in favour of generic 
purity, the product is a lifeless abstraction which con 
tains "nothing specifically characteristic," and is "merely 

1 Bosanquet, Hist. Aesthetic, p. 272. 



152 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

correct." 1 The Ideal must have individual expression 
it must be an individual plant, an individual animal, 
an individual man. Now the individual which most 
perfectly embodies the idea of its kind is the Ideal. 
This and not the Normal Idea is the highest type of 
Dependent Beauty. 

Kant restricts the Ideal to the human species because 
it alone is capable of moral expression. He means that 
Man is the only being who contains the end of his 
, existence in himself, or to put it in another way, Person- 
, ality is the only instance of a real individual.) This 
conception of the Ideal is the key to Kant s Teleology 
of Nature. It implies that all the categories which 
fall below Self-consciousness, including those of Biology, 
are only reflective predicates which are due to the 
dialectical nature of our Understanding ; they are 
descriptions of objects which have no supersensible 
substrate, and consequently their purposive activity is 
not the expression of a nature in the objects themselves 
but only an appearance for us. Thus the Ideal of a 
flower is inconceivable for Kant, and Myron s Cow is 
not an Ideal because it has not a moral expression. 2 
We have to remember, however, that, as the highest 
form of the Dependent type, the Ideal loses in aesthetic 
quality as it gains in significance. It may be said to be 
at two removes from Pure Beauty, for it is informed 
by a moral as well as an intellectual purpose. It is now 
easy to understand what Free Beauty means : it is the 
representation which is neither normal nor ideal, being 
completely void of all intention, intellectual, moral, or 
both together. Such are the meaningless symmetries 
of decorative art, arabesques and fanciful embroideries 

1 Bernard, 17, p. 89. 2 Bernard, pp. 86-9. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 153 

which are only made to please, and purposeless forma 
tions like flowers and crystals. 1 Even geometrical figures 
are excluded because they presuppose an intellectual 
purpose. The Beauty of a representation is only pure 
when it is unconditionally free. Even the thought of i 
a purpose must not enter into our judgment. As an 
extreme instance, Kant mentions stone implements 
which are found in old sepulchral tumuli, with a hole . 
in them as if for a handle. The purpose of these 
implements is quite unknown to us, but they are not 
therefore beautiful, for we know very well that they 
were originally made for a certain use. 2 Similarly in a 
work of Art, our aesthetical judgment is hampered by 
the intention of the artist ; and Kant thinks that if our 
judgment is to be pure, we must be able to abstract 
from the intention altogether and confine our contem- 
plation to the mere appearance. - x 

This principle is plausible and might be accepted as 
a useful test in settling disputes on Taste : it could be 
pointed out, in a case of disagreement, that for one 
person the Beauty consists in the mere act of con- 
templationj while the other person tries to understand 
what the artist sought to convey ; and it might happen 
that he could criticise the former s taste on the ground 
that he was applauding a work of Art, in which, how 
ever well executed, the intention was poor or even 
improbable. But it is precisely this opposition in 
judgment which is not admitted in a true theory of 
Aesthetic. The fault in Kant s principle consists in 
making a dispute possible where there ought to be 
none. If, as we say, the conception in a work of 
Art is poor or impossible, nothing in the execution 
1 Bernard, pp. 81,211. 2 Bernard, p. 90, note. 



154 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

can make up for this defect. It will remain a body 
without a soul, and whatever pleasure it may minister 
to us is only what arises from the resemblance in an 
imitation ; possibly it may have less aesthetic quality 
than a well-made hoe. 

On the other hand, we must not be deceived into 
thinking that a work of Art is meaningless because 
the intention is too vague to be grasped. When we 
speak of the conception we do not mean that the 
intention ought to be capable of definition, but that 
the work has an artistic motive and is really the 
expression of a significant state of mind, though it 
may be less understood by the artist himself than by 
the critic.; If what is nothing but a study in colour 
is successful, it is not by any means the empty repre 
sentation of symmetry in visual sensations, for colour 
like music is spiritual expression. In so far as I am 
able to understand Meredith s meaning in his Hymn 
to Colour, it is a metamorphosis of Love which, in this 
shape, becomes bridegroom to the Soul and opens her 
eyes to the truth of things. Life and Death are sub 
stantial forms only because we see in them, not Love, 
but our "craving self": in the language of Spinoza, 
they are born of desire, or as Schopenhauer would 
say, they are representations due to the pragmatic will. 
But in the presence of approaching Love, Life and 
Death, which walk with the Soul on either side, are 
made to seem as shadows, forms of light which borrow 
from each other tints and shades of colour : 

" Death begs of Life his blush ; Life Death persuades 
Xo keep long day with his caresses graced." 

And thus these two substantial forms are seen to be 
nothing more than the abstract factors which make 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 155 

up the variety of existence, as it is expressed in colour. 
So much may colour mean : 

" he leads 

Through widening chambers of surprise to where 
Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes, 
Because his touch is infinite and lends 
A yonder to all ends." l 

A successful study in colour alone is the expression of 
an artistic state which may have its roots as deep as Life 
and Death where they meet. However unconscious 
the artist may have been of any such intention, the 
spiritual meaning will nevertheless glow in his work, 
and whoever does not see some glimpse of it there is 
not entitled to pass an aesthetical judgment on the 
matter. 

It is interesting to notice that Kant had a very 
different opinion in his lectures on Aesthetic. There 
he says at least three times over, that you cannot tell 
whether a thing is beautiful until you know what it 
is for, that the Beautiful cannot be demonstrated a 
priori, and that the idea of the thing as it is found 
in experience must always be presupposed. 2 In reading 
these remains, one naturally finds that Kant is com 
paratively free from methodological caution in delivering 

1 Poems, vol. ii. A Reading of Earth. 

2 \yj r konnen eine Sache nicht eher fur schQn halten, als bis wir 
wissen, was es fur eine Sache sei, und was da sch5n sein soil. 
Anthropology 1779. Ohne die mindeste Beziehung auf Nutzen 
konnen wir keine SchOnheit finden, wenigstens darf sie ihm nicht 
widerstreiten. Anthropology 1784. Ob etwas schon sei, lasst sich 
nicht vordemonstrieren. Es ist bios durch die Erfahrung zu erkennen. 
A priori wurde er das Schone als solches nicht gelten lassen. Anthro 
pology 1791." Schlapp s Kant s Lehre vom Genie u.s.zc. pp. 201, 281, 

393- 



156 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

his opinions ; and this seems to be true even of the 
time after the Critique of Judgment was published, as 
may be seen from the date of the last quotation in 
the note. It clearly shows that, whenever he sat 
down to systematic exposition, his mind was overdriven 
and misdirected by theoretical exactions. And when 
we consider his moral disposition, we have no difficulty 
in understanding why he should have chosen the 
Rationalistic rather than the Romantic type of Free 
dom. He could hardly rejoice in the legal Freedom 
of Reason. But human nature must enjoy something, 
and his aesthetic theory looks as if it were prompted 
by the revenge of violated Sense on unsympathetic 
Reason. Since Reason in her freedom was so prudish, 
it was inevitable that Sense, secured by no weightier 
influence than a nominal conformity to Law, should 
become nonsense. Notwithstanding his anxiety to 
exclude all that savours of Sense, his aesthetic theory 
becomes in fact the formula for decadence. A theory 
of Art which professes to have no content, which 
sacrifices meaning to the cultivation of refined sensa 
tions, is, in the long run indistinguishable from vice. 

This was in substance Schiller s criticism, perhaps the 
most penetrating judgment ever passed upon Enlighten 
ment, and it is a criticism which has lost nothing of its 
force when applied to the downward movements in 
subsequent literature. He saw that the unsanctioned 
freedom of the individual did not seek to realise the 
true infinite of Reason, was not even conscious of its 
presence, but readily confused it with the specious 
indeterminate of sense-affection. What the individual 
pursues is not the infinite but an infinite finite, an 
unlimited extension of his individuality, an inexhaustible 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 157 

material instead of form, an eternally during mutation 
instead of the immutable and the absolute security of 
his temporal being : " while the infinite dawns upon his 
dazzled imagination, his heart has not yet ceased to live 
in the partial and to serve the present moment." In 
capable of abandoning his individuality to meet the 
demands of Reason, he lets fall his eyes on something 
in his sensuous nature which nearly resembles the 
uncaused causality of Reason, the law of his members 
which knows no law ; and since he cannot lay the 
questioning intellect to rest by discovering a final 
motive within himself, he at least brings it to silence 
through the idea of causelessness. 1 

But Kant has saved his theory from this disastrous 
consequence by a special application of his first principle, 
that no ingredients of sensation shall be admitted into 
Aesthetic. This restriction is now introduced with 
particular reference to the two forms of sense-affection, 
Charm and Emotion. So much has been already 
conceded to this insatiable phantom of negative Free 
dom, that it is hard to think what remains. The 
precious toil of science and the ennobling discipline of 
morality, can contribute nothing of their treasures; and 
it would seem that even Sense, the aether Beauty 
breathes, is sacrificed. The reason for his strictures on 
Charm (Reiz) is characteristic. The charm of Sense 
is empirical and therefore cannot be assimilated to 
what must be an a priori activity of mind. This 
is a good instance of Kant s weakness for the a 
priori, and is a consequence of his doctrine of Sensa 
tion. In the concrete act of perception (Wahrnehmung) 

1 Aesthetical Education of Man, Letter 24. Sammtliche Werke, xii. 
(1836), Weiss s translation, pp. 145-7. 



158 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

there are two factors : the constant forms of intuition 
(Anschauung), Space and Time, and the variable (Emp- 
findung). There is thus a constant factor in perception, 
which Kant ultimately believes to be produced by the 
synthetic activity of mind ; this is how it is stated in 
the first edition of the Transcendental Deduction : 
" Now this synthesis of apprehension must be exercised 
a priori also, I mean for the sake of representations 
which are not empirical. For without this synthesis, 
we should not be able to have a priori representations 
either of Space or of Time, for these can only arise 
through the synthesis of the manifold, which is offered 
by sensibility in its original receptivity." 1 But the 
variable in perception is empirical, and is not account 
able to our minds for its coming and going : at the most 
we can have c anticipations of its behaviour ; we know 
a priori that it will have some degree of intensity, but 
what degree it will have, and that it should enter into 
perception at all, is outwith the jurisdiction of the mind. 
It is this specifically empirical element that Kant 
excludes from Aesthetic under the name of Charm. 

His criticism, however, is not indiscriminate. Up to 
a certain point it is the commonplace observation, that 
Beauty is not enhanced but spoilt by the excrescences 
of barbaric taste. 2 An ornamental sword which is not 
serviceable in the field, is less beautiful than a plain but 
well-made sword which is perfectly adapted for use. 
When Aristippus asked Socrates if a dung-basket can 
be beautiful, he replied : " Yes, by Jupiter, and a golden 
shield may be an ugly thing, if the one be beautifully 
formed for its particular uses, and the other ill-formed." 3 

1 Hartenstein, iii. p. 568, Nachtrage aus der ersten Ausgabe. 

2 Bernard, 13. 3 Xen. Mem. iii. 8. 6, Bohn. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 159 

But Kant s strictures go much deeper. He reverts to 
his original distinction between aesthetical judgments of 
Sense and aesthetical judgments of Reflexion, or, more 
simply, the distinction between matter and form. 1 Now, 
Aesthetic can always be adequately defined as what 
deals with the form of things. But if we are to 
interpret Kant by his illustrations, he evidently does 
not mean aesthetical form which is something quite 
new, transcending the elementary opposition of matter 
and form in sense-perception, but the formal perfection 
of objects as unities in variety ; and this, of course, is 
not aesthetical but abstract perception. In a halting 
manner he does recognise that there are sensations 
whose matter may be exhausted in the form and are so 
far aesthetical, such as simple colours and tones. But 
this concession is only made on the ground that they 
are pure ; for, in themselves, the simple tone of a violin 
or the green of a grassy plot are mere sensations, and 
ought to be called pleasant. 

The point now to decide is what he means by being 
pure. In the first place, since he cannot find a dis 
tinction of matter and form in these representations, 
he all but invents one. He should like to think, if he 
could settle his doubts, that the mind actually perceives 
the rhythmical vibrations of the aether which consti 
tute sounds and colours ; then it would be easy to 
explain why simple tones and colours are thought 
beautiful, for they would be the perception of unity in 
a manifold of sensation. But failing this improbable 
expedient, he falls back on aesthetic apperception : 
" We cannot assume that the quality of sensations is 
the same in all subjects." 2 That is to say, those 

1 Bernard, 14, p. 73. 2 Bernard, 14, p. 74. 



160 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

who apperceive sensations aesthetically will distinguish 
between the variable sense-affection itself (Reiz) and the 
pure element which alone is capable of universal com 
munication. But this apperception does not constitute 
aesthetic form. As appears from his later treatment of 
the subject, his distinction between pure sensations and 
those which are mixed with the affection of the organ is 
an elementary recognition of the aesthetic senses ; and 
by the pure form which is universally communicable, he 
only understands a moral symbolism : thus the white of 
lilies suggests innocence, red suggests sublimity, and 
each of the seven colours has its appropriate moral. 1 

Kant s conception of aesthetic purity either means 
the abstract factor which is constant in perception, or 
it lapses into analogical symbolism corresponding to 
Hegel s symbolic stage in Art, where the sign is in 
contingent relation to the thing signified like the Bull 
as the symbol of Deity. This is illustrated in Kant s 
theory of the arts, fin Painting it is the drawing and 
not the colouring that is essential, in Music it is the 
rhythm and not the pitch of tones. This statement 
almost justifies the gratuitous criticism that a colourless 
painting and a toneless music are nonentities.; 

We have already said a little to indicate the spiritual 
nature of colour. In Music there is something which 
goes beyond the tones, the ineffable which Abt Vogler 
touched by accident on the keys of his organ and could 
not recover. The tones are not any kind of analogical 
symbolism, moral or intellectual, but the pure and 
direct expression of what is otherwise inarticulate. 
Kant seems to suggest this idea in his subsequent 
opinion, that musical composition is a kind of language 
1 Bernard, 42, p. 181. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 161 

which expresses the " unspeakable wealth" of aesthetical 
Ideas. 1 But a cursory inspection shows that this wealth 
in the aesthetical Ideas is not inarticulate because of its 
quality or meaning, but because there is an inexhaust 
ible quantity of possible linguistic signs in the musical 
composition ; it is a wealth of extensive, not of inten 
sive, symbolism. This interpretation is confirmed by 
the fact that he assigns the lowest place to Music 
among the arts, as being merely a beautiful play of 
sensations without contributing to the expansion and 
culture of the mind. He regards the tones as accidental 
signs, corresponding to the elements of speech, which 
indicate the affective state of a person speaking, and, by 
mechanical association, communicate the corresponding 
idea in his mind. But as Schopenhauer, in his remark 
able discussion, has shown, the true parallel is not 
between musical expression and speech but between 
musical expression and Nature. All the other arts are 
imitations, although ideal imitations, of Nature ; they 
are always particular representations of events and 
things. Painting, Sculpture and Poetry do not indeed 
represent events and things as they exist in their con 
tingency, but in their ideal forms ; and therefore what 
they copy is the Platonic Ideas. Now Music is dis 
tinguished from the other arts in this, that it does 
not resemble a representation of life and events at 
all ; there is no likeness in musical expression to 
a world of things, as there is in a painting. What 
Music copies is not the ideal forms of things but the 
Supersensible itself ; it expresses " the quintessence of 
life and its events " without resembling any of them. 
The Platonic Ideas, although they are immediate, and 

1 Bernard, p. 218. 
L 



162 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

so far complete, organisations of the Supersensible, 
are after all limitations of the Supersensible ; they are 
a plurality of expressions from different points of view. 
But Music passes over the appearance of the Super 
sensible, whether as ideal or as actual, and could be said 
to exist even if there were no phenomenal world at all. 
It does not express the Supersensible in terms of Nature, 
but is as direct and immediate a revelation of the Super 
sensible as Nature is in her totality, ideal and actual. 
Music, then, cannot be a language whose elements are 
conventional signs of the ineffable, but the peculiar 
language which makes the Supersensible articulate, co 
ordinate with the language of Creation. Schopenhauer 
confirms his theory by observing a certain parallelism 
between these two expressions of the Supersensible in 
Nature and Music : the mass of inorganic Nature cor 
responding to the bass or fundamental note, the vege 
table kingdom to the third, the animal kingdom to the 
fifth, and the kingdom of Man to the octave. 1 The 
truth is that Kant s opinion of Music was prejudiced by 
certain intrusive forms of the art with which he was 
painfully familiar. When an author descends to a 
foot-note, he generally takes the reader into his confi 
dence. In the text he has been reproaching the noble 
art with a want of urbanity, because it extends its 
charms beyond what is desirable in the neighbour 
hood; and then, in a note, he gives way to his 
grief against the ranting chorus of his neighbours 
at family prayers. Bernard recalls his letter to the 
burgomaster, in which he complains of the annoyance 
caused by the devotional exercises of the prisoners in 

1 The World as Will and Idea : HalcUne and Kemp, vol. i. bk. iii. 
52 ; vol. iii. chap. 39. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 163 

the adjoining jail, and suggests the propriety of closing 
the windows. 1 

This false conception of aesthetic purity as the 
abstract schema in perception, is simply a misconcep 
tion of what a priori means. As was remarked above, 
it is not aesthetic form but mathematical. His exclu 
sion of Charm proceeds on the supposition that the 
a priori is inconsistent with empirical mixture. So, 
while Aesthetic ought to be regarded as a representa 
tion which is a priori, he identifies it with the constant 
factor in an a priori representation. If we were 
to speak of the Beautiful as a fruit, we should say 
that Kant has given us a dry preserve. But this 
is not what a priori means in the Critique of Pure 
Reason. Knowledge is surely never identified with 
its abstract conditions. And in another work, Kant 
was forced to admit that the a priori does not 
exclude what is empirical. He was criticised in the 
Leipsic Zeitung for having made contradictory state 
ments in the Critique. He had said that there is no 
empirical mixture in pure knowledge a priori ; then, 
two pages forward, he used the same example to illus 
trate pure a priori knowledge as he had just used to 
illustrate a mixed proposition, namely, every change 
has a cause. To this Kant replied, that by a pure a 
priori he meant what is not dependent on empirical ele 
ments (die von nichts Empirischem abhdngig ist), and not 
what is absolutely free from empirical mixture. 2 This 
is an important admission which ought to be printed on 
the fly-leaf in every edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. 

1 Bernard, p. 220. 

2 Vber den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophic : Hart, 
iv. pp. 495-6. 



1 64 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Apart, however, from his mistaken conception of 
a priori and his consequent theory of aesthetic purity, 
the principle which underlies Kant s restriction is 
sound. If, as Lessing said, Charm is Beauty in 
motion, 1 those arts which are representations in time, 
namely, Poetry and Music, can have no expression 
at all without charm. But otherwise, charm is not 
essential, and, like the belt of Venus, sits loose to 
, _.; the person of the Beautiful. Schiller took up this 
idea from the Greek myth, and worked it out 
in his essay on Grace and Dignity. It is the least 
satisfactory of his philosophical works, and it is 
almost impossible to gather its contents under a 
single, systematic conception. That it was not success 
ful, is sufficiently evident from the fact that it pleased 
neither Kant nor Goethe. Having studied Kant s 
aesthetic theory before he wrote this essay, which first 
appeared in 1793, his main purpose was naturally to 
correct the prevailing subjectivity in Kant s view by an 
adaptation of Shaftesbury, and as a consequence to prove 
also against Kant, that in the beautiful character inclina 
tion and duty are reconciled. He observes that without 
her belt, which gave charms even to the ugly, Venus is 
still the beautiful Venus, while her beauty she can only 
give away with her person. Those on whom this favour 
is conferred, retain it as something external to them 
selves, and so far the charm of their beauty would seem 
to be subjective. But the marvel in the myth is, that 
while they have the belt in their possession, it consti 
tutes an objective characteristic of their person and is 
not a mere appearance for the spectator. {Sie . . . kommt 
dem Gegendstande selbst zu, nicht bloss der Art^ wie wir 

1 Lao&oon, xxi. " Reiz ist Schonheit in Bewegung." 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 165 

ihn aufnehmen.} 1 Now motion is the only change which 
a subject can suffer without losing his identity, and 
thus Charm or Grace can be an inherent attribute of 
the subject without being a constant, objective quality. 2 
Schiller advances to his conclusion in what is a chapter 
of contradictions, which we must pass over. He would 
emphasise that the motion must be voluntary, and in 
other places he insists that it must be involuntary. He 
does not mean to say that Grace is involuntary in the 
sense of reflex action, but that it is the involuntary 
element in the actions of a moral disposition ; it is what 
is characteristic in emotional expression, or just that 
form of expression which follows immediately on a state 
of feeling before it has passed away. 3 But Schiller has 
thus restricted characteristic expression to the beauty 
of character, and we can now understand why Goethe 
did not like his paper. It marks the middle period in 
Schiller s aesthetical development, where he tries to 
co-ordinate aestheticism and moralism. Evidently he 
has taken the Greek conception for all it is worth ; but, 
instead of applying it to inorganic Nature as Goethe 
did, he confined it to the Individual of the Aufklarung, 
to whom he looked back with fond regret. 

His conclusion is practically the same as Kant s 
denial of an Ideal to what has not a moral nature. He 
thinks that the waving hair of a beautiful head has 
no more grace than waving corn. 4 This statement 
is one in principle with Kant s criticism of Myron s 
Cow, that it is merely correct because it has not got 

1 ijber Anmuth und IVtirde. Sammtliche Werke, xi. p. 386. 
*lbid. p. 385. 

3 Ibid. pp. 407-13. See especially pp. 408 and 413. 

4 Ibid. pp. 386-7. 



i66 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

a moral expression. But Schiller has advanced on 
Kant in bringing out the significance of his principle 
when it is properly applied. He has shown how charm 
can be objective as entering into characteristic ex 
pression, although it is not essential to Beauty. To 
put it epigrammatically, there can be Beauty without 
charm, but charm must be the expression of a beauti 
ful nature. This somewhat ambiguous place assigned 
to charm may be clearly understood by a simple illus 
tration. We have seen the features of an ugly musician 
transformed under the influence of the music he is 
playing. While he is girdled with the belt of Venus, 
the expression on his face is a real part of himself. 
But when the music ceases, this expression dies away 
and the features resume their forbidding appearance. 
In one of his stories, Tolstoi tells of a musican who 
found his way to a ball in a most filthy condition. He 
volunteered to play, and "at each note that he played, 
Albert grew taller and taller. At a little distance, he 
had no appearance of being either crippled or peculiar. 
. . . His face shone with complete, enthusiastic delight ; 
his eyes gleamed with a radiant, steely light ; his nostrils 
quivered, his red lips were parted in rapture." But 
now the time is approaching when he must give up the 
belt to|the Goddess : " at the end of the next variation, 
Albert s face grew serene, his eyes flushed, great clear 
drops of sweat poured down his cheeks. The veins 
swelled on his forehead ; his whole body swayed more 
and more ; his pale lips were parted, and his whole 
figure expressed an enthusiastic craving for enjoyment. 
Despairingly swaying with his whole body, and throw 
ing back his hair, he laid down his violin, and with a 
smile of proud satisfaction and happiness gazed at the 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 167 

bystanders. Then his back assumed its ordinary curve, 
his head sank, his lips grew set, his eyes lost their fire ; 
and as though he were ashamed of himself, timidly 
glancing round, and stumbling, he went into the next 
room." 1 

Now Kant himself recognises, when he comes to 
treat of the Sublime, that charm is compatible with 
Beauty because the aesthetic state is a feeling of the 
furtherance of life, an interplay of the powers in which 
they promote one another to increased activity. 2 This 
clearly indicates that he conceived of Aesthetic as an 
objective, concrete state ; it is the significant play of 
our mental powers as fulfilling an end of our being. 
But while he makes this concession to Charm, he will 
not admit of Emotion (Ruhrung) ; for this is the feeling 
of Sublimity, and is not play but earnest activity. 
Emotion he defines as " a sensation in which pleasant 
ness is produced by means of a momentary checking 
and a consequent more powerful outflow of the vital 
force." 3 It is not intellective but volitional, and there 
fore not aesthetical but a modification of our moral 
disposition. But with this final limitation we shall 
have passed the lower limit of polemical criticism and 
entered on Kant s constructive phase. 

This moral emotion, in its most general form, is 
simply the feeling for Nature which Kant had through 
out presupposed in the background of his theory. The 
insipid simper of Free Beauty, which he thought already 
sufficiently charming, is only a caricature of the softened 
splendour in Celestial Being. Referring to the section 
in the Critique of Judgment where this sentiment is 

1 A Russian Proprietor and other stories Albert. 

2 Bernard, p. 102. 3 Ibid. 14, p. 76. 



1 68 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

expressly introduced, Schiller speaks of Kant in the 
highest terms as the first to reflect on the love of 
Nature for her own sake, as she stands opposed to 
Art and puts it to shame : " whoever has learnt to 
admire the author only as a great thinker, will rejoice 
to find here a trace of his heart." 1 

Schiller gives some examples. What is it, he asks, 
that pleases us in a homely flower, a spring of water, 
a mossy stone, the chirping of birds, the humming of 
bees ? He answers, it is an idea presented through 
them that we love : the still, creative life, the quiet, 
self-produced effects, the self-determined existence, the 
inner necessity, the eternal unity with self. They are 
what we were, they are what we ought again to be ; hence 
they transport us into a state of sublime emotion. 2 Kant 
calls this emotion by the strange name of an intellectual 
interest in Beauty, ostensibly because it implies some 
concept of Nature. Schiller more candidly regards it 
as moral sentiment. Neither of them considers it 
aesthetical. But Kant did not see that the admission 
of this feeling for Nature alters his whole conception 
of abstract Beauty. If we discover that the object 
of our admiration is an artificial flower, we lose our 
interest. It is the thought " that Nature has produced 
it" that creates the immediate interest in our aesthetic 
reflexion. 3 A mischievous boy can make a perfect 
imitation of the nightingale, and while the delusion 
lasts we are charmed ; but as soon as the deception is 
discovered, the charm is gone : " it must be Nature or 
be regarded as Nature, if we are to take an immediate 

1 Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Sammtlicke Werke, xii. 
p. 198. 

2 Ibid. pp. 198-9. 3 Bernard, 42, p. 178. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 169 

interest in the Beautiful as such." l Notice the deliberate 
use of the term immediate, and then consider that this 
section is entitled, Of the intellectual interest in the 
Beautiful. Both Kant and Schiller are thinking ot 
the same thing and both are wrong. Schiller s argu 
ment is that the feeling is mediated through an 
idea, and that it could only be aesthetical if it were 
the impression received in immediate observation of 
the form; 2 or as Kant would say, it must be blosse 
Eetrachtung. 

Here we see Schiller s limitation. Although he de 
veloped the conception of Form to great advantage, 
as aesthetic semblance, he never got away completely 
from Kant s mechanical distinction of matter and form ; 
and when he comes across psychic phenomena which 
have a deeper significance than the play of free appear 
ance, he can find no place for them except as affections 
of our moral disposition. Kant would defend himself 
by pointing out that we must not confuse this emotional 
interest with a pure aesthetic judgment, for in the con 
templation of a flower as a free beauty, we abstract 
altogether from the thought that Nature has produced 
it. But to this we reply that such a flower is as unreal 
as an artificial flower, and Kant has practically admitted 
that it is impossible to think away the thought of its 
connection with Nature; in the case of a counterfeit, 
our whole interest is based on the supposition that it is 
natural. Schiller could go a step further. He would 
admit that the form is deceptive, but it is an honest 
deception ; as the refutation of existence in its naturality, 
the tisthetischer Schein is frankly appearance and is a base 

1 Bernard, p. 182. 

2 \Jber naive und sentimentalische Dlchtung. Werke, xii. p. 198. 



1 70 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

falsehood when it claims to be actual. 1 But this is not 
an abstract appearance a new heaven ; it is a new 
heaven and a new earth. It is not an image given 
off from Nature like the etSwXa of Democritus, but 
Nature herself as appearance in her body and spirit. 
It is the false appearance that is opposed as form 
to matter, while the honest appearance transcends and 
includes this original opposition. This, as will be 
readily recognised, is practically refuting Schiller by his 
own words. But owing to his moralistic tendency, he 
did not see that the naive feeling for Nature is nothing 
else than the aesthetic consciousness of Nature s Spirit, 
which breathes through the poetry of Wordsworth : 

u To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," 

is a purely aesthetic emotion of the sublime order. But 
neither Schiller nor Kant was able to assimilate the 
Sublime to Aesthetic. 

Let me give one more illustration from Schiller. In 
a very fine passage he shows, with special reference 
to children, how the unsightly, the inconsiderable and 
in itself despicable has a soul of Beauty which does 
not lie in its form but shines through its formless 
ness. It is a good instance of the Sublime, which 
includes the infinitely small as well as the infinitely 
great. He says it is a mistake to think that the 
feeling we entertain towards children is due to their 
appearance of helplessness. This may indeed be the 
emotion in those who are used to feel towards the 
weak nothing but a sense of their own superiority. 
But the feeling for Nature for her own sake is 

1 The Aesthetlcal Education of Man : Weiss, p. 158. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 171 

" humbling rather than agreeable to self-love ; and if 
there be an advantage on either side, it is not at 
least on ours. The emotion does not arise within 
us because we look down upon the child from the 
height of our power and perfection, but because we, 
out of the limits of our condition, . . . look up to the 
limitless destination in the child and to its pure inno 
cence." l What is this but the sympathetic symbolism 
of aesthetic intuition, which gives wings to the wind, 
eyes to the stars, and invests inanimate Nature with the 
passions of men ? Because the child touches the Ideal 
of our perfection in a single point, we make it imper 
sonate the complete destination of our humanity. In 
a similar way, the homely flower and mossy stone 
have what is wanting in our character to make it com 
plete. And although they do not enjoy our divine 
freedom to change our condition, they suggest the 
Ideal of our humanity in the simple appearance of 
self-contained existence ; they have necessity, the in 
difference to change, which we have not, the eternal 
age of unremembered years is writ upon them. But 
if both are combined in what can only be an aesthetic 
intuition, if our uncertain, fitful changes are controlled 
by and educated into their serene indifference to Time s 
destroying passage, " there goes the Divine or Ideal." 2 
The whole root of the error of both Kant and 
Schiller is a false conception of immediacy. The 
feeling for Nature is the consciousness of depth in 
aesthetic content. Is our experience less aesthetical 
because it must sustain an effort of reflexion, is our 
intuition less serene and contemplative because it 

1 liber naive und sentimentaliichc Dlchtung. Werke, xii. p. 200. 
2 Ibid. p. 199. 



i;2 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

is the penetrating insight of sympathetic feeling ? Is 
not aesthetic emotion the greatest amount of excita 
tion with the least expenditure of energy, and will 
it not therefore maintain its calm in the consciousness 
of spontaneous effort ? Is our feeling less aesthetical 
because the soul of Beauty in a thing does not lie 
in the mere observation of its form, but exists in 
our sublimity, and must be fetched from the deep 
by sympathetic symbolism ? Kant himself has been 
telling us that there is a kind of causality in Aesthetic, 
by which the Powers maintain themselves and promote 
each other to increased activity. So the question arises 
whether unqualified immediacy is an adequate description 
of what is distinctive in Aesthetic. Setting aside for the 
moment the specific type of emotion which Kant has 
defined as a violent inhibition of the nerve-centres, 
we have only to recognise that emotion need not be 
exclusively volitional. The check may be and is 
normally ideational, and this is not a rude revulsion 
of moral feeling but the gentle displacement of one 
idea or image by another ; it is what happens in the 
almost imperceptible shock of surprise with which we 
greet recognisable features in a view or work of Art. 

Now it will be remembered that Kant stakes every 
thing on this question, and insists that the moment 
immediacy is surrendered, Aesthetic disappears. But 
the truth regarding immediacy is the same as we found 
in the claim to disinterestedness ; the two terms are 
the sides of the same shield. In contrast with Cogni 
tion Aesthetic is undoubtedly immediate, for it does 
not think the object discursively but views it as a 
whole whose parts are transparent. This perception, 
however, may be full or empty, deep or shallow, 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 173 

according to the power of aesthetic vision. He may 
not gain the Beautiful who only glances at her form 
and is satisfied in " the mere act of judging," he may 
have to linger long and suffer the displacement of 
many ideas. And still this mediating process is not 
the intervention of a concept or a moral reaction ; it 
is neither an intellectual nor a moral interest but the 
mediation peculiar to Aesthetic itself. This is what 
both Kant and Schiller have not recognised. It is 
not a going beyond the appearance into something 
beneath or above, which would be intellective, it is a 
modification within the appearance. There are degrees 
in aesthetic appearance, there are degrees in Subjec 
tivity. When we recognise the qualified sense in which 
Aesthetic is immediate, we shall not speak of a sympa 
thetic insight into Nature as an intellectual interest 
or as moral sentiment, we shall call it rather the content 
in aesthetic judgment. 

This completes Kant s critical theory. It was a 
threefold criticism, directed against the intellectualism 
of Leibniz, the aesthetico-ethical fusion of Shaftesbury 
and the sensationalism of Burke. But we have been 
continually aware that his theory suffers in its several 
applications. This is partly due to Kant s ignorance of 
Fine Art, but more I think to the incoherent doctrine 
of Freedom which he adopted from the Aufklarung. 
The fact is, he had a most profound insight into the 
original conditions of aesthetic Feeling, such as none 
of his predecessors had acquired, and the general prin 
ciples of his theory will never be superseded. As was 
hinted in an earlier part of this chapter, his limitation 
chiefly consisted in not being able to develop his own 
principles. His path was blocked by three obstructions 



174 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

which are all hewn out of the same rock, a negative 
conception of Freedom, an unregenerate Sensibility and 
a consequent want of schemata in aesthetic Imagination. 
I now wish to indicate, in conclusion, the positive 
and constructive phase of Kant s theory. But before 
doing so, we ought to notice an apparently unique 
passage in which he demolishes, at a single stroke, 
the whole edifice of abstract Beauty. He announced 
quite early in his analysis, that the key to the 
criticism of Taste is to be found in the principle that 
the judgment must precede the pleasure. To an 
appreciative reader this statement will occasion some 
surprise. As M. Basch says, a state of feeling is 
changed into a state of knowledge sans crier gare. 1 
Although it appears as early as the ninth section I have 
purposely reserved it until now, because it seemed quite 
inconsistent with the theory which Kant has developed. 
We have understood as a cardinal maxim that Aesthetic 
must not be assimilated to intellectual activity, but 
explained as being due to an original and indepen 
dent faculty. Now, however, we are told that we must 
make up our minds in advance before the feeling of 
pleasure arises, and this can only be understood as a 
prior intellectual act. What is more, this principle 
removes a most important landmark by which Aesthetic 
is distinguished from other types of mental activity ; 
for it is equally true of a teleological judgment that the 
recognition of an end precedes the pleasure, and also in 
the moral judgment the pleasure must decidedly follow 
the maxim of Practical Reason. Moreover, the state 
ment is not without support. In the original Introduc 
tion the same principle is expressed with a more glaring 
1 L Esthetique de Kant, p. 178. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 175 

emphasis ; it is said that " the subjective teleology is 
thought before it is felt." l 

It might be explained, in the first place, that Kant_ is 
here confusing logical with temporal priority. Un 
doubtedly the conditions which make the pleasure 
possible as a felt harmony in the mental states must be 
supposed to exist prior to the pleasure itself, but not for 
our consciousness. And, in his other statements, Kant 
makes it quite clear that the pleasure does not follow 
but accompanies the judgment ; it must be " bound up 
with the mere act of judging." ; But this criticism is so - 
obvious that, if it had been proposed to Kant, he would 
have laughed in scorn. Why then did he say that the 
pleasure must follow ? Because he wished to indicate 
that there is such a thing as aesthetical Reflexion, quite 
distinct from the intellectual process, and that if the 
pleasure is to be aesthetical and not the consequence of 
sensation, it must first be mediated through this 
reflexion. And although his language would lead us 
to believe that he is reducing the aesthetic state to an 
intellectual process, nothing is further from his mind. 
Even in the passage quoted from the original Introduc 
tion, where the harmony of the faculties is said to be 
thought before it is felt, he is careful to point out in the 
next sentence that the ground of this harmony cannot 
be brought under a determinate concept and can only 
be apprehended in feeling ; that is to say, it is not 
thought at all. Evidently Kant is struggling to 
express ideas which were in advance of his philoso 
phical vocabulary. He has to use the word thought 

1 fiber Philosophic tiberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 599 ; Hart, vi. 
p. 389. 

2 Bernard, p. 164. 



1 76 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

when he should have said c felt ; and he does so 
because it is not a mere feeling of pleasure that 
is in question but indeterminate content, and for 
Kant significant content was the object of explicit 
thinking. The unsuspecting candour and the absence 
of all sense of contradiction with which he introduces 
this principle in the ninth section, are themselves a clear 
indication that he had made a discovery of which the 
mechanical appliances of his age were not able to 
provide a working model. As to whether he meant an 
intellectual act when he placed the judgment before the 
pleasure, this is settled at once by his express use of 
the term Beurtheilung, which does not denote a logical 
judgment but a psychological process ; notice how it is 
stated : ob im Geschmacksurtheile das Gefuhl der Lust 
vor der Eeurtheilung des Gegenstandes, oder diese vor 
jener vorhergehe the specific judgment of the object, 
which is said to precede the pleasure, is distinguished 
from the judgment of Taste itself as falling within it. 1 
He does not say that the pleasure follows an intel 
lectual act, but that it must be bound up with and be 
dependent upon the condition of all intellectual acts 
and principles, the Power of Judgment in general. 

This principle, then, which at first appears so dis 
ingenuous, is simply the denial of unqualified im 
mediacy. What must be fundamental, he says, as the 
basis of the pleasure, is " the universal capability of 
communication" 2 in the mental state; and this is just 
another expression for a significant content, a state of 
feeling that is worth communicating and therefore 
capable of being understood. The whole point is that 
the aesthetic powers have it in their own hands, and do 

1 Hartenstein, v. p. 221. 2 Bernard, 9, p. 63. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 177 

not move at the bidding of Sense without or Reason 
within. The aesthetic act may be immediate ; but this 
does not mean that we must be precipitated on to the 
presentation and be glued to it in a blind panic, and 
that if it does not happen instantaneously there is a 
miscarriage. Like FalstafF the Powers refuse to enter 
tain upon compulsion, and whether we shall have any 
pleasure in the Beautiful is for them to consider. They 
have instructed the Pleasure not to be tickled by sensa 
tion, nor to be cajoled by any intellectual interest or 
moral sentiment, but to take its cue immediately from 
them ; when they move, it goes with them, when they 
begin to play, it announces the fact in cheers. But 
the Powers may refuse to budge, their motion may 
be fast or slow, light or heavy, and may vary in 
intensity. There is therefore such a thing as aesthetical 
Reflexion, quite peculiar and distinct from thought. 
There are degrees in immediacy, and each of them as 
it imperceptibly glides into another is an immediate 
moment, the Augenblick der Ewigkeit. Now when this 
reflective modification is observed from the outside, it 
looks like a mediated process; and it is this false 
external view that led both Kant and Schiller to think 
that naive interest in Nature, because it is not im 
mediately connected with the form of presentation, 
must be an intervention, intellectual, moral or both. It 
is not an intervention ; it is the mediation peculiar to 
Aesthetic itself. 

Thus Nature as the object, not indeed of Under 
standing but of Reflexion, is the content in Aesthetic. 
This poetic idea of Nature, as containing the raw 
substance to which Aesthetic gives form, is composed 
of two abstract elements, the systematic knowledge 



i;3 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

of sense-perception and moral Reason, or Nature as 
she is interpreted by mind and will. These elements 
do not enter into Aesthetic by mechanical subsump- 
tion as a material which is contingent to and unaffected 
by the form, and here at least Kant is above criticism. 
For although this mechanical metaphor is cognate to 
his mode of thought, he is very careful to insist that 
it is not concrete representations that are brought into 
the free relation which constitutes aesthetic form, but 
the faculties themselves. And this can only mean that, 
as indeterminate potencies, Knowledge and Morality 
enter into Aesthetic by inner transformation : fore 
going their specific form and subsiding into characterless 
substance, they are " changed into the same image." 
Kant unfortunately restricts the faculties to Imagination, 
or the highest faculty of Sense and Understanding, or 
the faculty of systematic Thought, and these are only 
specifications of one direction of mind, the intellective ; 
but, as will immediately appear, he merits a higher 
interpretation. He is deserving of all praise for the 
dogged persistence with which he excludes Knowledge 
and Morality, as such, from Aesthetic, and his mistaken 
theory of purity is in great part due to this motive. 
The artist is capable of perceiving Truth, but he does 
not think it discursively, and he has also a moral 
disposition, but its promptings are not commands to 
be obeyed. Therefore he need not blush to acknow 
ledge the sensuous form nor fear to own its authority, 
for it is instinct with intelligence, theoretical and 
practical. 

Now the original problem of the Critique of Judgment, 
as it is generally received, was the union of these two 
elements which are the abstract factors in the poetic idea 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 179 

of Nature ; it is the union of Sense and Reason, or of 
Nature as Mechanism and Nature as Freedom. But it 
is evident that this union can never be consummated in 
the artificial type of Beauty which Kant has developed ; 
for, as the very abstraction of Nature and the negation 
of true Freedom, it is incapable of containing either. 
Kant is well aware of this and turns to the Ideal, which 
is not aesthetical but moral, not the Ideal of Beauty but 
the Ideal of Character. But again this is not the solu 
tion of which we are in search. This moral Ideal is the 
ethical noumenon, the abstract Man of Freedom, which, 
as Cohen says, separates Nature and the ethical Person 
ality (Sittlichkeif) ; J it is an Ideal which is never com 
pletely realised and can only be maintained by ceaseless 
strife. It is therefore not properly the Ideal but the 
Idea of Humanity. It is in Aesthetic alone that the 
Ideal can be presented as the complete realisation of 
the Idea in individual form. There is only one way in 
which man could contain his own Ideal, and that is by 
being himself perfectly good. 

Kant, however, seems to have found his solution in 
another and somewhat accidental way, I mean his theory 
of Genius. It has the appearance of a foreign element 
which has no systematic connection with the rest of his 
work. But this is not a true impression. On the con 
trary, it may be urged with some degree of confidence 
that it is the primary and original factor in his Aesthetic. 
For over thirty years he had discussed the nature of 
Genius in his lectures on Logic and Anthropology, 
chiefly under the influence of Baumgarten and Gerard. 
The Essay on Genius by Gerard, a professor at 
Aberdeen, was known to him as early as the sixties, 
1 Kant s Begriindung der Aesthet\k y p. 216. 



i8o THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

and he mentions the work as the best of its kind. 1 
Meanwhile, in his comparison between Logic and 
Aesthetic, he was effecting a rapprochement between 
feeling and logical form, which later emerged in the 
conception of subjective teleology or Play (Spiel der 
Krafte). But it is not likely that he arrived at this con 
ception apart from the theory of Genius. We must 
remember that subjective teleology as aesthetic play 
does not come into vogue in Kant s writings until so 
late as 1787. In that year he intimated to Reinhold 
that Teleology would be the title of his work on Taste. 
It is surely, then, a correct inference that the conception 
of Play arises out of the theory of Genius and not the 
latter from the former, as Anna Tumarkin supposes. 2 
But Kant did not seem to be aware of any connection 
between them, and developed an independent theory of 
Aesthetic which has nothing in common with the nature 
of Genius. He did not see that in Genius the distinc 
tion between the formal Beauty of Nature and the 
characteristic Beauty of Art is completely swept away. 
For the work of Genius is at once Nature and Art ; the 
rule by which he is guided is not consciously applied, 
it is Nature that gives the rule to Art through him : 
" it can only be that in the subject which is Nature and 
cannot be brought under rules or concepts, i.e. the 
supersensible substrate of all his faculties." 
" Nature is made better by no mean, 
But Nature makes that mean ; so o er the Art, 
Which you say adds to Nature, is an Art 
That Nature makes." 

1 Schlapp, Kants Lehre vom Genie, u.s.w. p. 244. 

2 Kantitudten, Bd. xi. 7.ur transcendentalen Methode der Kantischen 
Asthetlk. 

3 Bernard, p. 238. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 181 

It is in this artistic consciousness that we shall find the 
reconciliation of Nature and Freedom. For the super 
sensible substrate that utters itself in Genius is not the 
ethical noumenon but the catholic nature of the indi 
vidual, not the ethical but the human Personality, not 
the Man of Freedom but the Man of Humanity. It is 
therefore the harmony of all the mental powers, and 
not simply those which are intellectual, Imagination 
and Understanding : it is the unison in their original 
simplicity of Intellection, Emotion and Conation ; it is 
the Gemilthskrdfte rather than the Erkenntnismermogcn. 

Kant denotes the consciousness of this state by the 
feeling of pleasure and pain. Perhaps there is an advan 
tage after all in this nomenclature. In the original 
Introduction he defined the feeling of pleasure and 
pain as the only form of sensation which can never 
indicate a quality in objects. 1 In another passage he 
goes further and says that it contributes nothing even 
to a knowledge of our subjective state. 2 Pleasure-pain 
is not a psychosis but the resonance of a psychosis ; 
it does not illumine explicit elements in consciousness, 
it only indicates the practical attitude of conscious 
ness to presentations. And, as the barest form of 
awareness, it has a close resemblance to that elemental 
state whose content is indeterminate. But there is a 
great difference between them. Pleasure-pain is only the 
qualitative index of consciousness as a succession, while 
the other feeling-state is the vague sense of duration 
and only means that we have consciousness. It has a 
nearer affinity, therefore, with sensation than with that 
form of sensation whose significance is exhausted in the 

1 IJber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 598. 

2 Rechtskhre : Hart, vii. pp. 8-9. 



182 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

bare feeling of pleasure or pain. But it is not sensation. 
It is the state which exists before the distinction has 
emerged between consciousness as affective and as affect 
ing. Fichte held a feast on the day his child first said 
c I, because it was the birth of self-consciousness. The 
child-life is prevailingly objective and impersonal, and 
even when the first personal pronoun is used, it is more 
in imitation of the linguistic expression than with a 
definite sense of the distinction between pure and 
empirical consciousness. The ego is vaguely identified 
with the whole mass of sensation, as may be seen from 
the use of the simple exclamation Hungry! instead of 
the more subjective expression, I am hungry. Unfor 
tunately, we have no word to express this primordial 
state of consciousness except the common term Feeling, 
which is already used to denote pleasure-pain. Perhaps 
we might use the word empathy, which Dr. Ward has 
coined to cover Einfuhlung in its widest sense. It is 
not a feeling of, but a feeling in y an empathy ; it is the 
limit at which consciousness is still possible without a 
determinate object, the thin, taut rope on which con 
sciousness balances itself without support and looks 
down into the awful abyss of the thoughts. 

This elemental feeling of our identity, in the quiet of 
our spirit, is a fleeting revelation of a past estate, and is 
deep enough to justify the thought of pre-existence. In 
the earliest dawn of human life, mind existed in its 
original simplicity without specific directions of activity : 
if there was apprehension it was not intellectual but 
pragmatical, for it was subservient to Will ; if there was 
Will it was not ethical but instinctive, for it was sub 
servient to the feeling of well-being as it is promoted or 
hindered ; if there was Emotion it was not ideational, 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 183 

for it was inseparable from its physical expression. This 
:s not an estate we should wish to recover, and if we speak 
of a return to Nature, we mean an ideal regress which is 
really a progress. But it was a harmony of mental life 
which we must regain if Nature and Freedom are to be 
reconciled. Meanwhile we cultivate the tendencies of 
consciousness in isolation, in order that the original 
unity may be enlarged and enriched ; but we are to 
corne back again. As the human foetus has evolved 
through the several stages of the animal world, the 
elemental harmony of human life has broken up into 
co-ordinate directions of activity and waits in hope of 
its redemption, when that which is in part shall be done 
away. Our Intellect is cultivated to excess, and as it 
becomes more and more conceptual, it loses the intuitive 
power to realise its ideas in practice : 

" Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor." 

There is the correlative defect in our culture that our 
Will is not intellectual ; it is exercised apart in enforced 
obedience to a Law which our mind cannot approve, a 
helpless monitor which bids us act or refrain from acting 
but does not inspire us to obey. Pragmatism is telling 
us that this is an antiquated theory, and that we must 
mince the absolute Rule into interesting morsels. But 
Pragmatism cannot change human nature. Humanism 
is periodic in the race, but the permanent features of 
human nature remain unchanged. The youthful exu 
berance and healthy-minded vigour of the present 
generation is closely akin to the effete and dangerous 
Schwiirmerei of the eighteenth century, and is the pass 
ing of the human spirit through a destructive moment. 
Mankind will ever seek to strive with the Highest and 



1 84 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

will not tolerate the squandering of its behests in the 
suffrages of human passion ; it will rather battle with 
uncompromising Righteousness, a hateful Law which 
intimidates by coercion, than see its mandates weakened. 
But therein it is not blest. Its morality is warped, a 
gasping Freedom reft from dishonoured Nature at 
whose dear price it wins a doubtful victory. To be an 
offering worthy of God and man, morality must pass 
through Nature, forgo its rigid form and sink to 
plastic substance, thence to emerge, empowered by 
Nature s ministries of love and noble feeling, to serve 
the Highest. It is not by Law but by "the faith 
which passes into action through love " that man is 
made righteous. 

Pending this regeneration of the Race, Aesthetic is 
the " symbol of Morality." The phrase is Kant s and 
thus we take it in its highest meaning. The moral 
Ideal was for him nothing less than the consummation 
of History. Now, the elemental harmony in man, 
which we may suppose to have preceded the develop 
ment of distinctive tendencies in consciousness, is 
already preserved in the aesthetic state as a higher 
immediacy. But Aesthetic is not Life. As the delibe 
rate refutation of the actual, it is only an incident in 
Life. Life, on the other hand, is a process of realisation 
which is never complete. But if man, in the fulfilment 
of his destiny, attains to perfect goodness, he will then 
become the Ideal of his humanity which Aesthetic now 
contains as symbol. His nature will be aesthetical, 
not in despite of the actual but for its sake. He will 
carry the ideal world into the actual, instead of subli 
mating it into an ideal world which ignores its existence. 
He will not be able to take pleasure in a work of Art 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 185 

which ignores or conflicts with moral instinct, as the 
artistic consciousness can do and is justified in doing. 
I do not wish to raise the controversy here whether 
there ever did exist a sinless man. But, to illustrate 
what has been said, we may at least observe that the 
nature of Jesus was an aesthetical harmony just because 
it was perfectly good. It would be a poor description 
of the life in God, as he conceived it, to say that it was 
moral, and in fact that is not the way in which he pre 
sented the Ideal of Character. It was as the life without 
a motive that he commended it, the life of the lily, the 
end of whose existence is completely immanent in itself. 
He did not tell men to be perfect because their Father 
in Heaven is perfect, but even as He is perfect, or as 
children say, just because. Morality in itself is not 
spontaneous but artificial, calculating, careful of its 
reputation ; it is occupied with many little things 
instead of the one thing needful ; it is the restless 
effort to acquire depth of character through breadth of 
enterprise, to gain intensity of feeling through extensive 
activity. Jesus told these weary souls to cease from 
their labour and enter into rest, the Peace of Genius. 
He showed them that the present moment is rich 
enough to make a perfect life if it is lived well, and 
that they need take no thought for the morrow. If 
we have the strength and the patience of mind to dwell 
in the actual until it is shorn of its contingency, it will 
be found to harbour the unlimited content which our 
minds are informed to receive, and we shall possess 
that intensive insight at home which the moral con 
sciousness, in its impatient prodigality of effort, seeks 
to find in a far country. The perfectly good is an 
aesthetical harmony. 



1 86 THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

But Kant was never able to carry out the consequences 
of his theory of Genius. For him Genius is more of an 
intellectual harmony than a harmony of all the mental 
powers. Even Cohen, the most liberal and sympathetic 
of Kant s expositors to-day, does not think that the 
moral consciousness is assimilated to the aesthetic in 
Kant s theory. 1 Although it is the supersensible sub 
strate that speaks through Genius, the faculties of 
Genius are the Imagination and Understanding ; they 
do not include the Will. Kant was afraid of the 
mental chemistry which could transform the moral 
consciousness by making it pass through Nature, and 
this appears in large letters in his doctrine of the 
Sublime. 

1 " Die Aufhebung des sittlichen Inhalts in die Form des Gefiihls 
der Anlage des Problems nach zwar vorgesehen, aber den Ausfuhrun- 
gen nicht als Disposition zu Grunde gelegt worden ist." Kanfs Begriin- 
dung der Aesthetik, pp. 232-3. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE SUBLIME. 

IF Kant had been asked to distinguish the Sublime in a 
single word, he would have said that while the Beautiful 
is pleasurable Feeling (Gefuhl), the Sublime is a moral 
Emotion (Ruhrung] ; the one is the consciousness of 
mere observation, the other is the consciousness which 
follows innervation, the reaction of our will to the 
challenge of Nature. The Sublime " brings with it 
as its characteristic feature a movement of the mind," 
while the Beautiful " maintains the mind in restful 
contemplation." l Both are forms of mental move 
ment, but in the Beautiful it is ideational, the play of 
representations. The Sublime is altogether earnest, 
and it is not Imagination and Understanding that are 
in play but Imagination and Moral Reason. 

It follows that the satisfaction in the Beautiful is 
immediate and positive, but indirect in the Sublime, 
being mediated through the reaction of our will. 2 
The very conception of Experience implies the adapta 
tion of Nature to our minds, and the most elementary 
relation of subject to object is a harmony of our cogni 
tive powers. This is not a state of positive pleasure, 
it is only absence of pain. The Feeling of the Beautiful 
is an intensive adjustment of this mental relation. 
1 Bernard, 24. ^ Ibid. p. 136. 



i88 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

We have positive pleasure in a further adaptation of 
Nature to our minds, for we perceive objects, not only 
as we ought to perceive them, but as we should like to 
perceive them. The Feeling of the Sublime is different. 
Unlike the Beautiful, which excites the Imagination and 
Understanding in harmonious activity to a positive 
degree of pleasure, it rudely destroys the existing har 
mony. Terrible Nature menaces and thwarts the 
habitual course of our ideas, and creates a feeling of 
disquieting fear. In the presence of mountain masses 
piled in arrogant confusion, forbidding crags with 
jagged edges impending our path : before the fury of 
the tempest and the raging of the swollen sea : beneath 
reverberating thunder-clouds emitting bolts of destruc 
tion, we suffer a sense a shock ; the even tenor of our 
life is arrested by invading force. But if our emotion 
will be sublime, we must win past this first moment of 
surprise and regain our calm, we must rise above the 
threatening presentation and our feeling of dismay. It 
is the difference between sublimity and superstition, 
and Kant has been careful to remark this distinction : 
" he who fears can form no judgment about the Sublime 
in nature ; just as he who is seduced by inclination and 
appetite can form no judgment about the Beautiful." l 

The satisfaction in the Sublime may therefore be 
called negative ; it is the peculiar pleasure which arises 
from pain and fear. Kant calls it admiration or respect, 
Burke calls it delight. The initial shock is followed by 
an overflow of vital force, the tension of inhibition 
relaxes in a feeling of expansion, and we are caught 
up beyond the present danger to an elevation from 
which we can look down in serene security. The 
1 Bernard, p. 1 24. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 189 

explanation of this change in us is that the greatness 
and vastness of Nature, baffling the effort of Imagina 
tion to grasp it, challenges our Reason, the divine 
power of our mind, to think of something greater 
still, the infinite power and majesty of God. The 
greatness of Nature suffers in comparison with the 
Omnipotent. This feeling is subtly expressed in a 
well-known Psalm. In the words, " I will lift up 
mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my 
help," the dependent clause is strictly interrogative 
and ought so to be read. The structure of the Psalm 
is antiphonal, set to be sung in the form of responses 
by reciprocating choirs, thus : 

u I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills 

From whence cometh my help ? 
From God my help cometh, maker of heaven and earth." 

But Burke s explanation is much inferior. It is 
simply the psychological fact that we do find pleasure 
in what is painful. He does not only mean dramatic 
sympathy, the pleasure we take in an imitation of 
painful facts, but pleasure in the painful facts them 
selves. He asks us to choose the most affecting 
tragedy, and to appoint the most favourite actors to 
act it on a certain day ; and just at the moment when 
the audience is at the pitch of expectation, let it be 
announced that a criminal of high rank is to be 
executed in the adjoining square : "in a moment the 
emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the com 
parative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim 
the triumph of the real sympathy." l He thinks that 
terror is the ruling principle in all cases of sublime 

1 Sublime and Beautiful, Part i. 15. 



icp THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

emotion ; what makes the sublime a " delightful horror " 
and one of the most affecting ideas, is its power of 
appeal to our self-preserving instinct. 1 By defining 
the Sublime in terms of its phenomena, .without dis 
covering any principle which should make them 
sublime, Burke has practically identified this emotion 
with the wretched sentiment which draws people against 
their will to the shambles, or the morgue, or any horri 
fying spectacle. 

Kant s explanation is very different. It is meta 
physical and concerns the destination of our humanity. 
In agreement with his principle that the Sublime is 
incompatible with charm, the sensational character of 
the presentation ceases to affect us at the moment when 
sublime emotion arises. It is not to the stimulus of the 
presentation that we respond, but to the solicitude of 
our Reason which it provokes to activity, and therefore 
horror or charm of any kind is not admitted into the 
Sublime. The raging sea is not sublime, it is horrible. 
Kant goes so far as to say that no form of sense can 
contain the Sublime ; we can only say that it is capable 
of suggesting a sublimity which is found in our minds. 2 
These are statements which we cannot accept, but mean 
while they help us to see the inwardness of his position. 
Before we advance further, we should say that Kant 
makes a distinction between the mathematical and 
dynamical Sublime, which we do not intend to consider. 
There are the two classes of sublime phenomena, those 
of quantity and those offeree. But mathematical exten 
sion is unable to affect us unless we conceive it somehow 
as intensive power. So Burke thought : " I know of 
nothing sublime which is not some modification of 

1 Sublime and Beautiful, Part ii. 2, 5, 22. 2 Bernard, p. 103. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 191 

power." l Whenever we speak, then, of greatness in 
Sublimity, it should always be dynamic and not simply 
quantitative. 

Kant has given a very confused account of his ideas, 
and it may not be possible to obtain a net result. Prob 
ably his analysis is consummated in the discovery of a 
higher kind of intuition. In the magnitudes of Under 
standing there is no occasion for sublimity because there 
is no conflict between perception and thought. The 
mathematical estimation of greatness proceeds by numeri 
cal schemata, and it is by this mathematical procedure 
that our bread-and-butter faculty of knowledge, the 
Understanding, appreciates greatness. We do not 
attempt to realise the greatness, we are satisfied if we 
can measure it or count it ; and since the schema of a 
mile is as easy for the Imagination as a foot, an exceeding 
great mountain occasions no more surprise than a mole 
hill. Certainly, as Kant reminds us, we must begin 
with a sensible measure in this logical estimate ; the 
numerical schema presupposes a definite intuition in 
space, and therefore " all estimation of the magnitude 
of the objects of nature is in the end aesthetical." 2 
The term aesthetical, as it is here used, has its original 
meaning of sense-perception and has nothing to do with 
artistic intuition. But in logical estimation the Imagina 
tion does not keep by the original, sensible measure, for 
its purpose is not to realise greatness but to give it a 
figure. It shuts its eyes to the solicitude of the presenta 
tion and listens to the Understanding. And since the 
numerical schemata of the Understanding are capable 
of infinite multiples, the Imagination can have " no 

1 Sublime and Beautiful, Part ii. 5. 

2 Bernard, p. m, 26. 



192 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

maximum " and therefore no impression of greatness. 
The whole which the Imagination seeks to envisage is 
not real, it is not the intuition of the parts in their 
completeness but the multiple of an arbitrary unit of 
measurement ; and however far the Understanding may 
lead, the Imagination is always able to follow by changing 
its gear. If the Understanding puts up the figure very 
high, Imagination takes its seven-leagued boots and 
gallops after. 

But Reason will have none of this short work. It 
requires the Imagination to realise what it is doing at 
every step. As the faculty of Totality, our sense of 
the divine and ultimate, it demands a whole of real 
parts and not an ideal sum ; and it asks the Imagination 
if it is able to keep up intuiting the real parts until the 
whole is envisaged. Here the unit is no longer relative 
but a fixed perception, or the aesthetical unit of magni 
tude as Kant calls it : " it must be the aesthetical 
estimation of magnitude in which the effort towards 
comprehension surpasses the power of the Imagina 
tion." 1 To this effort Imagination is unequal. It can 
apprehend part after part to any extent, but it cannot 
comprehend them in a single intuition. Looking up a 
mountain-side, we run over its features from the base to 
the top, but we cannot take it in. The total effect in 
the Powers of Nature is more than we are able to 
envisage in perception. This is the negative moment 
of disquiet while we are still under the influence of the 
presentation, but it is just in this contrast between 
Imagination and Reason that sublimity arises. The 
transcendent solicitude of Reason is for the Imagination 
" like an abyss in which it fears to lose itself." 2 

1 Bernard, p. 116. 2 Ibid. p. 120. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 193 

The painful sense of shock occasioned by the pre 
sentation reaches its limit in the completely unthinkable 
object of Reason, which makes its first appearance in 
our consciousness as an indefinite extension of the 
presentation. Were the object nothing more than a 
piece of finite Nature, we should not be alarmed nor 
distress ourselves about it. Its sublimity would be 
simply a want of conformity to our thoughts about 
Nature and would fall outside the range of our reflec 
tions. It is because the presentation is suggestive of so 
much more than its immediate unform, a Nature-in- 
itself for which we have no imaginative faculty, a 
Nature which with its slightest motion would derange 
our poor subjective principle of adaptation, that we are 
seriously perturbed. The presentation expands into 
infinity as the peal of thunder rolls into its interminable 
echo. In the words of Cohen, it is only as we view 
Nature aesthetically that there is anything hateful in 
her ; malformations are not yet objects of dislike but 
of teleological judgment, and only affect us as furchtbar 
and zweckwidrig. 1 It is because we interpret Nature 
into the aesthetic symbol of a Nature-in-itself which to 
us is all unform, unlike the supersensible harmony of 
which Beauty is the aesthetical appearance, that it can give 
us so much pain. There is thus already an aesthetical 
moment in the Sublime for which Kant has made no pro 
vision. In the passage already quoted, he tells us that 
all estimation of magnitude is aesthetical, because there 
must be an aesthetical unit. But if he thinks that this 
proves the Sublime to be aesthetical, he is surreptitiously 
confusing the two senses of the term. It is quite 
evident that in this passage aesthetical only means 
1 Kants Eegrundung der Aesthetik, p. 300. 

N 



194 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

sense-perception as contrasted with logical calculation. 
But an aesthetical moment, in our sense, is implied in 
his statement that the feeling of pain arises from a want 
of accordance between Imagination and Reason. 1 In no 
other way could we realise the contrast between Imagi 
nation and Reason than by the expansion of a presenta 
tion into Reason s object by aesthetic symbolism. It is 
at this moment Imagination calls off. The feeling of 
discomfort reaches its limit and passes into satisfaction. 
We are relieved of the irritating effort to assimilate the 
intractable forms of Nature which now are over 
shadowed by the Absolute. There is victory in this 
defeat, for although it is hopeless to contend with the 
Absolute we have a right to do so and are ennobled in 
the consciousness of effort. It is a law for us, says 
Kant, to strive after the Ideas of Reason, and it belongs 
to our destination to estimate as small in comparison 
with these Ideas everything which Nature, regarded as 
an object of sense, contains. 2 Thus in the moment of 
self-abasement we are exalted and feel with Faust in 
presence of the erhabener Geist : 

"Ich fiihlte mich so klein, so gross." 

It is this self-negating effort of Imagination, the greatest 
faculty of Sense, which falls so far short of Reason, the 
highest faculty of Thought, the more it strives, that 
gives rise to sublimity. It is the peculiar pleasure we 
take in a unity which is realised by emphasising the 
differences rather than by making them transparent as 
in the Beautiful ; it is the subjective play of Imagination 
and Reason " as harmonious through their very con 
trast." 3 The thwarting feeling that we cannot see is 

1 Bernard, p. 119. *lbid. p. 120. * Ibid. p. 121. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 195 

itself a certain intimation that there is light round about 
us, for this privation assails us with a challenge : like 
the dumb conviction which remains with us of the truth 
we have failed to vindicate in argument. The darkness 
of Reason is brighter than the whitest light of Sense : 

" in such strength 

Of usurpation, when the light of sense 
Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed 
The invisible world, doth greatness make abode, 
There harbours." l 

The feeling of the Sublime is thus for Kant a higher 
power of intuition, The pull which Reason makes on 
our Imagination to procure a real Idea, a whole in per 
ception and not simply in thought, " excites in us the 
feeling of a supersensible faculty." : Here at last 
Reason has found an answer to its pathetic cry, and is 
freed from the reproach of barrenness in the gift of a 
divine perception which sees the things unseen. There 
is also a covert rebuke to the arrogance of Understand 
ing, which professed to have the only kind of certain 
knowledge. Kant is here recovering part of the 
ground he had so readily conceded in his battle with 
the Rationalists. He freely exposed the emptiness of 
Reason, and gave his whole strength to rescue 
Philosophy from the contempt into which it had fallen 
by vindicating its existence as a genuine, scientific 
knowledge of Nature. But meanwhile the Under 
standing has gained undue ascendancy in Kant s system, 
and the time has come to define its limits. The 
scientific conception of Nature is exhausted in a single 
adaptation to our minds, namely, the world as matter in 

1 Wordsworth, Prelude, Bk. VI. 2 Bernard, pp. 109-10. 



196 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

motion determined by causality, and it makes no provision 
for further favours of Nature. But we have already 
found in the phenomena of the Beautiful an adaptation 
of Nature which goes beyond the Understanding, and 
now the phenomena of the Sublime, though they do not 
promote our thoughts about Nature, are conducive to 
our knowledge of a Nature-in-itself, the Supersen 
sible. We say knowledge of the Supersensible and not 
simply thoughts about it, for the supersensible faculty 
is a power of intuition which transcends the opposition 
of perception and thought. The Understanding, the 
controlling faculty of Sense in which Imagination is a 
subordinate piece like the lens in the telescope, is the 
knowledge of separation and diversity ; it only knows 
the parts of existence with a suspicion of their complete 
unity and therefore not as they exist concretely in the 
whole. Reason can never obtain a real total from these 
abstract particulars and must be satisfied with an Idea, 
an attenuated thought about them. For the demand 
of Reason, that it shall realise existence as a completed 
whole, can only be satisfied if the parts of existence 
themselves are known in their completeness as origin 
ally connected with the whole and with each other. As 
we shall see later, Nature favours us yet once more with 
an illustration of this more intimate relation of whole to 
part, in the phenomena of organic life. There is thus a 
conflict of faculties. Understanding and Reason, the 
governing faculty of Sense and the governing faculty of 
thought, are not able to supplement each other and 
supply a real intuition. For the parts of existence as 
they are known to Understanding are perceived, if 
imperfectly and even falsely, while the real kinds are 
not imaged by Reason, but imagined or conceived. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 197 

The particulars and their specific characters exist for our 
minds in divergent ways. 

This is the result at which the Critique of Pure Reason 
arrives : there is a pull between Imagination and 
Reason, as it is expressed in the Critique of Judgment. 
In the Sublime this silent opposition breaks out for the 
first time in an open declaration of war. Our power of 
perception is taken at a disadvantage. What can the 
Understanding make of arid wastes of solitude, " moun 
tain-masses grandly dumb," or the tragedy of human 
life ? To know their scientific history is not to explain 
the reason of their existence. Certainly the Beautiful is 
also outwith the jurisdiction of the Understanding, but of 
these phenomena it does not need to ask the reason be 
cause they confirm its interpretation of Nature as adapted 
to our intelligence. But these intransigent phenomena 
of the Sublime help us in no way ; they rather bring 
discredit on the effort of our intellect to keep its hold 
on Nature. For once the Imagination, which is an 
unbounded faculty of presentation, is put to confusion. 
Reason had already been degraded as an empty power ; 
now it is the turn of Imagination, with its controlling 
genius Understanding, to fall into disgrace, and in their 
common ruin the supersensible faculty takes its rise : 

" in such strength 

Of usurpation doth greatness make abode." 
The superiority of this supersensible power consists in its 
transcendence of the Streit der Facultdten. Its object is a 
"real idea," 1 the absolute totality which Reason sought 
but failed to find. It is real because the parts exist in the 
same way as the whole, there being no outside faculty of 
Imagination now to raise a conflict. It is the type of 

real existence. 

1 Bernard, p. 109. 



198 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

But however valuable this interpretation of the 
Sublime may be as a moral or religious acquisition, 
it has little in common with Aesthetic and Kant 
deliberately calls it a mere appendix to the Beautiful. 1 
Imagination having once lost its footing is never 
allowed to regain it, and " the light of sense goes 
out." It is true he says that Nature is sublime " in 
those of its phenomena, whose intuition brings with 
it the idea of its infinity." 2 But it is by a negative 
suggestion and not by aesthetic expansion of the pre 
sentation that the thought of the Infinite is conveyed 
to us. The presentation itself suffers in comparison 
with the Infinite of whose expression it is deemed 
incapable and even unworthy. " Who would call 
sublime," he asks, " shapeless mountain masses piled 
in wild disorder upon each other with their pyramids 
of ice, or the gloomy raging sea ? " 3 Certainly we 
should. But to Kant these are simply horrible, and 
although he is superior to Burke in discriminating 
between the Horrible and the Sublime, Burke was 
nearer to the truth when he discovered Sublimity in 
the frisson of sensation. 4 What is it that comes to 
our help when we are confronted with some imminent 
peril and regains for us our self-control ; or what 
enables us to contemplate the most harrowing suffering 
at once with sympathy and admiration ? It is sublime 
emotion. It may not happen often. As Kant truly 
says, sublimity requires moral culture. But if we are 
not moved to disgust nor turn away in loathing, we 

1 Bernard, p. 104. * Ibid. p. 116. z Ibid. pp. 117-8. 

4 "Der Engender Burg (i.e. Burke) sagt das Erhabene sei schreckhaft, 
das ist falsch. Anthropologie 1791-92." Schlapp, Kants Lehre vom 
Genie, p. 393. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 199 

stand our ground in presence of the presentation 
and are sufficiently reconciled to contemplate it with 
a curious but ennobling satisfaction. The awful loses 
its erstwhile hostile form, becomes familiar and even 
friendly while yet it maintains its distant majesty. 

There is a lingering trace, however, of aesthetic 
symbolism in Kant s view. Instead of confirming our 
interpretation of Nature as an intelligible order and 
enlarging our thoughts about it, sublime phenomena 
call in question the whole principle of natural teleology 
as unimportant, and shift our attention to the super 
sensible world of which visible Nature is only a more 
or less contingent representation : " we are reminded 
that we only have to do with nature as pheno 
menon, and that it must be regarded as the mere 
presentation of a nature in itself." l It will thus be 
employed gleichsam zum Schema des Uebersinnlichen. 
But this is only the analogon of a schema and not an 
expressive symbol. Perhaps a more decisive sugges 
tion may be found in his idea of subreption : " the 
feeling of the Sublime in nature is respect for our 
own destination, which by a certain subreption we 
attribute to an object of nature." : In its highest sense 
this language would mean the artistic passion which 
lives itself into the object and makes it personate our 
feeling. And he uses moderate language when he 
says that we judge sublime, not so much the object 
as our own state of mind. 3 I have mentioned these 
passages that we may not think unfairly of Kant s 
view. But these modifying statements do not affect 
his characteristic position. Sublimity is withdrawn from 
Nature altogether and exists entirely in our minds. 

1 Bernard, p. 135. z Ibid. p. 119. * Ibid. p. 117. 



200 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

This theory has influenced later thinkers and may 
be said to have held the field until we come to 
Schopenhauer. " Your object is the sublimest, of 
course, in space," said Schiller to the astronomer, 
"but friend, in space the Sublime dwells not." 1 
Hegel, too, has lent the weight of his great name 
to the same view. For him there is only one object 
of sublimity and that is God. But his appeal to 
Old Testament poetry is a little unfortunate, for it 
is not true that the transcendence of God exhausts 
Hebrew poetry. On the contrary, it was not till 
after the exile, when the fortunes of the nation were 
broken, that the Hebrew people learnt in their unfulfilled 
hopes to measure the distance between God and the 
creature. The theophanies of the earlier records testify 
to a fellowship with God as intimate, if na ive, as New 
Testament faith. And God is not only present to 
His people, He is immanent in His works. The 
forces of Nature are not analogous symbols but the 
expression of His presence and power : 

" Yea, He did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made 
darkness his secret place ; his pavilion round about 
Him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. 

" The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest 
gave His voice ; hail stones and coals of fire." 2 

If the God of the Hebrews is sublime, it is as He 
is clothed with Nature s majesty and power. And if 
Nature suffers in any part of her before the glance of 
the Creator, it is in man. But the vanity and nothing 
ness of human life, so characteristic of Ecclesiastes 
and many of the Psalms, is a product of scepticism, 

1 Kuno Fischer, Schiller ah Philosophy p. 60. 

2 Psalm xviii. 10, n, 13. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 201 

which first appears in the prophet Habakkuk and 
which is not original to Old Testament faith but a con 
sequence of its historical development. The destruction 
of Nature herself is abhorrent to the Hebrew mind, 
and is the subject of apocalypse which belongs to the 
New Testament rather than to the Old. 

Apart from this reference, however, it should be 
remembered in explanation of Hegel, that the rejection 
of Nature in his theory of the Sublime rests on the 
general principle of his Aesthetic. For him as for 
Aristotle, Art is Nature purified and set free from her 
contingencies ; and it has therefore more reality than 
Nature, as Poetry is higher than History. 1 He scarcely 
recognises natural Beauty. And since the forms of 
Nature are more or less contingent because inadequate 
embodiments of the true forms which are born of 
spirit alone, it should follow that all Art is in its 
origin sublime. It is in his impatience with natural 
Beauty, that is, with ordinary perception, that the 
artist desires to create an individual form which will 
perfectly express the specific character of a rock or 
tree or any other object of Nature. He wants to 
see the thing in its history and in the variety of its 
existence ; he wants to see a distinct, individual rock 
or tree and not as it exists for ordinary perception 
a generic composition of quartz and felspar or a 
generic collocation of leaves. Now the state of mind 
in which he approaches his study is sublime, because 
it involves some mental strain and a moment of dis 
appointment, followed by the feeling of uplifting, in 
the effort of imagination to penetrate to the Ideal of 
Nature in the particular form. 

1 Poetics, ix. 3. 



202 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

But if we are to acquiesce in the rejection of Nature 
in her sublime appearances, we shall have to face the 
question whether Aesthetic has any part in sublimity at 
all. We must not be misled by the peace of exalted 
emotion into thinking that it must therefore be aestheti- 
cal. The sublime peace of a Wordsworth is aesthetical, 
but not many are able to have the same feeling of peace. 
Moral determination is self-approving and yields a 
harmony of feeling, and peace of soul is the grace of 
religious faith. But neither of these need be aesthetical 
for they may be very abstract. Morality and Religion 
can exist on two terms God and I ; and it is even 
essential to their existence that they should maintain a 
negative if not hostile attitude to the world. The 
difference is that Aesthetic must be reconciled to Nature 
now, while Morality and Religion can afford to wait. 
It is the genius of Faith that it lives on a promise and 
does not walk by sight. For this reason we should 
consider Faith as of a higher order than aesthetic intui 
tion, for the latter is a premature realisation of what 
Faith will be one day when the old things are passed 
away. The common interpretation of Faith as a faculty 
which will pass into sight whenever the eternal things are 
revealed, is completely false. Faith is not hope ; it is a 
power which will continue to be exercised even by him 
who is seeing the eternal things. It is in this sense that 
Kant is justified when he calls the Beautiful the symbol 
of Morality. Yet Faith may be aesthetical, but it is 
only in rare, exalted natures that it is able to forget the 
opposition, suppress the strife and be reconciled to the 
world. " Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do," is a true instance of aesthetical sublimity. 
It was, of course, impossible that Hegel should not 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 203 

have also recognised an immanent phase in the Sublime, 
and I only allude to what he holds in common with 
Kant. If the Sublime were confined to those extreme 
phenomena which provoke antipathy rather than engage 
our sympathy, we should not be greatly concerned to 
win a place for it in Aesthetic. It could be defined as 
the exalted emotion of moral and religious experience. 
But this would be unjust to many phenomena which 
can only be admitted into Aesthetic by the recognition 
of their sublime character. Now in his analysis, Kant 
offers no principle which is able to include those pheno 
mena. They will thus be regarded as neither sublime 
nor beautiful. We have to ask, then, whether this 
terrible shock of which we have heard so much is 
essential to sublimity, and is a representative character 
istic of all its forms. Certainly not in the sense of 
violent reaction to a hostile, menacing power, for the 
presentation may be at once arresting and sympathetic. 
It is said of Dickens that when he visited the falls of 
Niagara he experienced a feeling of great peace. But 
there is a moment of suspense while our aesthetic sym 
pathy is put on its trial, due to an absence of familiarity 
which may occasion a feeling of disappointment or it 
may be a sense of self-depreciation. We are taken at a 
disadvantage for the moment by the daring expression 
of the Ideal in the presentation, and we may call this a 
slight shock if we please. But it must be understood 
that a hostile attitude in Nature is not essential, though 
she does reserve her dignity. The negative moment 
may vary between the sympathetic reaction we feel in 
seeing a sunrise and the violent sense of power to 
triumph in our own annihilation. 

Perhaps one of the finest instances of the Sublime as 



204 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

arising out of a purely sympathetic admiration, is the 
lunar rainbow in Browning s Christmas Eve. The 
imagination of the poet, exhausted in the effort to 
realise the beauty of the rainbow as it sprang like a 
spectral creature, dauntless and deathless, across the sky, 
subsided in the white light of pure, spiritual energy, and 
the vision of the outward sense passed into a vision of 
the mind : 

" Thus at the show above me, gazing 
With upturned eyes, I felt my brain 
Glutted with the glory, blazing 
Throughout its whole mass, over and under 
Until at length it burst asunder 
And out of it bodily there streamed, 
The too-much glory." 

An example of the lower limit is the dignified reserve 
in language which makes up sublimity in style, its 
power to dispense with fulness of diction and perfection 
of form. The following passage is characteristic of 
Hebrew prose : " Now Naaman, captain of the host of 
the King of Syria, was a great man with his master, and 
honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliver 
ance unto Syria : he was also a mighty man in valour, 
a leper" (2 Kings v. i). There is no adversative 
particle in the Hebrew to indicate the transition of 
thought. The narrative intimates the infirmity of 
Naaman in a quiet, unobtrusive manner that is all the 
more impressive. It emphasises the difference of con 
trasted features by taking their unity for granted. This 
indifference to form reaches its highest point in the 
silence of Ajax to Ulysses, which as Longinus remarks 
is more sublime than any speech. 1 When now we 
1 The Sublime, ix. ; Odyssey, xi. 543. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 205 

extend the range of the negative moment so as to 
include the minimum of inhibition, we see how large a 
class of phenomena come under the Sublime. We have 
already noticed some of these instances in the preceding 
chapter. If the Beautiful is that whose specific character 
is adequately expressed in sensuous form, the Sublime 
is found where the Ideal visibly goes beyond the expres 
sion ; and sublimity arises not in contempt of the form 
but in the exercise of our aesthetic sympathy, which is 
able to trust the wisdom of the Ideal when it consents 
to dwell in this unlikely appearance. Never is it more 
sublime, says Schiller, than when the Ideal seems 
awanting. 1 And the more sublime our own nature is, 
the more immediately sympathetic will the presentation 
be, for we are already uplifted by culture and self- 
discipline to the exalted level of this difficult expression. 
To one who is already sublime, like Faust, sublimity is 
beautiful : 

" To me are mountain-masses grandly dumb : 
I ask not, Whence ? and ask not, Why ? they come." 2 

This is the merit in Schopenhauer s exposition. He 
makes the Sublime the same in principle with the 
Beautiful, and traces the degrees in which sublimity is 
accentuated and intensified. The influence of Kant 
here as elsewhere in his system is very marked ; but, 
unlike Kant, he mediates moral Will through Nature 
in the Sublime, and shows how it is able to be a factor 
in Aesthetic. And, generally, he has done for this part 
of Kant s theory what Schiller did for the Beautiful. 
But it is in his own peculiar method, and also his 

1 The Aesthetical Education of Man : Weiss, p. 49. 

2 Taylor s translation, p. 310. 



206 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

aesthetic theory follows so naturally from his meta 
physics that it cannot be explained to advantage apart 
from his system. 

What Kant called the Supersensible is designated 
Will by Schopenhauer. In itself it is a Will that 
neither affirms nor denies, existing without ground 
or principle, the mystical One of the Vedas. To 
become directed and purposive it must be repre 
sented as Appearance, and this means that it becomes 
object of knowledge. So Schopenhauer calls the world 
of Appearance the objectification of Will. Now the 
individual for whom the world exists as objective 
Will is himself part of this world. Although in 
itself indivisible, groundless Being, the supersensible 
Will exhibits an intelligible, reasoned order in the 
graded scale of existence when it takes form in an 
object-world, and is related to these typic forms of 
existence as harmony to the single voice. 1 And in 
this ascending order, brain and nervous system stand 
among the very highest expressions of Will. But 
since the individual in his bodily being is part of the 
world as objectified Will, his knowledge will be con 
ditioned throughout by all the lower forms of existence 
which harbour in his individual nature. Human know 
ledge is therefore characteristically impure, being always 
subservient to the lower grades of Will as they come 
to us in sensation. It represents things as artificial 
unities of parts which co-exist with necessity or succeed 
each other in a certain order, never as real unities of 
being. Consequently we have to make this distinction, 
that the world as objective Will, or the world as it 
is represented in knowledge, is not a direct and perfect 

1 The World as Will and Idea : Haldane and Kemp, i. p. 206. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 207 

organisation of the Supersensible but indirect and in 
adequate. But there are also direct objectifications of 
Will, complete organisations of the blind Supersensible, 
and these are the real kinds or types of existence which 
Schopenhauer identifies with the Platonic Ideas : " As 
soon as knowledge, the world as idea (Vorstellung), 
is abolished, there remains nothing but mere will, 
blind effort. That it should receive objectivity, become 
idea, supposes at once both subject and object ; but 
that this should be pure, complete, and adequate objec 
tivity of the will, supposes the object as Platonic Idea 
(Idee), free from the forms of the principle of suffi 
cient reason." x Are these specific forms accessible to 
knowledge ? 

Before we proceed further we should notice that the 
German has two words for idea. The translators have 
preserved the difference in meaning by writing the 
Platonic Idea with a capital. The technical rendering 
of Vorstellung is representation, but idea in English 
Philosophy has been always associated with a concrete 
perception or image while Idee (Idea) denotes the 
universal ; for example, Burke says : " if they may 
be properly called ideas which present no distinct 
image to the mind." To answer the above question, 
whether the specific forms of existence are accessible to 
our knowledge, we must observe a distinction in our 
faculty of knowledge corresponding to that which we 
have just observed in the world of objective Will. 
Knowledge fed and governed by sensation is always the 
perception of things related in a necessary way, for 
sensations do not come to us haphazard but under rule 

1 The World as Will and Idea, i. p. 234. 

2 Sublime and Beautiful, Part v. 7. 



208 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

and measure. But besides this body-principle of know 
ledge to which Schopenhauer gives the name Sufficient 
Reason, there is a much more primary and ultimate 
relation, and that is the simple relation of subject to 
object, the mere fact of a representation in conscious 
ness (Vorstelhng uberhaupf]} All that is needful for 
the exercise of this pure knowledge is to abstract 
from its subservience to Will as it is indirectly and 
badly expressed in our individual being. Pure know 
ledge is the state of freedom from our personal being 
with its pragmatic tendencies, when we are pure, will- 
less subjects (willenloses Subjekf)? 

It is easy to see the close identity of this form of 
expression with Kant s explanation of the aesthetic state 
as a kind of knowledge in general, and it is this dis 
interested state which in Schopenhauer takes the place 
of aesthetic perception. It is hardly necessary to 
observe that its corresponding objects are those Pla 
tonic forms, which are complete organisations of the 
Supersensible. Outside the world of Appearance, 
the Supersensible is nothing because it is anything ; 
it is groundless Being. But Appearance does not give 
coherent meaning to the Supersensible ; it rather breaks 
up its indeterminate unity into a multiplicity of blind, 
impulsive tendencies, which war with one another with 
out ceasing and without any final purpose to justify 
them the mechanical attraction of physical bodies, 
the Man vital in plants and animals, and the impulse 
to action in man. Hence the misery of human life, 
which makes it that the first and only crime is to 
be born. Only in the Ideas (Ideen\ the specific 

1 Eng. Trans, i. 227 ; German, Leipsic, 1844, p. 198. 

2 German, p. 201, Bk. III. 34. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 209 

characters which are independent of the particular 
forms, is the Supersensible perfectly reduced to har 
mony and brought to peace. 

Schopenhauer criticises Kant for having made the 
Supersensible completely unknowable. He insists that 
it can be known when it is the object of aesthetic intui 
tion or will-less knowledge. 1 Thus a double change 
has taken place : " Since now, as individuals, we have 
no other knowledge than that which is subject to the 
principle of sufficient reason, and this form of know 
ledge excludes the Ideas, it is certain that if it is 
possible for us to raise ourselves from the knowledge 
of particular things to that of the Ideas, this can 
only happen by an alteration taking place in the 
subject which is analogous and corresponds to the great 
change of the whole nature of the object, and by virtue 
of which the subject, so far as it knows an Idea, is 
no more individual." : The contemplation of the 
eternal forms is a sympathetic intuition based on iden 
tity of natures, for outside the world of Appearance 
the supersensible Will is the same in the subject as 
in the object. 3 

In this contemplation the subject loses himself and 
comes into peace. It is the satisfaction in the Beautiful 
which is won without effort. This happens when 
the subject is occupied with those forms of Nature 
or Art whose content is in harmony with its sensuous 
expression. There are few or no contingencies to 
obstruct the passage of our sympathy, for that object 
is beautiful in which the stress of Nature s elemental 

1 The World as Will and Idea, i. p. 226. 
*Ibid. p. 228. 
z lbid. p. 233. 

O 



210 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Will is laid to rest. But there are also forms which 
do not yield so readily to such facile contemplation. 
Because they are themselves beset and hedged about 
with Nature s blind effort which guards their secret, 
their accidental form, unsympathetic to the pure Idea 
in themselves or us, provokes to activity the elemental 
Will of Nature as it is organised in our body. And 
being thus drawn into conflict with the hostile pre 
sentation, our will-less knowledge is in danger of being 
engulfed in the pragmatic interests of our personal 
being. From this thraldom it can only be delivered 
when by a violent effort we exert our will against 
our will, and refuse to be drawn into this strife with 
Nature. Then sublimity arises. Refusing to take up 
the challenge, we steadily penetrate the forbidding 
appearance until it yields the secret of its inward being 
to our disinterested knowledge and we have pleasure 
in its contemplation. Our emotion is sublime because 
we are lifted up above our personal being and its 
inevitable strife with Nature. 

In this brief account of Schopenhauer s theory, it 
will have been noticed how the Sublime and the 
Beautiful are interpreted by a single principle. In 
both it is the inner teleology that is the object of 
aesthetic pleasure, and we are able to enjoy the con 
templation of the sensuous form because we ourselves 
exist in our supersensible character. There is only a 
difference of method. While in the Beautiful we come 
into this state without a struggle, we attain to the Sub 
lime by "a conscious and forcible breaking away" from 
the hostile relation of the object to our will. But 
this does not affect the community of principle in 
both, which at least ensures that the Sublime is a 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 211 

genuine part of Aesthetic. There are degrees in the 
Sublime according to the strength or weakness of 
the effort by which it is distinguished from the Beau 
tiful. As an instance of the weakest degree, the 
following example may be given : " If, in the dead 
of winter, when all nature is frozen and stiff, we see 
the rays of the setting sun reflected by masses of 
stone, illuminating without warming, and thus favour 
able only to the purest kind of knowledge, not to 
the will ; the contemplation of the beautiful effect 
of the light upon these masses lifts us, as does all 
beauty, into a state of pure knowing. But, in this 
case, a certain transcending of the interests of the 
will is needed to enable us to rise into the state of 
pure knowing, because there is a faint recollection 
of the lack of warmth from these rays, that is, an 
absence of the principle of life ; there is a slight chal 
lenge to persist in pure knowing, and to refrain from 
all willing, and therefore it is an example of a transition 
from the sense of the beautiful to that of the Sublime." 1 
He gives other instances of rare beauty. I shall only 
mention what he says of solitude in Nature : it is a test 
of our intellectual worth to endure the state of pure 
contemplation in a region where there is nothing to 
engage our will, which is always in a state of want either 
of striving or attaining, and where we are tempted, in 
our incapacity, to abandon ourselves to the vacuity of 
unoccupied will and the misery of ennui. 

It is only by recognising such a principle of gradu 
ated indifference to harmonious expression that we can 
effect a real synthesis between the Beautiful and the 
Sublime and bring them under a common name. It 
1 The World as Will and Idea, i, p. 263. 



212 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

may be, however, that we should be prepared to find 
two forms of sublimity, one of which is not aesthetical, 
and separated in their less extreme forms by inappre 
ciable lines of transition. We should not be anxious to 
show that every form of the Sublime is aesthetical, for 
there are many which are not aesthetical and yet are 
sublime. King Lear is sublime when he defies the 
elements. He rises above the thunder-storm, he accepts 
the challenge as a very little thing, but there is nothing 
aesthetical in his emotion. It is only as a dramatic 
representation that Lear can be aesthetical, when he 
together with the raging elements becomes an object 
for the spectator ; and we can judge him as sublime 
because we are able to free ourselves from practical 
interest, which he could not do. To be aesthetically 
sublime in and for himself, he must become the storm 
as it passes over the trembling forest in its fury or lashes 
the deep into tempestuous foam. I have a distinct 
recollection of sublime emotion when witnessing a 
thunder-storm on the Brocken. But it was not aesthe 
tical, for the elements of Nature suffered in comparison 
and dwindled into ostentatious display of mechanical 
forces. This is nothing more than the triumph of our 
moral nature over the natural forces which make the 
cattle tremble, and is very different from the aesthetical 
peace a Wordsworth would have felt in his sacramental 
fellowship with Nature. 

But Kant has made it impossible to unite the Sublime 
and the Beautiful under a common principle, because 
he has defined the Sublime in terms of those extreme 
forms which lend themselves most readily to a purely 
moral interpretation. We have already noticed how he 
approaches a synthesis in the conception of Nature as a 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 213 

symbol of the Supersensible, and also in the recognition 
of a process of subreption ; but these are found to be 
little more than a.fa(on de parler. There is a remaining 
principle, however, tending in the same direction, on 
which he lays some emphasis and which ought to be 
examined. It is the idea of Security. Terrible Nature 
is attractive, he says, provided we are in security. 
There is no actual fear but only " an attempt to feel 
fear by the aid of the imagination." The quality of 
our emotion is not affected by this apparent want of 
seriousness, because it is not our actual experience 
of life that matters but the consciousness of our super 
sensible destination. 1 This seems to be his meaning, 
and it is plausible enough. We are reminded of Scho 
penhauer s volition in general (Woollen uberhaupt). 
Schopenhauer also insists that there must be no actual 
danger : u if a single real act of will were to come 
into consciousness, through actual personal pressure 
and danger from the object, then the individual will 
thus actually influenced would at once gain the upper 
hand, the peace of contemplation would become impos 
sible, the impression of the sublime would be lost, 
because it yields to the anxiety, in which the effort of 
the individual to right itself has sunk every other 
thought." 2 He means that our exaltation is consciously 
maintained by a constant recollection of effort, which is 
not a particular act of our will but the elemental sense of 
opposition between us and Nature. It is the aesthetical 
consciousness of will as completely dissociated from our 
personal striving and idealised in being identified with 

1 Bernard, pp. 125-6 and 136. 

*The World as Will and Idea, Eng. Trans, i. pp. 261-2 ; German, 
p. 229. 



214 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

the universal will of humanity. In this way the moral 
consciousness is passed through Nature and becomes 
aesthetical. But this interpretation has nothing in 
common with Kant s true position and is only a happy 
accident. Indeed, when we examine it closely, we 
find that it is a return to the formalism which we dis 
covered in his theory of the Beautiful. The principle 
by which he has been guided in both instances is, that 
whenever Aesthetic is free it ceases to be earnest, and 
that when it is earnest it has lost its purity and becomes 
dependent. He shows this formalism in another pas 
sage, where he says that we must not think of the stars 
as inhabited worlds or as physical bodies moving in 
elliptic orbits, but as a spangled canopy : nor of the 
ocean as peopled with the denizens of the deep, or as 
the source of clouds, or as the means of transit between 
the continents of the globe, but just as it strikes the 
eye. 1 This would be a very empty feeling and quite 
unworthy of his serious, wistful experience of the 
morally Sublime. The writer of the eighth Psalm, who 
looked up to the heavens, had much deeper thoughts 
than those ; the moon and stars were at least framed 
by the fingers of God. 

It is the beauty of morality, then, that Kant mistakes 
for the aesthetical Sublime, as Baumgarten would speak 
of the beauty of knowledge ; it is what we might call 
the aesthetical resonance of moral feeling, not the 
aesthetical expression of a moral disposition. In a stray 
passage he seems to make a considerable advance. He 
says that moral feeling is so far cognate to aesthetical 
that it can represent moral action as sublime or even as 
beautiful, without losing in purity. 2 But we must be 
1 Bernard, pp. 137-8. z lbid. p. 133. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 215 

guided in our interpretation by the total impression we 
have received from his work. With the most sym 
pathetic intentions we cannot help thinking that this 
statement is quite different from the position, that in the 
Sublime or Beautiful the moral consciousness is reduced 
to aesthetic form. Kant s definition of the aesthetic 
consciousness as a disinterested, which for him means 
impersonal, feeling of satisfaction, does not include, and 
therefore does not affect, the personal consciousness of 
character. The moral feeling of which he speaks as 
being closely akin to Aesthetic, is only a generic form 
which is indifferent to its content, like Socrates sail in 
the Parmenides ; it is the afterglow of self-conscious 
virtue. If the moral consciousness is to enter into 
Aesthetic at all, it must exist in us in some such 
instinctive way as Wordsworth believed it to exist in 
Nature : 

" Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, 

The periwinkle trailed its wreathes ; 
And tis my faith that every flower 

Enjoys the air it breathes. 
" The budding twigs spread out their fan 

To catch the breezy air ; 
And I must think, do all I can, 
That there was pleasure there." l 

For Kant the moral consciousness must always be wide 
awake. He reaches his highest point in establishing a 
close connection between aesthetic feeling and moral 
culture. He had already attained to this level in his 
early Observations, and he never gets beyond it. 2 It is 
the lower limit in Schiller s Aesthetical Education of 
Man. 

1 Lines written in Early Spring. 2 Hartenstein, ii. p. 239 



216 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

The Sublime might be called the test in aesthetic 
theory. Its importance is seen in its decisive bearing 
on the relation between Beauty and Expression. If 
we hold with Lessing that expression must always be 
subordinate to Beauty so that Laocoon must not open 
his mouth too wide, we confine Aesthetic to a very 
narrow field. There is a beauty of spirit as well as of 
form for example Maeterlinck s plays, to take a recent 
instance. The beauty of form is the essential condition 
of all expression. But while the beauty of spirit will 
not conflict with this formal symmetry, it demands its 
own individual expression which the beauty of form 
may never have dreamt, and is such stuff as dreams are 
made of. In the following passage from George Eliot s 
Romola^ expression is made subordinate to beauty of 
form : " a perfect traitor should have a face which vice 
can write no marks on lips that will lie with a dimpled 
smile eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that 
no infamy can dull them cheeks that will rise from a 
murder and not look haggard." This view could be 
defended on the ground that it is the character of a 
perfect traitor to dissemble his own nature and counter 
feit another. But this is only as it appears to the 
ordinary eye. Art has no use for such a creature, and 
will express in the features not only the perfect dis 
semblance but also some hint of the fact that it is a 
dissemblance. If now we look at such a painting as 
" The Two Usurers " by Marinus van Romerswael 
(London National Gallery), we see two men whose souls 
are carved upon their faces, the one secure from threats 
or dint of pity, the other agonising in the grasping 
greed for gold. Both are ugly and repulsive, but 
although there is no immediate beauty of form, there 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 217 

is beauty of expression ; their soul flows from their 
features, and this spontaneous, undisguised portrayal 
holds our admiration " like the red blood spouting 
from a vein." 

This question was important for Kant had he cared 
to take it in this way. For beautiful objects are the 
first intimation on the part of Invisible Nature that it 
is in sympathy with our limited intelligence. This 
accommodation, upon which all natural science rests, is 
what Kant calls the Technic of Nature. In view of 
those natural forms whose significance is not exhausted 
in their mechanism, it is essential to our further under 
standing of Nature that we should regard her as work 
ing on a definite principle. We think of her as an 
artisan who fashions and moulds his material with 
conscious purpose. Otherwise we should be in a hope 
less predicament, because our Understanding has no 
categories for those contingent forms. The Beautiful 
and the essence of Life escape a mechanical explana 
tion. In the absence of such definite knowledge as 

o 

a mechanical explanation can give, we must have some 
assurance that Nature knows what she is doing:, and 

D 

indeed we could not carry our mechanical explanation 
nearly so far as we do if we were not buoyed by 
this subjective principle. Certainly this persuasion does 
not make our knowledge of objects more intensive, 
for knowledge ends with mechanism and beyond that 
limit we are in the night where all cows are black. 
We may say, for instance, that the blood is carried 
into the lungs that it may be oxidised and diffused 
again throughout the body for the purpose of nutri 
tion ; but this teleological explanation throws no light 
on the efficient cause of its circulation. Yet if our 



2i8 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

knowledge is not intensified it is extended, and if 
we cannot say precisely what things really are, we can 
classify them, which is a great matter. 

Now the Beautiful is a visible evidence and not merely 
a hypothetical assurance of Nature s. sympathy with our 
intelligence ; it is that quality in objects which facili 
tates the knowledge of their specific character. It will 
therefore be in the interest of our subjective principle 
if the range of these objects can be extended as far as 
possible, and this can only happen if we are willing to 
define Beauty in terms of expression. This will enable 
us to secure the testimony of those phenomena which in 
themselves are a positive denial of the purposive dis 
position of Nature, the phenomena of the Sublime, the 
ugly, the unsightly and unformed, and all the darker 
features of experience. 

But this is not the course Kant has followed. He 
acknowledges that the Sublime is contingent to the second 
power, neither lending itself to interpretation by the 
scientific Understanding nor by the teleological function 
of Reason. And so he thinks that " the concept of the 
Sublime is not nearly so important or rich in conse 
quences as the concept of the Beautiful." 1 But in 
neglecting this advantage, Kant believes that we are 
introduced into a more fruitful field of discovery. For 
in the untowardness of those forms which seem to call 
in question the adaptation of Nature to our minds, we 
are thrown back upon ourselves and strike upon a 
higher harmony, the sympathy of our minds with the 
Supersensible. If the Imagination sacrifices its freedom, 
it acquires " an extension and a might greater than it 
sacrifices"; for instead of being the instrument of 

1 Bernard, p. 104. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 219 

Understanding as in the Beautiful, it becomes " the 
instrument of Reason." l And if the Sublime does not 
recognise the subjective specification of Nature as a 
working principle which only makes Nature explainable 
so far, it is because it assumes the de jure conformity of 
all Nature to the highest and most ultimate purpose, 
the moral destination of man. Thus the Sublime is 
indirectly a further influence of the supersensible 
Thing; for if Nature in her beauty is influenced in 
favour of our Understanding, in her sublimity " Reason 
exerts a dominion over sensibility " in order to extend 
its outlook into the Infinite. 2 

Hitherto we have been obliged to develop Kant s 
theory in slow stages. In proceeding to a final appre 
ciation, we must now try to give a clear idea of his 
position. 

Karit considered that in Beauty and Sublimity there 
are two kinds of teleology which are at last comple 
mentary. The harmony of our mental processes is a 
subjective indication that Nature is, positively or nega 
tively, in sympathy with our minds. But in the Beauti 
ful the harmony is due to the play of Imagination and 
Understanding, and this means that Nature is only 
adapted to our knowledge. Now in pure knowledge 
there is nothing truly infinite ; its object is rather the 
unending. Infinity dawns upon the scientist who is 
engaged with incalculable quantities only when his 
moral consciousness is awake. For his imagination, 
under the rule of scientific Understanding, makes no 
effort to realise infinity, being able to give it a figure 
by means of numerical schemata. Such is the limited 
nature of the mental powers which are active in the 
1 Bernard, pp. 136-7. 2 Ibid. p. 130. 



220 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Beautiful. The procedure of the Understanding does not 
indeed appear as this bad infinite in the aesthetic form, 
because it is the genius of the Beautiful to present the 
unending as immediate completeness, and it gives satis 
faction because the Understanding has ceased from its 
wandering. But this does not affect the nature of the 
faculty itself, and what we have presented in the Beauti 
ful is not Infinity but the crystallising of a false infinity. 
The superiority of the Sublime, in Kant s view, is that 
in it for the first time the Infinite dawns upon us, for it 
is the Imagination and the moral Reason that are in 
play. 

It was essential to Kant s theory of the Sublime as 
a negative experience which is not aesthetical, that 
the Understanding should be omitted ; for according 
to his theory we are not reconciled to Nature as 
known to the Understanding, but Imagination fabri 
cates a new world under the controlling influence 
of Reason. It is the presence of this latter power 
that distinguishes the Sublime. But it calls for some 
words of explanation, for throughout the discussion 
Kant is confusing Reason as the unconditioned Under 
standing and Reason as the moral faculty. Primarily, 
of course, he means the Practical Reason, and it is quite 
clear that in the Sublime this is the dominating and final 
sense in which it is used. 1 But he also appears to take 
it as the faculty of the unconditioned, the Theoretic 
Reason of the Dialectic, as is evident from the promin 
ence he gives to the idea of infinity. This confusion is 
due to the subtle way in which the GemuthskrHfte and 
the Erkenntnissvermtigen, which are ostensibly a single 
specification of the former, run parallel to and into one 

1 See Bernard, pp. 151-2. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 221 

another. As Judgment, which is only a subordinate 
element in the higher faculty of Knowledge, came to be 
identified with the higher faculty of Feeling, so the 
Theoretic Reason, itself a subordinate element in Know 
ledge, becomes germane to the Will or moral Reason. 
And after all, in spite of their apparent difference, there 
is a very close connection between them. For Theoretic 
Reason is the faculty which seeks to realise extensively 
in knowledge the same completeness (res completae) 
which moral Reason apprehends intensively in practice. 
The latter, firing at close range, either misses fire or 
strikes with deadly aim ; the former, firing at long 
range, is dispersed like small shot over a wide area. It 
is only an over-refined subtlety that would distinguish 
too nicely the Gemuthskrafte from the Erkenntnissver- 
m dgen^ and it is an equivocal merit in Cohen s book 
that he seems to assume their identity, at once making 
Kant s meaning more intelligible and his method harder 
to appreciate. There is no doubt that Kant s method 
ological intention was to restrict the Reason in the 
Sublime to its theoretic use, as a specification of the 
cognitive faculty. 

In the Beautiful, then, the content is limited. It is 
the perception not of infinity but of an infinite finite, an 
inexhaustible Nature but still unmediated Nature, an 
indeterminate concept of Nature but still a concept, the 
immediate consciousness of Nature only as it is adapted 
to knowledge. It is in the Sublime that the Infinite 
first appears in its true nature as spirit. For the 
harmony of Imagination with Reason is a subjective in 
dication that Nature is purposive to our highest destiny, 
not indeed directly and positively for then this final end 
of Nature would be evident to our knowledge, and in 



222 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

our immediate consciousness of this end as known the 
Sublime would also be beautiful. Now we see clearly 
and for the last time the double error in Kant s Aesthetic. 
The Beautiful is formal, without specific meaning, 
because it is exclusively intellectual and is not affected 
by the spirit of our mind. It is an idealised Under 
standing. There is no final end in Nature for know 
ledge, and however far we carry out the process, we 
never get any nearer to the heart of things. The 
immediate consciousness of this unending teleology is 
much the same as the ideal sum in arithmetical progres 
sion. The secret of our pleasure in this formal Beauty 
is its premature completeness, its anticipation of discur 
sive processes, but it does not follow that we have a 
deeper insight into Nature. The immediate conscious 
ness of infinite extension does not make our perception 
more intensive. It is only the unending processes of 
Nature crystallised in certain of her forms, very pretty 
like a glass marble ; but it has nothing spiritual, the 
breath of Art has not breathed upon it. Again, in the 
Sublime it is our spirit and not our Understanding that 
is affected by Nature whose final end, inconceivable for 
knowledge, is consummated in the consciousness of our 
immortal destiny. But this consciousness of Nature is 
not aesthetical ; it is spirit without form as the Beautiful 
is form without spirit. The sublime faculty has no 
aesthetic Understanding to perceive the final end in 
Nature, and must therefore think it outside of Nature 
in the formless void of an Imagination whose light is 
extinguished. In such exalted feeling, Nature has no 
community with man s spiritual being. 

The cause of this double error is Kant s radical 
separation of the mental powers. He did well to 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 223 

prevent all confusion of Volition with Cognition, 
and by doing so he ushered in the dawn of a 
new day for ethical theory ; he did well also to 
maintain a distinction between Feeling and the other 
faculties, and in doing so he laid the foundation-stone 
of aesthetic theory for all time. But Kant carried this 
separation into the root and destroyed the primordial 
unity of human nature. He ignored the fact that 
while these faculties are separate as explicit elements 
in consciousness, they lose their distinctness in the 
elemental unity of mental life : the intellective con 
sciousness has a moral nature, instinct with spirit, 
and Beauty must possess the Infinite; the moral con 
sciousness likewise has a nature that is intellective, 
instinct with form, and our sublime Reason must shape 
itself in Nature. 

But although Kant does not succeed in transforming 
the moral consciousness into an aesthetic factor and 
hardly suspects that it is possible, he really does succeed 
with knowledge. And faults in theory must not affect 
the merit of his intention. If he denied a soul to 
Beauty, it was in order that Goodness might live : a 
needless sacrifice, for the moral consciousness pre 
existed in a form much more akin to aesthetic feeling 
than to its own specific function. Kant himself was 
aware that the Ideal which he found in the moral con 
sciousness is the soul of Beauty and what alone could 
make it precious. But in his theory of Genius he 
goes much further. It is Nature in the subject, the 
supersensible substrate of all his faculties, that utters 
itself in Genius ; and evidently this cannot mean the 
ethical personality but the Man of Humanity, not his 
character but the totality of his nature. It is the 



224 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

supersensible substrate of his Humanity which, as 
Cohen says, holds itself responsible for the harmony of 
all the tendencies of consciousness. 1 

There is the further consequence that Aesthetic can 
not be subjective in the sense that it is a more abstract 
interpretation of Reality. For Aesthetic is the most 
concrete expression of our elemental disposition. We 
do not commit ourselves to the statement that it is 
more original, in the sense that it precedes and condi 
tions the emergence of Knowledge and Morality. We 
must not be misled by Schiller s poetic fancy when he 
says that virtue was loved and vice rejected before 
Solon s laws were made. 2 It is quite a plausible theory 
that, before our moral nature became self-conscious, it 
already contained the end of its development instinc 
tively ; if its content was meagre, less precious than the 
exposed and naked sense of self-conscious virtue in its 
ungainly growth, its eyes not yet being opened and 
innocent of good or evil, it had at least the form of its 
consummated perfection in the fruit, the innocence 
of its own goodness. But this ingenuous state is as 
little aesthetic as it is moral. It is simply the condi 
tion of a " living soul." We must distinguish the 
physical theory of the Play-impulse from the imagi 
native theory. The former is among the very earliest 
factors in the development of child-life as also in 
the race, but in this function the play-impulse is 
only another name for the consciousness of motion. 
Aristotle observed that the most rudimentary form of 
sensation in animals, namely Touch, is a discriminative 
activity by which the objects of nutrition are accepted 

1 Kants Begrundung der Aesthetik, p. 263. 

2 Die Kiir.stler, iv. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 225 

or rejected, and this primary attitude of consciousness 
is inevitably bound up with the consciousness of motion. 
The play-impulse as we find it in the child is a purely 
physical motive, the discharge of surplus energy, like 
the roaring of the lion in the forest when he has nothing 
else to do. But this is surely not the same as the play 
with images of things or the delight in seeing for see- 
ing s sake. The world of the child is altogether a 
world of play in the sense that the distinction between 
Appearance and Reality has not yet emerged, while 
Aesthetic is based on the conscious implication of this 
distinction. But, on the other hand, Aesthetic is at 
once more original and concrete than either Knowledge 
or Morality ; for while these are particular functions of 
consciousness, Aesthetic is the original disposition itself 
in its totality raised to a higher immediacy. It is the 
same elementary state but informed and enriched by the 
contributions of Knowledge and Morality, as the trunk 
of the tree grows with its branches and draws its nutri 
ment partly from them and partly from its own root. 
The ever-recurring question whether Aesthetic should 
be moral or intellective, is the same as if we should 
ask whether the tree can contain its own branches. If 
Aesthetic is affected by Knowledge and Morality, it is 
not in the form of raw impressions but as light and 
atmosphere are transmuted into the sap of the tree. 

Now Kant s view, strictly understood, means that the 
farther we are removed from outer presentations, our 
consciousness becomes less and less intensive : Aesthetic 
is subjective the more it loses contact with Reality. The 
theory is an echo of his doctrine of Inner Sense as a form 
of consciousness which is not schematic. Subjectivity 
first appears in the Beautiful. The pleasure is not the 



226 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

consequence of sensation but the concomitant of aesthetic 
reflexion, and consequently seems to lose the thrill of 
sensation and sensuous charm. We are still, however, 
in the realm of Appearance. But in the Sublime, 
subjectivity becomes outrageous. We soar upwards 
into the void where there are no objects of Appearance 
but incoherent figurations of a blind Imagination. Yet 
there is no candid reader who will seriously believe that 
this is an adequate statement of Kant s meaning. In 
Reflexion, of which Aesthetic is the typical expression, 
he finds something more than the neutral attitude of 
Science ; it is the Personal in man. It could not there 
fore be other than subjective, but for Kant it is the 
richest plane of experience and objective in its own 
right, though it cannot be measured by the standard of 
Science. It is in the Sublime, regarded as a further 
development of the moral Ideal, that we receive this 
deeper impression of Kant s meaning ; and while we 
acknowledge that in his exposition the gulf between 
Nature and Freedom is widened, we are bound to 
admit that in principle he effects a reconciliation be 
tween them. This principle is expressed mainly in the 
profound conception of subjective teleology as the felt 
harmony of our mental powers, and may be studied in 
the two Introductions, especially the first, and also in 
his theory of Genius. 

An attempt may be made in closing this first part of 
the Critique of Judgment to indicate a solution of the 
final problem, how, in spite of their subjective character, 
the judgments of Reflexion may be considered as even 
more objective than those of Science. According to 
Weber s law, the intensity of sensation varies in a 
constant ratio with the increase or diminution in the 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 227 

presentation-stimulus. For our purpose it does not 
matter whether we reject this quantitative theory and 
hold with M. Bergson that there is no minimum 
increment of sensation. The fact remains that the 
intensity of sensation diminishes in the degree that 
presentations are withdrawn. But this is only true 
up to a certain point. Increase the presentation- 
stimulus to its maximum and sensation disappears. 
Thus we have two very different orders of zero, 
that which registers the total absence of presentation 
and that which registers the maximum of stimulation. 
There can be no hesitation in deciding which of 
these applies to Aesthetic. Notwithstanding the ideal 
character of the world of Art as removed from the 
first rude contact with Reality in sensation, there is 
no diminution but an access of vitality. Therefore 
our zero must be the maximum. Aesthetic feeling 
is not the negation of sensibility but the transmuta 
tion of sense-affection into a new order of sensation. 
What gives the appearance of objectivity to sense- 
perception is just the partial and limited range of the 
presentation-stimuli. Their number is so modest that 
we are incapable of rejecting their addresses and readily 
give ourselves up to their entertainment. A few guests 
are always engaging and compel our devoted attention. 
But what do you do when the whole world calls at 
your house ? You begin to think of your own 
soul. It is not the absence but the prodigality of 
presentations that exhausts our sensibility and over 
steps the maximum. Now think of the whole world 
knocking at your senses, and you will readily conceive 
how you may be conscious of no sense-affections, just 
as we do not hear the motions of the heavenly bodies 



228 THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

after the fancy of the Pythagoreans, and still have an 
intensive consciousness. Kant s degrees in Subjectivity 
are our degrees in Reality. Aesthetic is for him an 
original faculty of intuition which is independent of the 
distinction between subjective and objective, thought 
and sense, because its object is the supersensible sub 
strate of Nature " which lies at its basis and also at the 
basis of our faculty of thought." l 

1 Bernard, p. 117. 



CHAPTER VII. 

TELEOLOGY OF NATURE. 

WE now turn to what seems to be a very different 
subject of study. But if we keep in mind Kant s 
original intention, the transition to the Teleology of 
Nature is quite easy. It is sufficient that we should 
have pleasure in discovering purposive connections, to 
bring this discriminative activity under a common 
principle with Aesthetic. For although the pleasure 
in either is of a different kind, it is characteristic of 
a mental procedure common to both, in which the 
mind is more interested in its own processes than in 
arriving at any definite conclusion. Each is a form 
of judgment which does not define an object but 
illustrates the way in which the conscious subject is 
affected. This is what Kant means by Reflexion. If 
we are pleased to call it a judgment, we must remember 
that it is not logical but psychological ; for in place of a 
predicate whose meaning is fixed and explicit, there is 
only an inarticulate feeling or affective description. 
A thing is beautiful only so long as it contains 
something which cannot be defined ; and living forms, 
in like manner, lose all their sacredness and charm, 
when a mechanical interpretation is sufficiently con 
vincing to influence our judgment and to destroy the 
sense of wonder in which Philosophy takes its rise. 



230 THE CROWNING PHASE. OF 

No doubt, connected with the difference in the 
kind of pleasure, there is a very marked distinction 
between the objects of Art and Teleology. In com 
mon language we speak of beautiful objects, although 
they are not beautiful in themselves but as representa 
tions in consciousness. Aesthetic pleasure is not the 
perception of a quality in the object but the sense of 
harmony in our mental processes. Or if we still 
prefer to use the language of common sense* and 
say that the object is itself a harmony of elements, 
it is nevertheless true that its purposive form only 
comes to self-consciousness in us. The beautiful 
object indeed exists outside of us, but conceived as 
a common object it has no aesthetic interest. If now 
we turn to living forms, we are confronted with things 
which continue to hold our interest while they also 
exist independently, and indeed because they do so. 
Therein lies the difference between Aesthetic and 
Teleology. Even the objects of Science are the creatures 
of our Understanding, their extension, rigidity and 
motion are subjective constructions ; and whatever their 
independent basis may be, they do not exist as objects 
in themselves, for object means synthesis and synthesis 
is the work of mind. For the sake of brevity we might 
adopt J. S. Mill s convenient evasion and say that they 
are permanent possibilities of sensation. How much 
more will the objects of Aesthetic, which is a still more 
independent activity than Understanding, be the peculiar 
creation of our mind? Our processes of imagination, 
feeling and thought are the objects themselves, and con 
sequently the pleasure we feel is quite distinctive. We 
have aesthetic satisfaction only when objects yield up 
their natural existence and impersonate our inner life. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 231 

But in observing living forms, our admiration is sustained 
by the thought that the object has an independent being, 
and we enjoy the excitement of our own processes, not 
because they are a finished symphony as in aesthetic 
pleasure, but just because they are incomplete ; it is 
pleasure in a harmony that is realised progressively. 
Our own processes are interesting only because they 
are the transcript of a purposive form which is in 
tensely interested in its own activity. We may now 
express the distinction in Kant s technical language : 
" we can regard natural beauty as the presentation of 
the concept of the formal (merely subjective) purpo- 
siveness, and natural purposes as the presentation of the 
concept of a real (objective) purposiveness." 1 

But even this difference of province between Aesthetic 
and Teleology need not put us off the track. For 
although Teleology is the experience of our affective 
states in essential connection with real objects, in the 
long run it is not less subjective than Aesthetic. It does 
not profess to determine anything conclusive about these 
objects. It is true that all Science is built up by 
teleological observation, and Kant himself devotes more 
attention to Teleology as a system of heuristic principles 
than is consistent with his original purpose. But he is 
quite positive in his opinion that the experimental 
sciences never give a final result which is different in 
kind from our mathematical knowledge of Nature. 
However far the biological sciences may carry their 
investigations, they do not come any nearer to the secret 
of a living form. Undoubtedly the sciences greatly 
extend our knowledge of Nature, but they are still 
working from the outside with quantities and measure- 
1 Bernard, Introd. p. 35. 



232 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

ments; and if, as Kant says, the end of Nature must 
be sought outside Nature, the door is foreclosed 
against them. He means that there can be no science 
of ultimate ends corresponding to our knowledge of 
relative existence. And since Metaphysic has the ulti 
mate for its object, it can never be a positive science 
but only the science of the limits of human reason. 

In teleological reflexion we do not define the exhaus 
tive unity of existence in a living form, but, to use a 
phrase of Mr. Bradley, give " illustrations of its latent 
qualities." For although a thing exhibits purposive 
activity and may therefore be regarded as an End of 
Nature (Naturzweck], we are not at liberty to say that 
its existence is an End of Nature. 1 The end which it 
embodies is limited to the organism and is not by any 
means self-explaining. All that we have said is that 
there is present a relative End of Nature. We are 
using little more than a figure of speech when we say 
that an organism is a natural purpose, for this it could 
only be if it were also a natural product. But if we try 
to answer this latter question we fall into confusion, for 
it is meaningless to speak of a product unless we know 
something about the mode of production. We say 
it is a product of Nature and do not even know what 
Nature is. 

It is true that we do see Nature organising herself in 
her products, and Kant himself thinks that we are 
nearest to the truth when we describe Nature as " an 
analogon of life." : But this is not encouraging : for it 
either means Hylozoism, the conception of Nature as 
living substance, which contradicts the very being of 
matter, spontaneous generation being an idle fancy for 

1 Bernard, 67, p. 283. * Ibid. p. 279. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 233 

Kant ; or it means the conception of Nature as informed 
by a soul, which is equally improper, for Nature is made 
into the instrument of a soul which governs it but does 
not bring it into being; or, finally, this latter theory 
may take the deistic form that the soul, existing from 
without, fashions the world out of an independent sub 
stance which it does not make. As he says in a further 
passage, to think of Nature as an intelligent being 
would be preposterous, and to place another intelligent 
being above it as its architect would be presumptuous. 1 
For the reason that we cannot prove the existence of 
God, we are also unable to speak of a natural product 
with any degree of intelligence. In order to speak of 
a natural product it is not enough to think of it as mani 
festing a purpose of Nature in its inner structure, for 
this is limited to the life of the organism and gives no 
hint of Nature s complete design ; we must be able to 
give the full reason for its existence as a reciprocal 
part of a world-organism. This would be to determine 
with precision the final end of Nature, and this we 
cannot do without a scientific knowledge of the God 
who made it, which is impossible. 

Kant gives the example of a blade of grass. 2 A blade 
of grass is an organic form of Nature and therefore 
something which no mechanical interpretation can ever 
explain. It is no mere concursus of fortuitous atoms. 
Even to make it thinkable at all, we must introduce the 
idea of design. So far, then, as its internal structure is 
concerned, it may be regarded as a natural purpose. But 
our fatal mistake is to jump from this purely subjective 
idea of design, which is a necessity of our Reason, to its 
actual existence, as if what we think ought to be must 

1 Bernard, p. 290. "Ibid. 67. 



234 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

be in fact. It is the same criticism as Kant makes on the 
ontological argument for the being of God. How do 
we know that there is any final end in Nature at all ? 
Indeed our certitude diminishes as the evidences of 
design increase ; for each fact of teleological observation 
leads to another by which it is cancelled, and we are 
carried forward in an unending progression from which 
the idea of a final purpose fades away. Thus, while the 
blade of grass bears the evidence of design in its struc 
ture and cannot have sprung up by accident, it offers no 
indication of the reason for its existence and we must 
seek the final cause outside of it. Let us say, then, that 
it is needful for the ox. But the ox is not in itself an end 
of Nature and again we must be satisfied with a relative 
explanation. We can say that the ox is needful for man 
as a means of subsistence. But no amount of scientific 
knowledge can offer the reason for man s existence, 
though he is the most highly developed of all organic 
products. The end of existence only becomes more 
ironical as the adaptations appear more wonderful. 
To take another example from Kant, the Laplander 
finds many conveniences marvellously suited to the 
maintenance of life in these inhospitable regions : the 
reindeer which can subsist on a dry moss which they 
scratch from under the snow, enable him to have inter 
course with other races of men ; sea-animals provide 
him with food and clothing, and with their fat and the 
wpod floated in by the sea his huts are warmed. This 
is very instructive, but it gives no conclusive proof of a 
divine purpose in Nature. For neither do these con 
veniences exist exclusively for the Laplander, although 
he happens to make use of them, nor does he contain a 
reason in his own being why he should be thus provided. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 235 

If men are to live there must be the means of livelihood, 
but it is not by any means clear why men should exist at 
all. As Kant rather wittily remarks, the case of the 
Laplander is not an evidence of purpose and harmony, 
but rather of their absence in the constitution of the 
world ; for it is only disagreement and strife that could 
have dispersed mankind into such inhospitable regions. 1 
Teleology therefore in Kant s view makes no pre 
tension to Science. Though it deals with objects which 
have an independent reality, it is subjective like Aes 
thetic. Its use as a scientific principle in building up 
our experimental knowledge of Nature is only a 
secondary result and not its proper function, which 
is to determine not the mechanical relations of objects 
but the total unity of their existence, their purpose or 
end. Now Science is so far exhaustive in its achieve 
ment, and Teleology would likewise be Science if it 
could discover with the same precision the final causes 
of things. But we have seen that it can never do this. 
In Science our judgments are objective because our 
thoughts about objects obtain necessity in sense-percep 
tion. But in Teleology our thoughts are only possi 
bilities which cannot be verified in actual presentation. 
We can have no sensation of an end. So while the 
judgments of Teleology may indeed be necessary truths 
of Reason, they are not necessary truths of Science. 
They are economic devices of Reason to help our 
memory and to save us from being confused in the 
multitude of scientific principles, by giving them the 
lead in a single direction towards which they converge 
and meet in a point. By the discovery of common 
elements, the multiplicity of scientific kinds is reduced 

1 Bernard, 63. 



236 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

to a comparatively small number of higher genera 
(entia praeter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda). These 
genera are capable of being further differentiated by 
features which are only found in a certain number 
of the species included under the genus, and thus 
the number of genera is increased on a new basis 
of distribution gentium varietates non temere esse minu- 
endas). But Reason will not rest until it has reduced 
all these genera with their sub-genera to a single, com 
prehensive unity, and this is effected by carrying the 
principle of differentiation to an unlimited extent until 
the plurality of genera melts away and gives place to a 
single genus. For by increasing the diversity, it is 
found that the sub-genera or species hitherto obtained 
are not fixed but continuous with one another. And 
although this approach of Reason to a final unity is 
always asymptotic, it is understood in the interest of 
systematic knowledge that no species is absolutely sepa 
rated from another ; it will always be possible to discover 
between any two a third whose difference from either 
of them is less than their difference from each other, 
and so prove their affinity (non datur vacuum form arum). 1 
In consequence of these three maxims of Reason, 
namely, Homogeneity, Specification and Continuity, 
the general principle follows that there are no first and 
original differences separated from each other by an 
empty interval, but that all the manifold genera are 
divisions in a single, supreme genus. It is natural that 
we should think of this final point in which the various 
principles meet, as a stable fact of Science ; and if man 
were to be taken as the apex of the manifold genera, he 
would not only be able to give a reason for the hope 
1 Appendix to Dialectic. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 237 

that is in himself but also to substantiate the existence 
of all the lower forms as ends of Nature in their relation 
to him. Teleology would then have scientific value 
and man s immortality might rest on other than moral 
grounds. Modern thought favours this point of view 
and has reversed the order in Kant s statement. As 
Dr. Ward would put it, Science is not objective and 
ultimate but reflective, while it is Teleology that inter- 
pretes the real constitution of Nature. Science is only 
a conceptual description of facts, and for its boasted 
necessity there is not a trace of evidence except what 
we project into Nature out of our own heads, causation 
being nothing more than what Mill said it was, uniform 
antecedence. It seems that Hume was not so far wrong 
after all. But the modern attitude to Teleology is 
different. The ends which we read into Nature are 
valid and objectively true because they are a creative 
interpretation of Nature. 

We shall not stay to examine this position further. 
But it is right to say that the difference between Kant 
and his critics is in great part a matter of words. We 
have reason to think that the Subjective in which 
Teleology finds its place, is for Kant more real than 
Science ; but he reserves for Science the title to know 
ledge and denies it to Teleology, because in its deter 
minate, mechanical relations Science has the completeness 
and finality of a limited achievement. However, we 
must at present accept Kant on his own terms. This 
point to which reflective Reason decoys the laws of 
Understanding is no proved fact of Science but an 
illusion, a focus imaginarius, like the naive belief that 
objects reflected in a mirror are actually behind it. 1 

^Appendix to Dialectic: Meiklejohn, p. 395. 



238 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

He is quite emphatic in the Critique of Pure Reason 
that these principles are not derived from the actual 
nature of objects but from the interest of Reason 
in the completeness of knowledge. 1 They are not 
constitutive but reflective, not interpretative but descrip 
tive. They are not properly concerned with objects at 
all, but only with the way in which they are illustrated 
in the consciousness of ourselves. Teleology is there 
fore reflective like Aesthetic. They are different because 
they are on different planes and are occupied with 
different aspects of Nature, the former through re 
flexion on concepts, the latter through reflexion on 
representations. 

This is the implicit intention of Kant s Teleology. 
Its primary significance is not logical but affective. It 
is the play of concepts as Aesthetic is the play of repre 
sentations. In neither of these forms of judgment 
do we look for a predicate which specifies the scientific 
nature of objects, so much as for an affective Idea which 
carries their resonance in the consciousness of our 
own processes and is marked by a feeling of pleasure. 
This is their common attribute and the only justi 
fication for having brought them together as modes 
of Reflexion. But there are so many strands in the 
discussion that we lose sight of this original motive 
in a complicated analysis. Kant himself seems to 
forget all about it and shows a greater amount of 
interest in the metaphysics of Biology, so that we 
who have been hitherto engaged in the analysis of 
Fine Art now find ourselves thinking of Darwinism 
and kindred problems. He had already discussed 
Teleology at sufficient length in the Dialectic, being 
l lbid. p. 408. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 239 

more intent on the criticism of its misuse than on the 
recognition of its positive function. What he ought now 
to have done is to develop this positive side so as to 
show its affinity with Aesthetic. But throughout the 
Critique of Judgment and the two Introductions we hear 
the same old song as in the Dialectic, with the exception 
of a few sporadic strains. 

There is, of course, a new element introduced 
into Teleology in the Critique of Judgment. In the 
Dialectic Kant is only concerned with what may be 
termed Formal Teleology, because it surveys things 
with a view to their symmetrical arrangement in 
a logical system ; and it does this on the principle 
that Nature specifies the laws of Understanding, which 
really mean mechanical causation, into more minute 
applications throughout her whole empire. This pro 
cedure of Reason carries the belief that Nature will 
be found constant to her character as governed by 
necessary laws, even when we press the causal con 
ditions to their farthest limit which is manifestly 
beyond the reach of knowledge. It is no other than 
Mill s Uniformity of Nature with his supplementary 
doctrine of Probability. 

This is the logical disposition of Nature, though it 
must not be supposed that it is the empty analysis 
of an arbitrary premiss. Kant explains in the origi 
nal Introduction that it rests on a transcendental 
principle which has its ground of expectation in Nature 
herself ; it is not the Logic of the Syllogism but the 
Logic of Nature. 1 This does not alter the fact, how 
ever, that the system of Nature obtained by inductive 
hypothesis is logical, for Nature is never given to us 
1 Vber Philoscphie uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 590, note. 



240 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

as a completed whole any more than she is given as 
beautiful, and therefore Induction like Art is a tele- 
ological determination of Nature. Not seeing the end, 
we endure " as seeing Him who is invisible," and are 
only able to realise it in a logical anticipation. Accord 
ingly, we are not surprised to find Kant saying that 
the end or ends, by whose help we imagine to ourselves 
the independent series of causal conditions not only 
as completed in themselves but also as uniting in a 
final direction, do not exist in the things of Nature ; 
it is solely in the thinking subject they reside, for the 
behoof of his reflective faculty. 1 It is called formal 
Teleology because it is a necessity of our Reason to 
regard Nature as governed throughout her extent by 
a systematic Idea, and because it does not dogmatically 
assert that there is a purposive activity in Nature 
herself. For as Stadler admirably expresses it, the 
laws of Nature are always mechanical and it is only 
their relation to each other that is not mechanical. 
When we say that a particular thing is contingent, 
we must not mean that it cannot be mechanically 
explained ; for how could we ever recognise that it 
fell outside the universal order of Nature unless 
it were a possible object of experience with causal 
conditions ? Every fragment of appearance must have 
causal relations, even the most complicated fact must 
be presented as a sum of effects ; otherwise it is no 
object of experience. 2 What we want to know is 
how these innumerable threads of causal conditions, 
which no memory can hold, are related to each other 
and whether they unite in a common direction. The 



. p. 594. 

2 August Stadler, Kants Teleologie, pp. 63-4. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 241 

hypothesis of Reason is absolutely necessary for the 
sustained activity of Understanding, for without this 
systematic Idea of determination according to end, 
Nature would be a torso even as mechanism and the 
supposed necessity of the categories would have merely 
subjective validity. As Kant says in the Introduction, 
without the principle of Formal Teleology " the 
Understanding could not find itself in Nature." 1 

What is to be noticed in this entire procedure of 
Reason is that nothing further is determined in the 

o 

constitution of Nature herself. Formal Teleology 
rather emphasises the mechanical order of Nature and 
gives sureties for its continuous and unquestioned 
application. The novel feature in the Critique of 
Judgment is that Nature is purposive, not simply as 
a logical system in the interest of our Reason but in 
the organisation of her own products. These organic 
forms are much more than a complex of mechanical 
processes, and are only intelligible if we regard them 
as the immediate products of a Nature which organises 
herself in them. We should expect this new field of 
observation to react in a very marked way on the 
teleological judgment, to the extent of creating a new 
type of Reflexion. For there is the greatest possible 
distinction between a Nature of mechanism, which is 
only figured as purposive with a view to completing 
and sustaining its original character, and a Nature 
which is herself purposive in her products. The for 
mer exists as a system altogether in our teleological 
reflexion, but the latter is in parts of her domain 
quite independent of our interpretation and is herself 
purposive. This at least is how the case seems to 

1 Bernard, p. 36. 
Q 



242 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

stand. And Kant makes the rather unexpected state 
ment that this Objective Teleology " has nothing to 
do with a feeling of pleasure in things." 1 Surely 
this is taking very high ground. It shows at least 
how clearly Kant meant to distinguish the two fields 
of teleological observation. He freely acknowledges 
that in Formal Teleology the discovery of a higher 
principle under which several heterogeneous laws of 
Nature may be combined, is the ground of a very 
marked pleasure, although hardly anyone except a 
transcendental philosopher is capable of this admira 
tion ; 2 and if we do not always have this feeling, 
it was certainly present at one time. But in the case 
of things which are themselves real organisations, it 
would seem that our own interests are silenced in 
the presence of a being which enjoys its own existence, 
and we surrender the pleasure we might have in our 
processes of observation to the neutral attitude of 
the scientist who merely registers the harmonious 
activity of the organism. Thus the difference between 
these two provinces of observation does not affect the 
nature of Kant s Teleology in the slightest degree. 

Two courses were open to him : either the sub 
jective factor in the judgment is practically negligible, 
as appears from the statement just quoted in which 
the feeling of pleasure is excluded, and then Teleology 
becomes an objective judgment of Science and ceases to 
be a form of Reflexion altogether ; or its reflective 
character is retained, not because of, but in spite of, 
its objective province. His critical temper will not 

1 Bernard, Introd. p. 34. Cp. fiber Philosophic ilberhaupt: Rosen- 
kranz, i. pp. 602-3 ; Hart, vi. p. 392. 

2 fiber Philosophle uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 595. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 243 

tolerate the first alternative, for he is bound to main 
tain that Metaphysic can never be Science. Just as 
he had exposed the false application of Formal 
Teleology in the Dialectic, he must now show that 
no form of judgment which goes beyond the causal 
connections in experience can have more than sub 
jective validity. He therefore explodes the illusive 
certainty to which we pretend in our interpretation 
of organic life, quite in the manner of the Dialectic, and 
finally proclaims that what he himself calls objective, 
material, internal purposes are only predicates of Reflec 
tive Reason. But this is just Formal Teleology over 
again, and the judgment has gained nothing from the 
character of this new field of observation. We simply 
pass through the world of organic life and, like a 
diver whose eyes are shut under the water, rise to 
the surface as wise as we were before. We can now 
appreciate Stadler when he says that the Reflective 
Judgment in its entirety is identical with the regula 
tive Ideas of Reason, and that the only peculiar and 
novel feature in Reflexion is Aesthetic. 1 At first we 
should be naturally inclined to agree with Dr. Frost, 
who holds, on the contrary, that they are not the 
same, for Reflexion is meant to provide deeper cate 
gories corresponding to those of the Understanding. 
But Stadler is speaking from the actual results of Kant s 
exposition, and Frost admits that he is quite correct, 2 

1 " Wo immer Kant von einer eigenttimlichen Urteilskraft spricht, 
er damit die asthetische meint, und dass er keineswegs gedacht hat in 
der teleologischen Urteilskraft ein neues, von der Kritik der reinen 
Vernunft noch ungekanntes Vermogen aufzustellen." Kants Teleologie, 
p. 29, cp. p. 36. 

2 Der Be griff der Urteilskraft bei Kant, p. 115. 



244 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

as indeed it is only too easy to prove his position from 
statements in the two Introductions, which are quite 
explicit in its favour. But if this is all we have to 
learn, we have spent our labour in vain. The teeming 
forms of life emit no response to our efforts to under 
stand them, but shrink into their crevices before the 
fatal sneer of Criticism ; and all that we have for our 
part is a judgment which is neither scientific nor 
reflective, but a hybrid form of judgment which deter 
mines nothing either in the object or the subject. 
For Criticism is perfectly justified in reducing organic 
life to the same level as the field of observation 
in Formal Teleology. Organisms must be perfect 
mechanisms above all else, and any flaw in the mechani 
cal functions is fatal to the life. The heart beats, the 
blood circulates, with the same purposeless, insensate 
motion as the stamps in the battery of a gold-mine. 
As Kant says, without mechanism organised beings 
" would not be natural products." l They are a system 
of mechanical processes which we can follow and under 
stand. What we cannot understand is the system 
itself, which gives a meaning and a purposive direction 
to those processes which no mechanism could initiate. 
An organism is as true to its mechanical character 
as an engine which is controlled by an external agent, 
although the controlling power is not without but in 
the organic processes themselves. Consequently our 
teleological observation of an organism is essentially 
the same as when we round off the purely mechanical 
world of Nature into a completed system by the help 
of final Ideas. Organisms, therefore, from our point 
of view, are not generically distinct from the totality 
1 Bernard, p. 342. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 245 

of mechanical Nature as empirically contingent for our 
Reason ; they are particular illustrations of what is 
essentially the same problem, and though outstanding 
are not peculiar. 

But the question which becomes increasingly insistent 
in the Critique of Judgment is precisely how far the 
standpoint of the Kantian Criticism is justified. If we 
accept the position that the mechanical interpretation of 
Nature, as the essential implicate in the conditions of 
knowledge, is the first and indispensable basis of all 
Science, we need not look for anything higher even in 
Organic Nature than a Formal Teleology the synthesis 
of mechanical relations in the unity of a logical system. 
But the priority of a mechanical interpretation is not 
by any means a proved position, notwithstanding its 
significance for Epistemology. Nor are we therefore 
required to deny the intimate association of Episte 
mology with the Metaphysic of Nature. For our part 
we see no reason to reject Kant s fundamental principle 
that all Science of Nature must be based on the fact of 
self-consciousness. Even Pluralism, in spite of its 
antagonism to Kant s theory of knowledge, may be said 
to accept his principle : with the characteristic quali 
fication that the emphasis is placed on the conative 
rather than on the cognitive aspect of self-consciousness. 
But Kant s peculiar analysis of self-consciousness 
admitted of only two alternatives, which excluded the 
counterpart in consciousness to that aspect of Nature 
which is most insistent in its demand for explanation, 
and which is universally regarded as higher than 
mechanism in the scale of values, namely, the organic. 
These alternatives were, the interpretation of self-con 
sciousness as a mystical unity and as a determined 



246 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

succession represented under the form of space. And 
since the former was quite undetermined in content 
and therefore useless as a category of interpretation, 
Kant adopted the latter as the representative schema of 
Nature. There was no middle way. Hence his theory 
of knowledge that the mathematical and physical 
sciences are established by analysis of the nature of 
self-consciousness. But though the conditions of know 
ledge require that there shall be necessity in Nature, 
they do not decide one way or another as to what the 
nature of this necessity may be. We are quite free to 
suppose that mechanism is only an abstract aspect of a 
deeper Reality, which includes mechanism as a factor 
but which is not itself mechanical. As we shall pre 
sently see in the following pages, Kant s theory of 
Nature in the Critique of Judgment requires a conception 
of mechanism which is something more than just 
mechanism itself. The consequence is that Formal 
Teleology loses its significance ; for what Kant repre 
sents as a logical system of mechanical relations, is really 
a system of relations which are not merely mechanical 
and therefore a system which is not merely logical. 

Kant s error was to suppose that Teleology is only 
the indefinite extension of a mechanical whole : the 
latter, which is always relative, becomes a teleological 
whole when it is rounded off by a logical complement. 
The completed teleological whole is thus the logical 
equivalent for what is meant to be a completed 
mechanical whole, and is therefore a Formal Teleology. 
Now, as Mr. Bosanquet has recently remarked, 1 there is 
a striking resemblance between a mechanical and a 
teleological whole : both are approximations to the 
1 Proc. Arist. Soc. 1912, Purpose and Mechanism, iii. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 247 

type of timeless existence. Of course a mechanical 
system such as an engine exists in time, but time does 
not exist for it to any appreciable degree. As a 
constant repetition of identical relations, the engine is 
equally significant at any given moment, succeeding 
repetitions contribute nothing to its perfection as a 
system. Its functioning has nothing corresponding to 
memory the assimilation of the past to the present 
with a bearing on the future, and therefore the engine 
exists only in numerical moments which have no in 
dividuality in time. On the other hand, at the opposite 
extreme, a perfect teleological whole may also be re 
garded as timeless ; for, as a complete realisation, it 
transcends the temporal process which is essential to a 
finite purposive whole. It would thus be quite easy to 
suppose that Mechanism and Teleology are identical in 
nature, the latter being simply an indefinite extension of 
the former. But Kant hardly recognised that the very 
idea of extending the system must alter its whole 
character. His own conception of regulative Ideas 
which imperatively demand completeness of explanation 
(res completae), requires a different interpretation of 
Teleology. Why must we demand completeness for 
the relative mechanical whole, unless this latter itself 
exhibits a tendency towards completeness and is there 
fore in its nature conative ? Is this not what Kant 
himself means by his rather unexpected announcement, 
that, having once discovered a true instance of teleology 
in organisms, we must eventually extend the organic 
conception to the whole of Nature ? Nor is this inter 
pretation of Teleology inconsistent with its apparent 
independence of time. For still its timelessness is not 
that of an abstract logical unity but of a unity which 



248 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

must be regarded as somehow conative. For, as 
Mr. Bosanquet further observes, perfect realisation 
implies satisfaction, satisfaction is inseparable from the 
notion of value, and the appreciation of value can 
hardly be divorced from conation. Even as absolute, 
Teleology does not exclude the individuality of its 
moments. The connection of perfect realisation with 
conation may seem paradoxical enough, but it is not by 
any means inconceivable. And, without going back to 
the Platonic and Aristotelian conception of pleasure un 
conditioned by want, we find the contradiction realised 
in Kant s aesthetic theory. Although he conceived of 
aesthetic experience as essentially immediate, he could 
yet find room within this immediacy for a kind of 
causality by which the mental powers maintain them 
selves : not as if the aesthetic state were in its nature 
incomplete, but simply to indicate that excellence of 
activity can never be devoid of power ; * it is a state 
of complete realisation which is unceasingly engaged in 
realising its own excellence, or in Kant s words, it is 
purposiveness without a purpose. He therefore refused 
to connect Aesthetic with the reproductive function of 
Imagination, and placed it in the medium of Productive 
Imagination where time seems to exist in the form of a 
conceptual play rather than of a sensuous representa 
tion. Accordingly, a teleological whole can only be 
understood on the analogy of individual experience. 
We are not therefore pledged to say that it has in 
dividual consciousness ; we only need to assert that it 

1 " And, O heavens, can we ever be made to believe that motion 
and life and soul and mind are not present with absolute being ? 
Can we imagine being to be devoid of life and mind, and to remain 
in awful unmeaningness an everlasting fixture ? " Plato s Sophist, 249. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 249 

has at least that individuality of being which is implied 
in eternal and complete unity with self. And if a 
perfect teleological whole is in its nature conative, a 
fortiori a finite teleological whole, that is, an organism, 
must be explained as a system of real purposes and 
not as an appearance which is due to the discursive 
application of a logical end. 

Accordingly, the difference between organic and in 
organic remains to be explained. In the one case 
mechanical Nature does nothing to further its own 
interests, it lodges no claim to systematic uniformity ; 
it is we who have to bring its case to chancery and plead 
its cause. But in the other, Nature is assertive and needs 
no counsel to speak for her. For though we see no 
more than a complicated mechanism at work in a living 
being, and can have no determinate perception of an end 
or purpose as we do have of necessary changes in causal 
sequence, it enacts a purposed plan in every phase of 
its activity ; we are quite sure that there is more than 
mechanism there, although we cannot give it a name 
that has any intelligible sound in the language of 
mechanism, just as the conception of end has no mean 
ing for a Haeckel. Yet there is nothing in the teleo 
logical judgment to register this change. Our pulses 
do not quicken nor is imagination kindled, there is no 
intimation that we are in the presence of the living ; 
nay, we are even told that this kind of observation has 
nothing to do with a feeling of pleasure. 

Thus Organic Teleology is neither scientific nor re 
flective for Kant. He indeed calls it reflective, but 
that it is not reflective is quite evident from his 
statement that it has nothing to do with a feeling of 
pleasure. The explanation of his perplexing attitude is 



250 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

that he could see no means of connecting Reflexion, or 
the consciousness of subjective purpose, with objectivity. 
Judgment for him must be either purely subjective 
hence the false subjectivity of his aesthetic theory, or 
purely objective hence the false objectivity of mechan 
ism and its consequent priority in his theory of know 
ledge. But since Organic Teleology must be in the 
first instance subjective for the behoof of our reflective 
faculty, and since it must also take some cognisance of 
the objectivity of its province : Kant was fain to in 
stitute a hybrid hypothetical judgment which resembles 
a blend of Science and Reflexion, but which really deter 
mines nothing either in the object or in the subject. 
While this hypothetical predication pretends to be 
4 reflective, though it has nothing whatever to do with 
Reflexion, it practically reduces Organic Teleology to 
the universal postulate of Uniformity the conception 
of a formal purposiveness of Nature without which the 
Understanding could not find itself in Nature. The 
principle of Uniformity were well enough if it were an 
elastic conception which admits of different levels of 
coherence, and if it were left to Nature herself to decide 
what kind of coherence will be forthcoming in any 
given instance. But when the principle is understood, 
as Kant understood it, to mean that there is one 
fundamental type of uniformity and one only, namely 
the mechanical, that Nature is therefore coherent only 
in the sense of an invariable repetition of identical 
relations without the slightest difference of quality : the 
door is foreclosed against us ; whatever type of co 
herence other than mechanical which Nature may 
present, must be regarded as an inexplicable accident 
which is due not to Nature but to the nature of our 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 251 

Understanding. Organic Teleology consequently re 
solves into the analysis of organisms strictly as effects, 
not of organisms as themselves causes : it is Teleology 
considered solely as an ancillary instrument of Science, 
which is not also the explication of a higher type of 
coherence in Nature ; it is Teleology exclusively as a 
means of explanation, not as a fact which itself requires 
to be explained. If we wish to vary our language and 
say that, in view of those natural products which are 
not mechanical, Nature is most happily conceived as an 
anakgon of life , Kant has no objection provided we do 
not run into Hylozoism ; or we may adopt a psycho 
logical instead of a logical idea and think of Nature as 
acting on the analogy of our practical causality. But 
although these expressions may be more picturesque, 
they are nothing more for Kant than alternative state 
ments of the mechanical principle of Uniformity. 
Nature is not allowed to speak for herself. Organic 
Teleology is consequently an external reflection T on a 
given Nature, it is not in any sense a reflexion * as we 
have understood the term in connection with Aesthetic. 
It can only be a form of Reflexion, in the technical 
sense we have given it, if it is the predication of a real 
quality which is at the same time reflected in the 
consciousness of ourselves. In other words, Teleology 
as a reflective idea is not a contingent inductive 
hypothesis, for it is Nature in us that determines the 
particular kind of coherence or uniformity which this 
* reflective idea should lead us to anticipate. This is 
the psychological aspect of Teleology on which we have 

1 The difference in spelling is intentional, in order to conserve the 
technical sense of the word in the Critique of Judgment. Vide supra, 
p. 33, note. 



252 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

insisted as Kant s real problem in the Critique of 
Judgment. The emphasis is to be placed on the contribu 
tion of objects to our perception of them : what we 
think of them is bound up with the way in which we 
are affected by them; our teleological observation takes its 
peculiar character from the nature of the objects them 
selves. And, in so far as it has a coherent content, our 
{ reflective observation is also logical ; but it is by the 
Logic of inner development that it is governed, and not 
by the Logic of external reflection on a given material. 
Certainly a strong case may be made in Kant s favour 
to show that he did appreciate the distinction between 
Formal and Objective Teleology. Dr. Walter Frost, 
for instance, rates Reflexion higher than Formal Tele 
ology because it brings an intensive insight into objects, 
while Formal Teleology only makes a demand for 
larger objects and a larger outlook. We are far from 
denying the truth of this opinion, and hope to use it 
with advantage in the proper place. Thus the highest 
reach in the Objective Teleology, to take it in its net 
result, is the interpretation of organisms as the spon 
taneous products of a Creative Understanding, the 
conception of which is based on the analogy of our own 
practical causality. This is a thought which is infinitely 
higher, more illuminating, and more precious as it is 
more human, than the greatest pretension of Formal 
Teleology which is the interpretation of Nature, not as 
the immediate product of an Author, but of an indeter 
minate cause in which it is eminently contained. As 
Kant says, " the transcendental and only determinate 
conception of God, which is presented to us by specula 
tive reason, is in the strictest sense deistic" l Therefore 
1 Transcend. Dialectic : Meiklejohn, p. 413. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 253 

the Objective Teleology is a deeper insight into Nature 
than Formal, as the immanence of Theism excels the 
artificial transcendence of Deism. 

This is readily conceded. But the more intensive 
the predicate the farther is Kant drawn away from his 
proper study, which is not to interpret organisms 
as effects but as themselves causes. An intensive 
predicate does not constitute Teleology into Reflexion 
unless this intensity is reflected in the consciousness 
of ourselves. Reflexion is something more than induc 
tive hypothesis, if by inductive hypothesis we mean an 
invariable principle of uniformity which is restricted 
to a single type of coherence. It is only in the 
theory of Aesthetic that Reflexion maintains its dis 
tinctive character, and there is absolutely nothing in 
the Teleology of Nature to save it from confusion 

o / 

with the ordinary, systematic or Formal Teleology 
which is just the specification of Causality to the nth 
power. Judging by results, then, Stadler is justified 
when he says that Reflexion is nothing different from 
the regulative function of Reason in the Dialectic, 
excepting Aesthetic, which alone introduces a new 
principle. The process of Induction is described in 
the Critique of Pure Reason as Reflexion is later defined 
in the Critique of Judgment, the qualification of a par 
ticular which is given and certain by a merely proble 
matic idea; 1 and the maxims of Reason, Homogeneity, 
Specification and Continuity, are called the maxims of 
the Urteihkraft? The Teleology of Nature, in Kant s 
treatment, is simply an extension of Formal Teleology, 
and so the Critique of Judgment closes with the same 

^Appendix to Dialectic : Meildejohn, p. 396. 
2 Bernard, Introd. pp. 20 and 24. 



254 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

impression of disappointment as the Book of Job, in 
its present melodramatic and spurious conclusion. 

Perhaps we may seem to be forcing an interpretation 
of Kant which his expositors will not recognise. But 
in no other way is it possible to give a plausible explana 
tion of the connection between Aesthetic and Teleology, 
and I believe they were originally united in Kant s 
mind in a very real way. His main achievement in 
the Teleology of Nature is not by any means to destroy, 
but to sift in order to place on a more secure basis, 
the argument from design. The critical review of 
Kant s Teleology such as we find in a book like Dr. 
Kennedy s Natural Theology and Modern Thought, shows 
a curious want of insight. Kant s objection to the 
argument was that it degraded God to the level of 
an architect. Otherwise he holds it as deserving of 
respect, being " the oldest, the clearest, and that most 
in conformity with the common reason of humanity." 
He thinks that it would be utterly hopeless to destroy 
the irresistible conviction to which it rises : " the mind, 
unceasingly elevated by these considerations, which, 
although empirical, are so remarkably powerful, and con 
tinually adding to their force, will not suffer itself to be 
depressed by the doubts suggested by subtle speculation ; 
it tears itself out of this state of uncertainty, the moment 
it casts a look upon the wondrous forms of nature and 
the majesty of the universe, and rises from height to 
height, from condition to condition, till it has elevated 
itself to the supreme and unconditioned author of all." 1 
It was held that the form of things, the arrangement 
of means and ends, is contingent, being foreign to the 
matter which was regarded as eternally necessary. Kant 

^Transcend. Dialectic-. Meiklejohn, p. 383. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 255 

replied that God is then limited by the matter whose 
necessary being lies outside of His creative power. In 
order that He may be a creator and not an artificer on 
the analogy of technical Art, matter must be equally 
contingent. For to say that matter with its purposive 
forms is contingent for our knowledge, is to admit the 
probability that it is the spontaneous product of a 
creator whose ways of working we cannot conceive. All 
apodictic certitude must be confined to the mathematical 
form of things and is not to be entertained of matter 
and its purposive modifications, which can only appear 
as inexplicable accidents to our intelligence. The only 
certainty we can have in regard to these is hypothetical. 
But this criticism rather strengthens the argument 
from design, for he has extended the borders of certitude 
beyond the mathematical and introduced it in a qualified 
form into the realm of contingence. He has shown 
that Metaphysic can be Science if only its necessity is 
hypothetical. Kant s so-called scepticism amounts to 
nothing more than the hypothetical element in all 
modern Science : " he is unbelieving, who denies all 
validity to rational Ideas, because there is wanting a 
theoretical ground of their reality." l We need not 
allude to his Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, 
which breathes a spirit of religious adoration his critics 
may seldom enjoy, as it falls within his pre-critical 
period. We have only to cite another short treatise 
which appeared three years after the Critique of Pure 
Reason was first published, where he evinces the same 
devout belief in a beneficent Creator. 2 

1 Bernard, p. 411. 

2 Idee zu einer allgemeinen Gcschichte In weltbUrgerlicher Absicht : 
Hart, iv. pp. 147-8. 



256 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

But although Kant has displayed his critical acumen 
to great advantage, he has made no contribution in his 
Teleology of Nature to the study of Immediate Experi 
ence, which is the proper and only domain of Reflexion. 
He has indeed extended the boundaries of Science, though 
he must retain a distinction in name between the mathe 
matical and hypothetical. But according to his own 
finding, there is a very decided limit to this extended 
Science, and we are constrained to ask if we have not 
been on the wrong road. Its hypothetical results are 
not different in kind from mathematical certainties, the 
interpretation of organic life by the Idea of end being 
just the specification of mechanical processes as forming 
a systematic unity. Moreover, Kant admits that the 
whole teleological procedure is due to a defect in our 
intelligence. It is because we cannot perceive an organic 
unity without discursively apprehending its elements in 
their discreteness, that we must prefigure our perception 
of the whole in the conception of its end or the idea of 
what it would be like if we could immediately perceive 
it. So far are we from acquiring a deeper insight by 
this method, that we disrupt the original unity of organic 
life into end and means, idea and existence, and conse 
quently fail to receive a direct impression of its nature. 
It is only to manufactured things which we ourselves 
can make that the conception of end may be applied 
with advantage. But in the instance of a living thing 
which never is completely but always is to be, the con 
ception of a final end may be a false anticipation which 
destroys the perception of its immediate unity. We 
must choose, then, between the following alternatives : 
either Kant was not justified in co-ordinating Teleology 
with Aesthetic under a common principle, or else 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 257 

Teleology is something more than a logical method. 
If the latter of these is accepted, the system of Nature 
determined by Teleology cannot be merely empirical 
a system of concepts organised into an artificial unity 
which is not reflected in experience but only furnished 
out of our methodological interest. If, as Kant him 
self believed, the aesthetic consciousness is an a priori 
apprehension which has more affinity with sensation 
than with logical process, Teleology should also be 
equipped with an intuitive a priori ; otherwise it cannot 
have a genuine community of function with reflective 
experience. To put it concretely, the activity of the 
scientist who makes a true induction, is not exhausted 
in the formation of judgments and in trains of reason 
ing : there is something in his mind which precedes 
and conditions the inductive process itself, and that is 
the entire attitude of consciousness which Kant would 
call reflective the catholic unison of the mental powers 
which constitutes aesthetic experience. And just be 
cause it is Nature in the- subject that is expressed in 
this fundamental harmony of mental function, the 
proleptic ideas with which the subject seeks to interpret 
Nature in his teleological method, must be an a priori 
insight into Nature which is transcendental and not 
a merely logical a priori which is simply another name 
for empiricism. The remainder of this chapter will 
be given to a more minute study of the Teleology 
of Nature, to ascertain whether and how far it is able to 
bear this interpretation. 

A complete scheme of Kant s Teleology is not help 
ful ; it rather discourages the reader from entering 
into the matter at all. However, a spectre is most 
easily laid by walking through it. For our purpose, 



258 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

it is convenient to take the main division as into 
subjective and objective. But under the subjective 
are included two very different kinds of Teleology, 
Formal and Aesthetical. They both define the state 
of the subject alone, the one being a play of 
notions, the other of representations. Otherwise they 
are not subjective in the same sense. Kant charac 
teristically identifies formal and subjective, and we 
have already seen how this is exemplified in his 
theory of Aesthetic. But we also showed how Subjec 
tivity, even on Kant s principles, has a content of its 
own which is anything but formal. In so far as Art 
expresses an Ideal, its problem is the individual, for the 
Ideal is an Idea embodied in individual form, and this 
puts Aesthetic on a level with Objective rather than with 
Formal Teleology. Stadler correctly keeps them apart 
as distinct types. 1 Then follows what is most important 
for us at present, the Objective Teleology. But this is 
again subdivided into formal and material, the same dis 
tinction as we have just made and which Kant should 
have made under the heading subjective. What he 
calls objective-formal are geometrical figures ; they are 
formal because they are capable of many relations and 
constructions which are not essential to their existence 
as a determination in space, for instance, a circle. 
Finally, the other subdivision, objective-material, admits 
of a further distinction, inner and relative. 

We do not seem to have gained much by this 

o / 

exhaustive dichotomy. It is sufficient to say that 
Kant s main concern is to establish a difference in kind 
between organic teleology which is self-contained, and 
all other types whose purpose is only relative to other 
1 Kants Teleologie, 112. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 259 

things. What he calls relative-objective-material is not 
really different from the formal type of Teleology. 
The superficial distinction between them is that 
what is formal only applies to the purely mechanical 
aspect of things which have no purposive intention 
in themselves, while relative teleology is called mate 
rial because the things to which it applies do exhibit 
adaptations which contribute to the existence of things 
and not merely to the unity of our knowledge. Kant 
gives the instance that the sand deposited by the sea is 
excellent for growing pines. But these adaptations can 
be adequately explained by mechanical causes without 
supposing any design. Indeed it would be ridiculous 
to think that the deep sea had nothing else to do than 
to look after the growing of pine-trees ; the growth of 
pines is quite contingent to the action of the sea, for 
sand can be left in large quantities without growing 
pines. Why should we credit the sea with a self- 
conscious purpose, when we know that it is itself an 
effect of a larger cause, the history of the earth ? 

Relative teleology, then, is really formal, because the 
purpose it appears to carry as contributive to the 
existence of things can be demonstrated to be an effect 
of mechanical causes, and it is only we who suppose 
designed adaptation. It can only be material and there 
fore something more than formal, if that to which it is 
contributive is itself a purpose of Nature, 1 for then 
it would be means to a real end of Nature and not to a 
figment of our fancy. But we know of no such real 
end in Nature even among organic beings, for " to 
judge of a thing as a natural purpose on account of 
its internal form is something very different from taking 
1 Bernard, pp. 271, 34.6. 



260 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

the existence of that thing to be a purpose of Nature." 1 
If we look away from the self-contained teleology in 
organisms and consider their relation to the environment, 
we find that they are pieces of Nature like everything 
else. They are of a day and perish in a day. Their 
purpose is cut before it is fulfilled by the abhorred 
shears which " slits the thin-spun life." Even man, the 
highest of the creatures, is not excepted from the 
ravages of Nature, nor is he treated with more respect. 
Kant recognises only one genuine type of Teleology, 
and the saving feature which marks it off from those 
which are relative, contributive, conditional, is its inner 
adaptation. If we abstract from the relation to environ 
ment altogether in which there is no suggestion of final 
purpose, we find in the organism an adaptation of 
means to end which is self-sufficing within the limits of 
its life. 

The result, then, of the entire scheme is to 
establish a broad distinction between external and 
internal Teleology. The former can only have the 
relative validity it claims if that for which it is 
useful is itself a final purpose of Nature, and this 
can never be demonstrated ; but the internally pur 
posive "is bound up with the possibility of an object 
irrespective of its actuality being itself a purpose." 2 
This internal Teleology is quite distinctive and 
t cannot be confused with what is only relative. The 
first broad specification of natural laws is into organic 
and inorganic. Although in Kant s opinion our judg 
ment is equally formal in both, the objects themselves 
are radically distinct. And we should notice here that 
the expression, Objective Teleology, is confusing. He 
Bernard, p. 283. ^Ib id. p. 346. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 261 

only uses the term objective to characterise the 
province of Judgment and not the judgment itself. 
What is distinctive in an organism is not a greater 
complexity of relations but a new kind of relation. 
The structureless plasma is a single organ without 
differentiation, while the crystal is a complicated forma 
tion ; but the plasma has what the crystal has not, 
reaction and assimilation. In an organism the parts are 
reciprocally cause and effect ; it is a new kind of 
causality. 

This important rinding, however, does not seem 
to enrich Philosophy. It has only brought us an 
enigma. Organisms are unthinkable, he says, unless 
we regard them as purposes of Nature ; but there is no 
question here of final cause, for it is only as " considered 
in themselves and apart from any relation to other 
things" that we must think of them as natural purposes. 1 
How they can also be natural products will remain for 
us a mystery, until we are able to show that there is a 
necessary relation between the environment and their 
purposive organisation. Darwin s brilliant hypothesis 
of natural selection is very far from demonstrating 
necessity in this relation. The variations which present 
themselves arise contingently, and we have no means of 
knowing if these and no others should be forthcoming. 
The structure of a bird is perfectly adapted for flight, 
but there is no ultimate necessity in this particular 
adaptation : "Nature, viewed as mere mechanism, might 
have shaped and connected the parts in a thousand other 
ways, without stumbling upon the unity which such 
a principle demands." 2 But accepting it as an enigma, 

1 Bernard, p. 280. 

2 Caird s translation, Kant, vol. ii. p. 478 ; Bernard, p. 260. 



262 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

it is the only genuine instance of a real purpose that we 
know ; and although we do not understand this new 
principle on which Nature organises herself in her 
products, we are justified in seeking to extend it to 
the whole of Nature in the belief that nothing is in 

o 

vain. 1 In Kant s words : the concept of natural purpose 
inevitably leads to the idea of entire Nature as a teleo- 
logical system ; and in view of this example which 
Nature gives in her organic products, we are entitled, 
nay called upon, to expect that there is nothing in 
Nature and her laws that is not ultimately purposive. 

We are now confronted with one of the unsolved 
problems in the Critical Philosophy, which has puzzled 
its expositors not a little. If the conception of natural 
purpose be applied beyond organic forms to every object 
of experience, it remains undecided whether this should 
mean the discovery of a thorough-going mechanism or 
a complete teleological system in the whole of Nature. 
Kant can be interpreted in favour of both positions. 
Dr. W. Ernst thinks that the relative priority of 
Mechanism and Teleology in the Critique of Judgment is 
a non liquel? I think we are able to entertain a more 
positive opinion. In like manner, Pfannkuche can find 
no clear solution in view of the criticisms offered and 
the misunderstandings which have arisen. 3 He admits 
that the discovery of an ultimate mechanical interpreta 
tion lies in the trend of Kant s thought, but that all his 
explanations are in favour of an External Teleology 
which can hardly be different from the old rationalistic 
procedure except in its conditional character. The first 

1 Hartenstein, v. 67, p. 391 ; Bernard, p. 284. 

2 Der Ziveckbegriffbei Kant und sein Verh&ltnis zu den Kategorien, p. 68. 

3 Der Zivcckbegrif bei Kant. Kantstudien, Bd. V. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 263 

actual result of Kant s Teleology was to destroy the 
easy optimism of Rationalism. We are at liberty 
to organise our knowledge into a unity as far as pos 
sible but not to introduce any specific end into Nature. 
Now if Kant intends that we should apply this 
specific principle which is exemplified in organic life to 
all objects of experience, he is certainly going beyond 
the Formal Teleology of inductive science. But I do 
not think that he would acknowledge this interpretation. 
Pfannkuche appeals to the discussion on the antinomies 
in support of his view. There Kant says that we must 
explain Nature on mechanical principles, but that when 
these fail, as they do in the case of organisms, we have 
instructions to interpret these forms and eventually the 
whole of Nature by the principle of final cause. Pfann 
kuche considers that this implies something more than 
the indefinite extension of mechanical principles which 
Formal Teleology is meant to provide, because inorganic 
Nature is already adequately explained on mechanical 
grounds, and therefore the application of final cause can 
only mean some kind of special Teleology. But this is 
just what is not true. From the moment we enter the 
Dialectic, it becomes evident that Mechanism is quite 
insufficient to give a complete explanation even of 
inorganic Nature without the help of Teleology as a 
heuristic principle, and that the objects of experience are 
only necessary within the limits of a wider contingence. 
Besides, Kant distinctly says in the passage to which 
Pfannkuche refers, that though this principle obtained 
from organisms is certainly useful, it is not indispensable 
in our judgment of inorganic objects "for Nature as a 
whole is not given as organised." x I therefore think 

1 Bernard, p. 310. 



264 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

that Kant did not seriously intend organic purpose to be 
taken as a principle of External Teleology, but as an 
additional maxim of Reflexion to help us in our 
researches into Nature. 

The truth is that, at an earlier period, Kant had 
entertained something like this view to which his 
language in the Critique of Judgment certainly lends 
countenance, and its traces still remain. At that time 
his interests were mainly scientific, and he was content 
to assume certain connections of ideas which his critical 
reflection afterwards rejected. In The only possible 
proof for the being of God (1763), he is evidently 
criticising two well-known theories which he after 
wards explicitly mentions in the Critique of Judgment. 
These theories, which prevailed in the eighteenth cen 
tury, were Occasionalism, which goes back to Cartesian 
principles and Preformation, which was formulated by 
Leibniz. On the first view, the appearance of every 
new species or variety in a species was the occasion of a 
divine act ; on the second, there was no such thing as 
a new formation, but simply an unfolding of parts 
which were preformed from all eternity and already 
existed in all the complexity of their later development, 
though very small, like diminutive models. 1 This theory 
of Preformation went by the name of Evolution (Aus- 
wickelung). In the Critique of Judgment Kant exposes 
its false pretensions and shows how a better name would 
be Involution or emboxing (Einschachtelung)? It is not a 
real evolution, but an unfolding of what is already com 
pletely involved. Preformation is therefore no advance 
on Occasionalism. For it is all the same whether a divine 

1 See Schultze, Kant und Darwin, pp. 35-7. 

2 Bernard, 81 ; Hart, v. p. 436. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 265 

act is invoked for these new formations at the time of 
creation or in the course of development. Indeed, 
Kant thinks Occasionalism has the preference, for it 
restricts the interference of the supernatural to the 
forms which actually come into existence, while Pre- 
formation must provide supernatural agency for every 
possible variety whether they come to maturity or not. 1 
Preformation does call in the aid of natural science to 
explain the growth and transmission of the preformed 
characters, but it is not less supernatural ; for the 
distinction between the two theories does not lie in the 
degree of immediate divine activity employed but solely 
in the time of interference. 2 

The real issue, then, is between Occasionalism and 
genuine Evolution, or what is a still more apposite 
term, Epigenesis. Kant was not the author of this 
theory, which still remains as the essential basis in the 
modern doctrine. According to Schultze, it was first 
announced by Caspar Friedrich Wolff in 1759. Epi 
genesis means that an organism is not simply the growth 
of a tiny preformation as a literal evolution of already 
perfect parts, but. an accretion of successive new forma 
tions which previously had no existence at all in the 
embryo ; or, as Kant would express it, it is not an 
educt but a product. Yet Kant does not mean to 
exclude the supernatural. The advantage which he 
commends in Epigenesis is that it involves the least 
expenditure of the supernatural. In Preformation, 
which is a maximum Occasionalism, every species of 
animal and plant is eternally created by God, and 
the only natural feature in this supernatural production 

1 Bernard, p. 344. 

2 Der einzig mogllche Beweisgrund, u.s.w. : Hart, ii. p. 158. 



266 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

is the simple transmission and growth of the original 
characters. But in Epigenesis the production of the 
variations in a species is natural just as much as the 
transmission of the original tendencies, and it represents 
Nature not merely as evolving but as self-producing. 

Darwin later essayed to show how this is possible by 
4 natural selection. Kant s sympathies, however, were 
quite averse from materialism. Though he conceives 
of the production of species as natural, he does not so 
regard their origin. He indeed said in his 4 Natural 
History of the Heavens, Gebet mir Materie, ich will 
eine Welt daraus bauen ! But this is only with refer 
ence to the inorganic world, for in the same context he 
challenges anyone to show how from given matter even 
a worm can be produced. 1 The question for Kant was 
whether every individual in a species is immediately 
created by God, or whether only the original indivi 
duals are indeed divinely created yet endowed with a 
power, inconceivable to us, of producing their kind in 
accordance with natural law, and not of merely evolving 
them as educts. 2 The first alternative he rejects under 
the name of Occasionalism, the second is the theory of 
Epigenesis which he favours. He thinks that there 
must have been a first divine disposition of plant and 
animal life (ersten g ottlichen Anordnung) in which the 
seeds of later tendencies are found, not as individual 
but as generic preformations. 3 And further, in order 
to restrict the range of supernatural agency, these 

1 Hart, i. pp. 219-20. 

2 Der einzig mogliche Beweisgrund, u.s.w. : Hart, ii. p. 157. 

3 Der einzig mogliche Bezveisgrund, u.s.w. : Hart, ii. p. 158; Bernard, 
P- 343- 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 267 

original individuals must be reduced to the smallest 
possible number. 

On this principle of seminal tendencies or generic 
preformations, he explains the races of men as a teleo- 
logical organisation of Nature. He rejects the idea of 
local creations of races, and maintains that, in spite of 
their differences, whites and negroes are sprung from a 
single stem. While he anticipates what is important 
in the modern theories of adaptation and natural selec 
tion, he will not hear of contingent variations which are 
the distinctive feature in the Darwinian hypothesis. 
He defines a Race as constituted by constant, hereditary 
characteristics which are unfailingly transmitted, and he 
will not allow T us to speak of it even as a particular 
species ; otherwise genus and species would solely denote 
what is incompatible with a common stem. 1 He means 
that these hereditary characteristics are not specific, for 
that would involve Preformation or Occasionalism, 
but generic differences which were originally united 
in mere tendencies (in blossen Anlageri), and which are 
gradually developed and separated out in the course of 
propagation. 2 A Race is a variation of the type, but it 
must not be regarded as produced by a contingent act 
of Nature. He therefore proposes to substitute for the 
word Race a technical term which will indicate this 
meaning of variation ; it is Abartung, which denotes 
the hereditary variations generically contained in the 
common stem, as distinguished from Ausartung, which 
denotes complete deviation from type. For this latter 
he can find no place. 3 As he says in his Races of 

1 Vber den Gebrauch teleologischer Pnncipien in der Philosophic : 
Kirchmann, p. 153. 

p. 152. *lbid. pp. 150-1. 



268 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Men : " an animal species, having a common stock, 
contains no different kinds (for these just mean differ 
ences of derivation) ; but their deviations from one 
another are called Abartungen if these are hereditary. 
The hereditary marks of derivation, if they tally with 
their parentage, are called resemblances ; * but if the 
hereditary variation no longer exhibits the original 
stem-formation, it should be called Ausartung" 2 

Kant s own way of dealing with what we should call 
contingent variations is as follows : if the variant 
characteristics which are compatible with a common 
stem are necessarily hereditary, a Race is constituted ; 
if they are not necessarily hereditary, it is a Variation. 3 
He thus throws the burden of explanation upon Tele 
ology, for it is the original tendencies that must explain 
when and where the variations shall be hereditary or 
not ; just as he believes that the varieties among men 
of the same race are, in all probability, designedly 
(zweckmassig) reposed in the original stem. 4 His theory 
of evolution may be summarised in the following 
passage from the Races of Men : " This providence 
of Nature in equipping her creatures by means of 
hidden, inner provisions against all manner of future 
conditions, that they may maintain themselves and 
adapt themselves to differences of climate or soil, is 
wonderful ; and by the wandering and transplantation 
of animals and plants, it produces kinds which are to all 
appearance new, but which are nothing else than 

1 He is thinking of half-breeds like the Moors. 

2 Vber die venchiedenen Racen der Menschen : Hart, ii. p. 436. 
z Dber den Gebrauch teleohgischer Prindpien in der Philosophies 

Kirchmann, p. 153. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 269 

constant variations {Abartungeri) and races of the same 
genus, whose seeds and natural tendencies have been 
developed only occasionally throughout long periods of 
time in diverse ways." * Kant anticipates the impasse 
which a mechanical theory like Darwinism is bound to 
encounter, by making the mechanism of evolution 
finally subordinate to a teleological principle. What is 
developed by external causes, such as climatic conditions, 
are seeds (Keimi) or natural tendencies which were 
given in the act of creation. 

This is undoubtedly a teleological view of Nature, 
organic and inorganic. Although, as Schultze says, 
Kant s Anthropology is completely in favour of our 
derivation from the ourang-outang, it is only the 
external causes of production that are natural. The 
generic preformation or seed placed in the original 
disposition of the species, is metaphysical, and comes, 
like the soul in Aristotle s psychology, from without. 
We must not forget that Kant has unmistakably ex 
pressed his opinion more than once that matter is 
utterly dead, and the disposition of original seeds in 
a lifeless matter is unquestionably an External Tele 
ology. As a maxim of Reflexion, Teleology would 
only mean that we may or must interpret Nature as 
purposive, but we should not be authorised to determine 
any specific purpose in Nature such as we do find in the 
present instance. Organic life comes into being on 
occasion of an original creative act, and so we may call 
his position a minimum Occasionalism. 

But although Kant does not make any essential 
change in his theory of organic evolution, he can hardly 
be said to hold the same metaphysical implications in 
x Hart, ii. pp. 440-1. 



270 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

his later writings. In c The only possible proof for the 
being of God/ he rejects the three proofs and advances 
a new one, which, from the idea of other beings and 
their logical possibility, infers the necessity of an existing 
something as their ground. 1 This, of course, is nothing 
new and is thrown over in the Critique of Pure Reason, 
as it well might be, for it is simply a restatement of the 
ontological argument. It shows that Kant was content 
to reinforce the existence of God as an a priori certainty 
arising out of the mere conception of possible existence, 
by an a posteriori regress from the purposive relations in 
existence, which are consequently regarded as external 
predicates of inorganic Nature. 2 

In the Critique of Judgment all this is altered and 
therewith a subtle change enters into Kant s view of the 
origin of species. He is no longer prepared to maintain 
what is exactly the position of an intelligent theist 
to-day who is anxious to reconcile Theology with 
Darwinism, but advances towards the view that matter 
is brought into existence by the same creative act as 
endows it with life ; or, to take it from the other side, that 
matter is a divine creation and may therefore contain in 
its original constitution the purposive combinations of 
organic life. It is true that up to the last he thinks 
that living matter is an impossible conception, 3 and he 
shows no favour to hylozoism. But that is only because 
we cannot see into its hidden ground, and for this reason 
we are for ever precluded from pretending to a theory 
of matter. We are free, however, to use the indications 
which Nature has given us in speculating on her super- 

L Erste Abtheilung, see p. 126 ; Hart, ii. 

^Ibid. see p. 135, last paragraph in Erste Abtheilung. 

3 See Bernard, p. 304. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 271 

sensible substrate, and to cherish without proof the 
conviction we are empowered to entertain. As in the 
instance of Practical Reason, we are at least safeguarded 
by a negative certainty. Just because we cannot perceive 
the inner constitution of matter, it is impossible to 
demonstrate that the origin of life may not lie in the 
mere mechanism of Nature : " it is left undecided 
whether or not in the unknown inner ground of nature, 
physico-mechanical and purposive combination may be 
united in the same things in one principle." * 

This does not mean that the distinction between 
Mechanism and Teleology is removed, nor does it affect 
the sincerity of Kant s warnings that we must not mix 
the two modes of explanation. Although an intuitive 
Understanding would see no difference between them, 
the difference as it appears to us will still exist even for 
that Understanding. There is occasion for much con 
fusion in this intricate connection of ideas, and it can 
only be avoided if we distinguish Causality from 
Mechanism. I agree with Frost as against Stadler that 
in the antinomy, where this question arises, the distinction 
is not between Reflexion and Causality but between the 
maxim of Finality and the maxim of Mechanism, both 
of which are forms of Reflexion. 2 Causality means the 
perception of necessary change, and this remains funda 
mental throughout as an a priori certainty. But beyond 
the field of immediate perception, it only obtains as an 
analogy of experience, and its application to unperceived 
Nature is therefore always problematical. This hypo 
thetical Causality is the maxim of Mechanism, which is 
as much a heuristic principle in empirical research as 

1 Bernard, p. 296. Cp. p. 313. 

-Der Begriffder Urteihkraft bei Kant, p. 108. 



272 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

the maxim of Finality. The difference is, that while 
Causality is quite assured of its necessity within the 
narrow limits of immediate perception and has no 
misgivings, the maxim of Mechanism advances trembling 
in the dark, not knowing what may turn up, and is 
quite prepared to find maggots springing into life 
spontaneously from a dead body. In Mechanism as a 
maxim of Reflexion, the ultimate nature of Causality 
is treated as an open question and remains quite 
undetermined. 

Yet I feel that we are taking our results too easily 
in what is a very complicated analysis. It is hard to 
elaborate a consistent opinion out of Kant s own writings, 
nor are his expositors in agreement. It does seem con 
tradictory to prohibit confusing or mixing Mechanism 
and Teleology as methods of explanation and at the 
same time to suggest their ultimate identity. If they 
are only aspects for us men of what is really a single 
intuition, it should not greatly matter if we are careless 
in our use of them. Their common element will surely 
draw them together in spite of our efforts to keep them 
apart. But a complaint of this kind will not arise 
when we have grasped Kant s proper meaning. In 
two of his smaller writings he makes a clear distinction 
between two uses of Teleology, one of which alone is 
entitled to our serious consideration ; and it is the 
other and false Teleology, I think, that he has in mind 
when he warns us against a confusion of principles. 
It must be remembered that Teleology in the first 
instance is a purely empirical procedure. The ends 
of Nature are found solely through experience. We 
cannot see a priori why there should be ends in Nature 
as we can quite well see a priori how there should be 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 273 

a connection of cause and effect. This at least is 
Kant s opinion. 1 What saves the judgment from being 
a worthless hazard is the connection of our moral 
consciousness with these empirical concepts. Now it is 
quite plain that this kind of judgment may easily lapse 
into the crazy teleology which says, in the jesting spirit 
of a Voltaire, that we have noses in order that we may 
wear spectacles, unless the intelligent sanction of our 
moral consciousness is present. And since Teleology, 
in so far as it is limited to empirical conditions, can 
never adequately define the first cause of purposive 
connections, we must " expect this complete explana 
tion from a Pure Teleology which can be no other than 
that of Freedom, whose principle contains a priori the 
relation of a Reason in general to the totality of all 
ends and can only be practical." z We are safeguarded 
in our teleological reflexion by a sense of obligation 
which delivers our thoughts from being contingent 
speculations. In the structure of the eye, for instance, 
as adapted for sight, we must imagine a certain 
necessity which is anterior to and independent of its 
particular, physiological formation. In the instance of 
a stone we feel no such necessity, for it may be used 
for breaking on or for building or for many other pur 
poses, none of which is final. But of the eye we 
judge that it ought to be adapted for sight, although 
its structure is quite contingent for our judgment 
and might be adapted for sight in a thousand other 

1 See \Jber Philosophic iiberhaupt : Rosen kranz, i. p. 609 ; Uber den 
Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophic : Kirchmann, 
p. 172. 

" IJber den Gebrauch teleologischer Princlpien in der Philosophic : Kirch 
mann, p. 173. 



274 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

ways unknown to us ; and this sense of obligation 
" can be determined just as little through merely 
physical, empirical laws, as the necessity of the 
aesthetical j udgment through psychological laws." 1 It is 
therefore only the empirical use of Teleology, unsanc- 
tioned by Practical Reason, that Kant will keep distinct 
from Mechanism, for no Teleology of this kind can 
supply the want of physical theory. Without mechani 
cal explanation we are always uncertain about the actual 
causes, no matter how clear our supposition may be. 2 
But when it is a genuine teleological judgment, its 
relation to Mechanism is very different. Then Tele 
ology is not only in place but must always be present 
even in our observation of inorganic Nature, and must 
have the precedence. It is no longer a question of 
co-ordination, but Mechanism must always be sub 
ordinate to teleological reflexion. 3 Kant means that 
induction and deduction, synthesis and analysis, are 
both essential in every explanation, and Teleology 
takes the lead because the regress from effect to 
cause is conditioned and instructed by an ideal pro 
gress. 

It is so far settled, then, that there is nothing in the 
distinctness of Mechanism and Teleology as principles 
of explanation to preclude their fundamental identity. 
What lies behind both and unites them is the super 
sensible substrate of Nature, which takes the place 
of a theistic God in his theory of organic evolution. 
For although he still conceives of the ultimate Ground 

1 tiler Philosophic ttberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 610. 

2 tiber den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophic : Kirch- 
mann, pp. 145-6. 

3 Bernard, 78, pp. 331-3. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 275 

as an intelligent Being, he does not now think of this 
Being as designedly disposing the orders of Nature and 
endowing them with life. On the contrary, we do not 
demand " that there should be actually given a par 
ticular cause which has the representation of a purpose 
as its determining ground," and it may be that organic 
products should find their ground in Nature s mechan 
ism, " a causal combination for which an Understand 
ing is not explicitly assumed as cause." 1 

This is put very clearly in the essay On the use of 
teleological principles in philosophy, only published 
two years earlier (1788). We can only understand how 
an organism is made by using the analogy of our own 
technical activity, which is a mixture of Understanding 
and Will. It is nothing more than an analogy, how 
ever, because we cannot make an organism as we can 
make objects of technical art. The real cause of an 
organism, therefore, must lie outside experience as a 
causality of which we have no example ; and the 
nearest approach we can make to such a conception 
is that of a Being whose activity is purposive but 
which has not the ground of its determination in an 
Idea. But since the conception of a Being, in itself 
purposive and acting without specific end or aim in 
view (" aus sich selbst zweckmftssig) aber ohne Zweck und 
Absicht zu wirken "), is quite fictitious for us, we must 
either give up all attempt at explanation or still think to 
ourselves an intelligent Being ; not as if we considered 
that such a ground-principle is impossible, but because 
the conception of an intelligent Being is the only 
support we can find in our thought for the otherwise 
unthinkable conception of a ground-principle, which 
1 Bernard, 77, p. 320. 



276 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

is in itself purposive but excludes final causes from its 
activity (Vrsache mit Ausschliessung der Endursachen)! 
The notion of intelligence which is inseparable from the 
conception of acting according to purposed ends, is not 
introduced for its own sake but only for the sake of a 
conception which contradicts the notion of intelligence ; 
the supersensible substrate is a Being which has no 
ideas as motives for its creative acts, and is presupposed 
as indeterminate Ground (Grundkrafi) rather than as 
cause. It may therefore be that there is no real basis 
for what we observe as teleology in Nature, and that 
nothing more is needful for explanation " beyond the 
mechanism of causes working blindly." : 

This, however, does not mean that Kant has finally 
displaced Teleology in favour of a rigid mechanism. If 
we read 77 of the Critique of Judgment we shall 
find that the Mechanism which Kant approves as an 
ultimate mode of explanation, is something much 
more than just mechanism itself. It means that the 
parts are explained by automatic analysis as the parts 
of a real whole which is given in perception with them, 
as would happen to a divine mind, a very different 
thing from the conception of discrete parts out of 
whose mechanical aggregate a whole is constructed. 
We have to notice in Kant s Teleology a similar result 
to what we already found in his aesthetic theory. While 
according to the view we have taken, he does not reduce 
Aesthetic to intellectual processes in terms of which it 
is explained, but conceives of it as a higher plane of 
mental activity in which knowledge is a limited and 
specialised direction; he now interprets Mechanism in 

1 Kirchmann, pp. 171-2; Hart, iv. pp. 493-4. 

2 Bernard, p. 287. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 277 

terms of a Grundkraft which transcends the distinction of 
Mechanism and Teleology, instead of explaining organic 
Nature on strictly mechanical principles. It is Nature 
conceived as purposive without a purpose, a process 
which to all appearance is mechanical but which unfolds 
itself in marvellous wise and moves indeed to an event 
we can surmise and applaud, yet without forecasting or 
express intention. This theory, which will sound some 
what novel to students of the first Critique, can 
only be named an idealistic naturalism or c creative 
evolution. 

Perhaps it may seem a little hazardous to urge this point 
of resemblance between Kant and M. Bergson in view of 
the sharp contrast which the latter has made between 
Kant and himself. But so far as I know, M. Bergson 
makes no serious reference to the Critique of Judgment 
and confines himself exclusively to the Critique of Pure 
Reason. Is it too much to contend, as our short study 
has essayed incidentally to show, that the third Critique 
effects a real modification in Kant s theory of know 
ledge ? Let us just think what Kant s position means 
at the point we have now reached. It is true that his 
accredited view moves between a timeless supersensible 
and phenomena juxtaposed in abstract time. But a 
mechanism working blindly and yet fruitful of reason 
able consequences is certainly not the abstract relation of 
cause and effect, and much less is it the timeless identity 
of mechanism and teleology in the divine mind. It is 
clearly an existence which is more than quantitative: 
on the one hand, it is not a mere mechanism whose 
parts are simply repetitions of an identical relation, for 
it springs spontaneously from a Ground which is pur 
posive and must therefore be itself individual in each 



278 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

moment of its existence ; and, on the other hand, it is 
not an empty teleology which, as the realisation of a 
predetermined end, eliminates real change, but an 
accretion of real parts in which the end, unknown even 
to the Ground, is progressively revealed. Now, as 
M. Bergson has observed, Causality for Kant has " the 
same meaning and the same function in the inner as in 
the outer world." l He means that inner experience 
keeps time with the outer process, and that while our 
experience is really a continuum of interpenetrating 
elements which are never external to each other, Kant 
has made our experience conform to what is only a 
single and ultimately false tendency in experience, 
the externalising function of the intellect in space- 
relations. 

But this simple statement does not cover the whole 
ground. Just as we have observed in Kant s final 
theory of Teleology a conception of existence which is 
more than that of quantity, whose parts, over and above 
their formal character as repetitions of abstract causation, 
have an individual character as purposed elements which 
can never be repeated, we have now to recollect a corre 
sponding change in the subject. Kant conceived of the 
inner life as divided into two orders, both of them, 
strange to say, in the same medium of Time, the Imagi 
nation. Of these the schematic order is subject to the law 
of determined succession, the other is vaguely defined as 
dn Inner Sense, and if we are able to have that deter 
mined succession in consciousness which is necessary to 
the maintenance of our own identity, it certainly does 
not constitute a coherent perception and is only a fleet 
ing awareness. So much is this the case that, as we saw 
1 Time and Free-Will, p. 232. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 279 

in Chapter IV., the contents of Inner Sense are more of 
a conceptual play than a sensuous succession in Time, 
although they are affections of the very and only faculty 
of Time and are expressly described as sensuous. But in 
the Productive Imagination, which is to all appearance a 
timeless faculty, a new causality is sprung upon us without 
warning to take the place of the reproductive function 
which Kant had denied to it. By means of this causality 
the volatile contents of the Inner Sense are transported 
into coherent forms, which we can recognise as enduring 
unities with all the perfect finish of immediate creation. 
He speaks of the aesthetic state as maintaining and 
strengthening itself by an inner causality, in virtue of 
which we are able to linger over the Beautiful as some 
thing more than an inconsequent conceptual play. 

Now the peculiar feature of this theory is the way in 
which Kant has combined, in a single process, the timeless 
nature of indeterminate intellective functions with the 
quality of schematic coherence but without the characters 
of abstract Time as they are found in our perception 
of the external world. I am not forgetting that Kant s 
prevailing expressions convey the idea of a negative, 
formal consistency without any real content ; but it is 
equally clear that concrete coherence lies in the line of 
his thinking. It is just because he has no terminology 
for a real duration which is other than that of external 
perception, that he is forced to deny coherence to the 
Inner Sense. The puzzle in his theory of Aesthetic is 
created by the search for an order of Productive 
Imagination which will be in Time and yet not in that 
determined order of necessity which controls our sense- 
perception. For Kant there is no such thing as a 
perception of Time itself, and therefore the schema of 



280 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Causality is not a mode of Time, for this would mean 
a determinate consciousness of Time, but a mode in 
Time. But in Aesthetic there must be no necessity in 
Time, for then the Beautiful would be indistinguishable 
from objects of Science. There is only left to Aesthetic, 
if it will be anything at all, the alternative that its sym 
bolic schemata are modes of Time and therefore a more 
or less durable consciousness of Time. 1 

But it is all the more disappointing to find that for 
Kant the ultimate identity of Mechanism and Teleology 
in real existence is a hidden Ground, completely unknown 
to the subject, notwithstanding the fact that on his own 
admission the nature of this Ground and of the subject 
is the same, namely, purposive reality without a purpose. 
Our main contention throughout this study may be 
put in the form of a question : why should the Critique 
of Judgment have been written if Teleology is to gain 
nothing from the theory of Aesthetic ? The classic 
reason Kant offers for this failure is the discursive 
nature of our Understanding. This remains to be 
examined. 

The proof is contained in the difficult and important 
V^-??* which really contain the crux of the argument 
in the Teleology of Nature. It turns on the difference 
between the human mind and what we are able to 
conceive as divine. Our defect is shown in the presence 
of two heterogeneous factors, sensuous intuition and 

1 See the discussion in the First Analogy: Meiklejohn, p. 137. 
Notice how Kant says that succession and coexistence are modes of 
Time, and then corrects himself a few lines further on, but only with 
reference to coexistence. To be consistent he should have made the 
same correction in the case of succession, as is evident from the glaring 
contradiction in this sentence, where he says that Time is not affected 
by change and that its parts are all successive. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 281 

thought. We know when we are in touch with fact, 
our thought runs against something hard and becomes 
perception. And we also know when we are not in 
touch with fact but are moving in airy circles of 
possibility. According to Kant, actual fact (Thatsache) 
means sensation with the solitary exception of the Idea 
of Freedom, which is a fact although it has no adequate 
intuition corresponding in sense-perception. 1 Apart from 
this exception, for it does not interest us now, we may 
say that without sensuous perception we have nothing 
left but the bare sense of possession, and our supposed 
objects pale into the mere " representations of a pro 
blem." It is our misfortune that we have more thoughts 
than we can make into objects and are neither god nor 
beast. For a god the possible is itself actual, and we 
can suppose that for an animal all perceptions are neces 
sary at least if all animals are the same as Mr. Bradley s 
dog, for whom there is but a single possibility : what is, 
smells ; what does not smell, is not. 

But the simple consciousness of possession is no 
slight acquisition. In the Dialectic, Kant recognised 
principles of Reason which never have immediate relation 
to a sense-object and yet are synthetic with a suggestion 
of objectivity. Their function is to organise the con 
cepts of Understanding as it in turn organises into 
unities the manifold of sensation. 2 In our Reason we 
recognise a power to think our thoughts about objects 
as if these thoughts were real objects themselves, and 
although we never expect to find a correspondent in 
sensation to this high thinking, we cannot over-estimate 
its importance. There is no such thing in fact as pure 

1 Bernard, 91, pp. 405-6. 

2 Meiklejohn, pp. 213-4 and pp. 394-5. 



282 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

earth, pure air or pure water, but these are real objects 
for Reason as sensibility is real for the Understanding, 
and are necessary abstractions for determining the share 
which each of these natural elements has in any given 
objects. 1 

Now there were four chief Ideas of Reason recognised 
in the dogmatic metaphysics, God, the Soul, the World 
and End. To the first three there is nothing adequately 
corresponding in perception : in order that our con 
ception of the world may be actual, we should have to 
see the whole world at a glance, and of course that is 
impossible; again, we cannot run against our own souls 
and ncocher as if they were external bodies we are 
only going round them ; and of the first of these, 
namely, God, our conception is entirely problematical. 
But in the instance of End, Kant changes countenance, 
for it is peculiar to this Idea that a corresponding 
intuition is actually given in organisms. At this point 
we might naturally think that metaphysic has at last 
vindicated its claim to science, for there is one Idea of 
Reason which is immediately related to experience and 
so becomes a necessary perception. But we are at once 
pulled up by the fatal docetic formula, as it were. 
According to Kant an Idea of Reason is only synthetic 
for the thoughts, and not for the objects, of Under 
standing. Both Understanding and Reason are synthetic 
functions on different planes of experience, which at 
their nearest point of contact are divided by a film 
of sense. And although an intuition corresponding to 
the Idea of End is given in organisms, it is only the 
Understanding that can see it. 

This is what Kant means by the somewhat doubtful 
1 Meiklejohn, p. 396. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 283 

assertion that we cannot perceive teleology in Nature as 
we do mechanical causation. 1 There is at least this to 
be said, that while experience would be impossible if 
there were no mechanical necessity in Nature, we are 
not able to say how far the absence of natural purposes 
would affect the possibility of experience. In an 
organism as object of sense and therefore as judged by 
the Understanding, nothing is perceived beyond a 
complex of mechanical processes ; and when Reason asks 
the questions, what is it doing and where is it going? 
we have ceased to think of it as mechanism. The 
perception of Reason comes too late. It is as if we 
were looking at an object through two different pairs of 
eyes, which are as unrelated as the percepti6n of a 
mechanic and an artist. Reason, who is wearing glasses 
heavily smoked, is peering over the shoulder of Under 
standing, and enquiring with the suspicious alertness of 
Maeterlinck s Sightless, { What is that, what is that ? 
Why don t you tell me ? I am sure I saw something. 
To which the Understanding laconically replies, Com 
pose yourself, my dear fellow, it is nothing for you ; 
it is only one of my little men. The moment we try 
to use a principle of Reason as a principle of Under 
standing, its synthetic quality resolves into the vague 
function of an Understanding in general (ernes Verstandes 
uberhaupi)? 

1 u Dass 63 in der Natur Zwecke geben miisse, kann kein Mensch 
a priori einsehen ; dagegen er a priori ganz wohl einsehen kann, dass 
es darin eine Verknlipfung der Ursachen und Wirkungen geben 
miisse." "Ober den Gebrauch teleologiscker Principlen in der Philosophic : 
Kirchmann, p. 172 ; Hart, iv. p. 494. Cp. Bernard, pp. 311-2 and 
P. 327. 

2 Hart, v. p. 418 ; Bernard, pp. 319-20. 



284 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Now we go a step further. Not only are principles 
of Reason inapplicable to objects of sense, the principles 
of Understanding are in a similar case. When we read 
in the Critique of Pure Reason that there are synthetic 
principles of Understanding, we must remember that 
they only become synthetic, formative, creative, because 
vision has been lent to them from without in sense- 
affection. As we saw in Chapter IV., Kant favours the 
suggestion that the pure conceptions of Understanding 
are true of things as they really are, while schemata, the 
applied conceptions of Understanding, present things 
only as they appear. In their unconditioned form, the 
principles of Understanding are indistinguishable from 
those of Reason, and like them are analytical, without 
immediate relation to experience. As applied in ex 
perience they are forms of synthesis, but they are not 
synthetic in their own right, as may be seen from the 
unsatisfactory character of experience. The unity which 
Understanding gives to objects is not the perfect 
universal it is capable of thinking, but a unity which it 
is obliged to construct by reproducing the parts of 
existence in a determined order. The consequence is 
that we only see aggregate unities and discrete succes 
sions, never the soul of things. Had the Understanding 
a gift of vision all its own, we should be able to see 
with the children in Blue-bird, the soul of flinty rock 
blue as sapphire, the souls of the Hours tripping 
out of the clock or Bread tumbling out of his pan. 
A principle which is synthetic in its own nature can 
only be found in the Ideas of Reason, for they are not 
limited by sensation and are therefore free to produce 
their objects in the simple perception of their unity. 
But then they have no application to experience, and so 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 285 

far as objects of sense are concerned they are really 
analytical ; for while the whole is real enough, the 
parts are ideal. For an opposite reason, there is no 
principle of Understanding which is synthetic in its own 
right ; for while the parts are real enough, their totality 
is supplied by the Ideas of Reason and is merely ideal. 
A genuine synthetic principle means such a creative 
insight into the whole nature of a thing as that 
Being has who, in the simple perception of its unity, is 
able to produce the complexity of its structure. In 
Kant s words, " we see into a thing completely only so 
far as we can make it." l To the same effect Lord 
Kelvin is reported to have said, that he could not be 
satisfied that he had explained any natural process until 
he constructed a working model. 

It is as a consequence of this analytical nature of 
thought that our Understanding is discursive. When 
we speak of thought as an analytic unity, we mean 
that it is incapable of analysis, its parts being so com 
pletely transparent as to be non-existent. A real whole 
is reciprocally conditioned by its parts, but this analytic 
whole is unconditioned and has no immediate relation 
to particular instances in experience. The particular is 
therefore contingent for the universal of Understanding, 
it has a multiplicity of possible relations which are quite 
undetermined for this universal. In the simple fact of 
knowledge, on the other hand, the universal and par 
ticular are both immediately given in the individual 
perception and the contingency is not apparent. But 
that is because only those relations of the particular 
presentation are allowed to enter consciousness as are 
necessary for the consciousness of our own identity. 
1 Bernard, p. 291. 



286 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Here we return to Kant s original doctrine of sensa 
tion. What is determined is not the particular itself in 
its exhaustive relations, but the particular as it must 
appear to us if we are to have a necessary perception 
of it. If we now proceed beyond the simple needs of 
immediate perception, we find that we have no universal 
to cover the multiple relations of the particular which 
do not enter into the consciousness of ourselves. This 
is just how we feel in thinking of an organism. A 
knowledge of its mechanism is given in the simple fact 
of perception, because without causal necessity in per 
ception we would not be conscious of our own identity. 
But although we can surmise the end in an organism, 
we can never be sure that our judgment is final, we 
have no necessary perception of its ultimate unity. If 
our Understanding were intuitive, every nuance in 
the structure of an organism would be immediately 
perceived as self-explaining. This Intuitive Under 
standing is the Mrs. Harris of philosophy quite as 
much as the Supersensible Thing. Since the universal 
of our Understanding is not synthetic, we cannot per 
ceive the whole as cause of the parts but as their effect, 
and therefore cannot have an a priori perception but an 
ex post facto idea of the whole. In Kant s technical 
language, we must proceed from the universal to the 
particular. Since the particular given in perception is 
contingent and we have no corresponding universal to 
determine the multiplicity of its possible relations, we 
must first think it in the most general terms, then 
advance from this unspecified thought to a more con 
ditioned, until we arrive, if we are able, at an adequate 
conception which will commend the particular to our 
intelligence. We thus proceed from the analytic 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 287 

universal. This is the discursive nature of Under 
standing. 

It will be noticed in this account that Kant makes 
a sharp contrast between discursive and intuitive. Our 
Reason, in itself intuitive, is only capable of perceiving 
bare unities, not individual things. It consequently 
becomes discursive when applied to a particular which 
it does not itself create. It has a stock of ready-made 
suits, all empty, formal, pathetic in their simulation 
of the individual, which it essays to fit, one after the 
other, on the presentation. It usually happens that 
during this discursive process, the presentation walks 
away. The Understanding, which is the business 
faculty we use in daily life, is wise ; it builds the 
suit on the person of the presentation. The univer 
sal and the particular are immediately given in the 
individual perception. It is only when our thoughts 
are applied in the form of schemata, or conceptions 
specially adapted to presentations, that they become 
intuitive. Kant, then, appears to think that in the 
schematic consciousness the discursive process comes 
to an end. On the contrary, it is in the schematic 
consciousness that the discursive process is initiated, 
sustained and completed. It is true that our thoughts, 
like the waves of the sea, are more or less contingent 
modes of mind, whose meaning is as elusive and 
unspecified as the crest and oval rings on the breakers, 
and flow discursively over the surface of the deep 
until they peradventure break upon the shore. But 
they are motived by the tide. We never think to 
any purpose without schemata. No matter how 
abstract it may be, our thought is always intuitive 
in nature because it is dynamic, having an original 



288 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

tendency to imaginative form. Kant said, our 
thought is discursive because it is unconditioned ; 
we say, it is intuitive because it is conditioned. 
Schemata are not by any means confined to the 
Applied Understanding. Kant himself recognised that 
there are schemata of Reason. The Ideas can only 
think their Ideal of systematic unity by the energy 
of some dynamic form of thought, and this is the idea 
of a maximum ; l or if we will think of something 
even more attenuated, the idea of a Supreme Intelli 
gence comes before our minds under the schema of 
a thing in general. 2 These he calls analogous or 
symbolic schemata, and so far there is some ground 
for this distinction between the schemata of Reason 
and Applied Understanding. For however strong our 
tendency may be to think the being of God or the 
maximum unity of existence, our thinking never 
arrives at a completely determinate concept ; the ten 
dency towards imaginative form is inevitably arrested, 
and just when we think we are coming at it, our 
thoughts disperse into vacuity. But the ground of 
difference which Kant supposes to underlie these 
distinct orders of schemata is quite fictitious. In his 
opinion it consists in the fact that the schemata of 
Understanding have a necessary reference to Time, 
whereas the symbolic forms of Reason have no implica 
tion of Time at all. This does not prove anything. 
The reference to Time in schemata is nothing more 
than the feature of change which is essential to the 
fact of self-consciousness, and this implication of Time 
is quite as real in the symbols of Reason. For Kant 
admits that " we may have a determinate notion of 
1 Appendix to Dialectic : Meiklejohn, p. 407. ^Ibld. p. 411. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 289 

a maximum and an absolutely perfect/ 1 But a deter 
minate notion we cannot have unless we are balancing 
and recovering ourselves in the yielding medium of 
consciousness, and this implies some displacement in 
Time. 

The theory which we are now criticising is deeply 
embedded in the history of thought. Aristotle, thinking 
from an opposite standpoint, held the same mechanical 
opinion as Kant of the relation between sense and 
thought. He indeed speaks of the Passive Reason as 
perishable, but he does not therefore mean to identify 
it with the soul of the lower powers as Zeller seems 
to understand him. It is the discursive processes that 
are perishable, and these are not themselves affections 
(?ra(97) of Reason but of that " which has Reason in 
it in so far as it has it," 2 that is, images embodying 
universals. In itself. Reason is incapable of being 
affected and is unmingled (a-TraOrjs Kal a/xcy^?). 3 By 
being passive he only means that it is reduced to 
potentiality. But when Reason becomes active, as it 
may be supposed to exist in the divine mind, the 
discursive processes have fallen away. 

Both Kant and Aristotle hold that discursive is 
inconsistent with intuitive thought. We are prepared 
to go a certain length in consenting to this opinion. 
The discursive nature of thinking signifies, that no 
thing of sense or imagination can have any meaning 
for us unless we are thinking of something else at 
the same time ; consciousness is apperceptive. Were 
our Understanding intuitive, we are told that each 
individual perception would be immediately self- 
explaining. But, unfortunately, this Intuitive Under- 

1 Ibid. p. 408. *De Anima^ 408 b. 3 Ibid. 4303. 

T 



2QO THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

standing is unable to answer for itself, and it is not 
by any means decided, in our opinion, that even in 
the divine mind there is not something correspond 
ing to our discursive thought. At all events, we 
refuse to countenance the idea that our thought has 
only an accidental relation to sensuous experience. In 
Kant s schematic consciousness, thought and sense are 
only united de facto and the same is true of Aristotle s 
theory. But we can also point with Kant to a higher 
plane of our experience where they are united de jure^ in 
the aesthetic consciousness. As Hegel says in his Philo 
sophy of Art, it is not that Sense may be tolerated as a 
medium, it is rather that Reason must be degraded into 
a symbol and cannot appear except in sensuous form. 
In his conception of mental Play, Kant has given 
conclusive proof that thought is inherently perceptive, 
and that therefore schematic consciousness is original 
to the nature of mind and not the accident of a 
psychological device. The discursive nature of our 
thought does not argue a defect in our intelligence, 
for the discursive process is instituted and maintained 
by what is truly divine in us, the dynamic energy of 
thought. It may be desirable that our thought should 
be improved in the direction of becoming more intui 
tive and less discursive, but that its discursive nature 
should be eliminated altogether is a doubtful propo 
sition. Even for the divine mind immediacy may not 
exclude mediation. It may argue a superficial intelli 
gence in a deity whose mind does not admit of more 
and less. If Kant s Intuitive Understanding can see at 
a glance, so to speak, it is only because He has no 
ideas, no discriminating preference in the vast universe 
of His resources. Certainly we do not think of a 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 291 

discursive transition in the divine mind as happens 
with us, but we can imagine some qualitative sense 
of change. In so far as we have anything divine in 
us, we need not blush to own discursive thought. 
What lies at the back of all our thinking, except 
when our apprehension is completely implicit, is the 
Schema ; it is that transcendental element of thought 
which is felt before it is noticed, 1 preceding and inform 
ing all perception. 

In conclusion, we have still to explain why the 
schemata of Understanding should appear to be so 
much more effective than those of Reason. While 
the schemata of Reason float with extended wings in 
the pure ether of Theoria, the schemata of Understand 
ing stick their claws into the pulp of sense and prey 
on garbage. The latter have the advantage of a more 
immediate contact with Reality. While Reflexion is 
said to be transcendental and a priori, it only organises 
Nature into an empirical system ; but the Understand 
ing has an apodictic knowledge of its province and its 
a priori is absolute. Perhaps the following suggestion, 
somewhat on the lines of the conclusion to Chapter VI., 
may throw some light on the problem. It is in the 
nature of thought that it should have a certain amount 
of generality and so be able to embrace many different 
particulars. Our thought can therefore attend to one 
of these only as it thinks it through the others. But 
in simple perception the apperceptive function, which 
is not different in kind from the discursive nature 
of reflective thought, is limited. We do not need 
or wish to do more than perceive, and the amount 

1 For this expression I am indebted to a suggestion in F. H. 
Bradley s acute article on Immediate Experience : Mind, Jan. 1909. 



292 THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of suggestion and memory-processes called into play 
is no more than what is needful for simple perception. 
In Reflexion the apperceptive function is intensified. 
Presentations are not simply to be perceived as they 
ought but as we should like to perceive them, and 
for this a far greater amount of suggestion and recol 
lection is required. But the result is not less actual, 
it is more actual. Every atom of sensation is spun 
into a web of apperceptive gauze until the merely 
actual disappears and the actual with increased sig 
nificance takes its place, the world of Art and Life. 
The more the beauty of a thing is seen and felt, the 
more does it stand out from the frame-work of 
the actual, suspended in splendid isolation by its own 
invisible thread ; the more we draw the ends together 
in a living being, the more do its organs lose their 
exclusive independence : they have ceased to exist as 
merely actual parts in their discreteness and have 
become distinctive elements in a system of ideal rela 
tions. A living body is no longer an aggregate of 
impressions, but a real whole productive of its parts. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

AESTHETIC AND TELEOLOGY. 

THE discursive method of our thought does not disable 
us from apprehending living Nature. On the contrary, 
our Understanding with its modicum of intuition is 
peculiarly fitted for assimilating this plane of perception. 
In Aesthetic our ideas displace each other with such 
a facile motion and not less in the Sublime where the 
aesthetic process may originate in a violent dislocation 
that the discursive transition melts into a frictionless 
continuum like the ether. It is not on that account a 
timeless or unreal process, but the self-mediation of 
immediate experience. But in Teleology the discursive 
process must be more explicit, because we are subject to 
a different kind of constraint due to the influence of 
living beings, which we do not feel in Aesthetic. The 
wisest course, then, for the Understanding is to abase 
itself before the aggressive presentation, and ponder 
discursively what it has to say in a kind of personal 
intercourse. We can adopt George Meredith s expedient 
of finding out all we want to know, by asking questions 
without expecting a reply. The least significance Tele 
ology should have for us is that, like Art, its object 
is the individual and not the generalisations of abstract 
induction, which is all the meaning Kant put into it. 
Every true induction is a discursive process shot through 



294 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

with momentary flashes of insight, which reveal the 
individual nature of the thing examined. The cumula 
tive judgments of a scientist who devotes years to the 
study of a spider, have the emotional quality of artistic 
divination : with this difference, that while representa 
tions occupy the foreground in the artistic conscious 
ness, which is unthinking, they form the background 
in the active consciousness of the scientist to explicit 
conceptual relations. 

This is the chief distinction between Aesthetic and 
Teleology. The judgments of both are forms of what 
Kant has called subjective teleology, that is, they are 
purposive as psychological processes of ours quite apart 
from any predicate of purpose. But while the aesthetic 
consciousness is exhausted in the subjective feeling 
of harmony in a play of unthinking representations, 
a harmony which is capable of infinite expansion, 
Teleology is a conceptual play which, in its very nature 
as conceptual, must refer beyond the process to an 
object which has a different kind of independence from 
that which we recognise in objects of Art. The predi 
cate in a teleological judgment is at one and the same 
time a purposive feeling and a concept of purpose ; and 
the subjective teleology is not exhausted in our feeling 
of harmony, because it is the emotional transcript of 
purposive activity in a being which enjoys its own 
existence. While we recognise the objects of Art as 
individual with an independent, abiding existence, our 
pleasure consists precisely in the fact that the product of 
an independent will so easily yields to our interpreta 
tion. But our interest in organisms is stimulated and 
strengthened by the thought that they do not yield up 
their independent existence. Teleology is not simply 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 295 

the reflection of our personality, but Nature enacts our 
freedom in her living forms. 

It was this independence in the organism that stood 
as a stumbling-block in Kant s way. His final criticism 
was that we cannot understand an organism because we 
cannot make it, and that therefore the application of our 
own practical causality as a means of explanation must 
only be analogical. This limitation to our knowledge 
constituted for him the difference between the mathe 
matical and biological sciences. He thought that the 
only things we can know with certainty are extensive 
magnitudes, because, as Geometry shows, we literally 
produce representations in space a priori. His view of 
intensive magnitude or degree in sensation does not 
really affect his position, and is hardly more than a 
corollary to the preceding principle. It is fundamental 
for him that " sensation is just that element in cognition 
which cannot be at all anticipated." And the only 
element in sensation which we can anticipate, is that to 
which we can give a mathematical ratio. It is true that 
he speaks of intensive magnitude as if it were an 
individual quality, apprehended in a single instant of 
sensation. For example, we perceive by the muscular 
sensation of lifting that a brick and a stone, of equal 
size, have different intensive magnitudes. It would 
thus appear that we can have a knowledge of objects 
which is not quantitative. But in order to be a priori, 
it must be a sensation which can be measured in terms 
of space, for example, the number of feet a body with 
specific intensive magnitude will fall in a given time. 
When Kant speaks of intensive magnitude, he is 
thinking of the quality of a quantity and not the 
1 Meiklejohn, pp. 126-7. 



296 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

quantity of a quality. We have no right to infer from 
his statement that we perceive intensive magnitude as an 
individual quality, that we can also anticipate different 
qualities in sensation to which we cannot give a mathe 
matical ratio. He denies that we can have an a priori 
sensation of an end, or the intensive unity in an 
organism. His mathematical ideal of knowledge is the 
necessary correlate to his mathematical view of mental 
life, as a succession of elements in abstract time, 
represented under the image of position in space. He 
can hardly be said to have regarded consciousness as 
organic : it was either an empirical representation of 
parts external to each other, or else an analytic unity. 
It is not therefore wonderful if he should have thought 
that we cannot have a necessary perception of an in 
tensive unity, which is neither mathematical nor mystical. 
In reply to Kant we should say, that we can under 
stand the organic better than anything else for the 
reason that we know nothing so intimately as ourselves. 
And we have this intimate knowledge of ourselves 
because our personality is something we cannot make, 
as if it were a living thing which exists independently 
of our self-consciousness, and which is therefore able to 
react on our knowledge of it and check our surmises 
about it. The only real kind of knowledge is obtained 
in a discursive intercourse punctuated by flashes of 
intuition. In the same way, an organism is a thing 
of which we can have real knowledge because it is 
something which we cannot make. If we wish to 
vindicate the validity of the historical and biological 
sciences against a mathematical ideal of knowledge, we 
must first recognise the individual existence of their 
objects. Of geometrical figures we may be said to 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 297 

know nothing real, in so far as we are able to 
produce them. They are only models which we 
construct of natural forces and their relations to 
each other, such as the elliptical motions of the 
heavenly bodies, which we do not make. It might 
be objected that we do understand a natural law when 
we are able to produce an illustration of it in a working 
model. But all that we understand about it is only 
what we ourselves have put into it. Our so-called 
mathematical certainty is just what precludes us from 
ever knowing how far our conception is true. As 
Kant himself said in the preface to the second edition 
of the Critique of Pure Reason, what we know a priori in 
things is only what we ourselves put into them. 1 

In so far as we may be said to have mathematical 
certainty in our knowledge of anything, there is either 
nothing in it to be known, that is, it is not an 
individual thing but a centre of endless relations, or 
we know nothing real about it. If we are able to 
explain a fact of history like the French Revolution, 
precisely as the effect of certain causes, we have missed 
its significance as an individual event, an act of cosmic 
will, and explained it away. We do not forget that 
natural forces are realities which we do not create 
any more than organisms, and it is a plausible inference 
that we should be able to have a real knowledge of 
them too. For all we know, they may be what 
Schopenhauer believed them to be, manifestations of 
Will, and therefore realities which are capable of recip 
rocating our consciousness of them. But it is just 
because they suffer themselves to be measured with 
mathematical precision and do not question or disturb 

1 Hart, iii. p. 19. 



298 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

our a priori peace, that we can never have a real know 
ledge of what they are in themselves. As matters now 
stand, we certainly know a great deal more about 
personality, notwithstanding its obscurity, than we 
know about the ultimate nature of mechanical forces. 
The Individual is the only thing that stands up to 
our scrutiny, and it is the only thing of which we can 
have real knowledge because it is the only thing that 
has a self-subsisting centre of reality which is not 
dissipated by criticism. There is nothing else in 
Nature of which we can have real knowledge because 
there is nothing else in Nature with which we can 
have personal intercourse in a reciprocating conscious 
ness. The living, or if not the living itself, that which 
refuses to be measured by mathematical standards and 
subsists as the act of creative will in History or Art, 
is the only thing that gives a sense of security to our 
self-consciousness because it responds. The phenomena 
of quantity keep us completely in the dark, the only 
answer we receive is the mocking echo of our ques 
tioning spirit : we are what you have made us and no 
more. It is the response that gives reality to our 
knowledge, it is the one touch of Nature that makes 
the whole world kin. 

Now Kant admits that a Teleology of Nature is 
possible and that we can have at least some hypothetical 
knowledge of organic forms, but it is by a negative 
process of subreption similar to what we already found 
in the Sublime. The conception of a natural purpose 
would be quite unintelligible except to a being who is 
capable of acting from ends of Reason. The concep 
tion of ends in Nature is therefore a psychological idea 
imported from our moral consciousness and attributed 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 299 

to Nature. And we can never be sure if it is not 
we rather than Nature who are originally responsible 
for the purposive manifestations of organic life. Like 
the Indian who wondered, not that the froth should 
foam out of the beer-bottle but that it should ever 
have got in, we are prone to imagine that what we 
think to be traits of character and will in organisms, 
exist in Nature as they appear to us. 1 

It is right, then, that we should not rashly choose 
our ground but first apply the thought of living pur 
pose, which we find in ourselves, to those organic 
forms which are able to sustain it. Although we may 
confidently think of persons as having a nature like 
our own, it is a precarious inference that animals and 
plants have anything corresponding to a moral con 
sciousness ; it is possible that their appearance of 
purposive activity may be sufficiently explained as 
mechanical functions. At the meeting of the British 
Association in 1908, Mr. Francis Darwin gave an 
interesting address on a kind of memory-knowledge 
in plants and lower forms of life. The plant which 
raises its leaves with the dawn and depresses them at 
dusk, continues to do the same when kept in total 
darkness ; flowers that are sweetly fragrant during the 
night, also exude their grateful odour during an eclipse 
of the sun. When we consider that the natural causes 
of their several functions are absent, we are forced to 
think of these phenomena as due to a kind of associa 
tion of ideas which implies memory. But we are still 
in the region of conjecture. We can never be sure 
that our proleptic idea of purposive causality in an 

1 Bernard, p. 224 ; Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea ; 
Haldane, iii. p. 78. 



300 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

organism is a fact of Nature. In Kant s opinion, there 
is only one Idea of Reason which is a fact independent 
of experience, and that is Freedom. Man is in himself 
an unconditioned end of Nature, for he contains the 
highest purpose to which Nature can be subordinate. r 
We do not see all things already put under him, but 
" the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for 
the revealing of the sons of God." Man is the only 
animal who bids defiance to Nature s rule and chooses 
his own destiny. He is what Professor Ray Lankester 
calls him, Nature s rebel. 2 The animal kingdom was 
made subject to vanity, being ruthlessly governed by 
the principle of natural selection ; Nature bids die 
all who fail to reach the required standard of efficiency. 
Only man has the courage to answer Nature s challenge 
with the will to live : " I shall not die but live, and 
declare the works of the Lord." 

Thus the highest Idea of Reason for Kant is the 
Idea of Personality. The only certain end in Nature 
is the end of human life, and it is therefore our moral 
consciousness alone that gives the sanction to Teleology. 
As subordinate to man, all the purposes of Nature, 
internal and external, may have a relative meaning 
and truth. But in themselves they have no indepen 
dent substrate of reality, and we can only judge of 
them reflectively by an external teleology to which 
there may be nothing corresponding in themselves. 
When Kant says that the thought of teleology in 
organisms is due to the discursive nature of our 
Understanding, he evidently means that their whole 
significance consists in their relation to a self. The 
unity is in themselves but not for themselves, as a 

1 Bernard, pp. 360-1. 2 The Kingdom of Man, pp. 26, 40. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 301 

stone may be said to have a unity of form, or what 
Aristotle calls an external entelechy. They are con 
scious but not self-conscious. In Dr. M Taggart s 
words, they are not able to withstand the unity of 
the Absolute Idea which is an abstract description 
of the human spirit. 1 

Although Kant strongly affirms the relative validity 
of the categories of abstract science, which Dr. 
M Taggart as strenuously denies, he would agree with 
him that the biological categories are not a true descrip 
tion of Reality but are due to the zig-zag movement 
of our thought as expressed in the law of Contra 
diction, or in Kant s own terms, to our discursive 
Understanding. But as Mr. Bosanquet has shown in 
his important article on Contradiction and Reality, 2 
contradiction is one thing and negation is another. 
Dr. M Taggart has not sufficiently noticed this dis 
tinction. Contradiction is a vanishing factor and 
diminishes in the higher reaches of experience, where 
the elements are opposed not so much in earnest as 
in play. But this does not touch the question whether 
there may not be an original and abiding discursive 
factor in all our thinking, even when it approximates 
to the intuitive. Kant s fundamental error consists in 
having assumed as the type of real existence, an 
ultimate unity which is incapable of further analysis 
and which excludes not only evanescent oppositions 
but also original distinctions. The consciousness of 
Freedom is such a reality, and that is why he is 
able to call it a fact independent of experience. His 
position is that finite existence is for a self but Reality 
for itself, or in Mr. Bradley s phrase, that Reality is 
1 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, p. 143. 2 Mind, Jan. 1906. 



302 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

experience. The only difference is that what Kant 
conceives as a higher immediacy in the analytic 
consciousness of Freedom, Mr. Bradley conceives as 
a lower immediacy in Sentience. The former is a 
subject which is its own object, the latter an object 
which is its own subject. But, on their own ad 
mission, both these realities are ideal limits which have 
nothing to do with experience. Kant admits that it is 
absolutely impossible to procure a single case in ex 
perience with complete certainty, in which the maxim 
of an act, ostensibly done for duty s sake, has rested 
solely on moral grounds and on the idea of 
duty. 1 Mr. Bradley, again, cannot find a single piece 
of experience which is not vitiated by relation to 
a self, and consequently swollen with a merely ideal 
content like a face stung by a bee ; just as Kant s 
consciousness of Freedom transcends, Mr. Bradley s 
object which is its own subject falls below, the margin 
of experience, and then it becomes a lost quantity. 2 
Mr. Bradley desiderates a quiet encounter with a fact 
outside of experience, where he may shun publicity and 
the exaggerated reports of the upper world : 

" Foliis tantum ne carmina manda, 
Ne turbata volent, rapidis ludibria ventis." 

One is reminded of the tramp who remarked on being 
convicted of drunkenness, that he must have had a 
glorious time of it last night judging from what the 
policeman told the magistrate. 

This position that Reality is immediate experience, 
which is really the basis of modern Pragmatism 
however indifferently disposed to this school its 

1 Hart, iv. pp. 254-5. 

2 Appearance and Reality : see especially chap. xxvi. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 303 

authors may be, begs the whole question. Clearly 
we can only start from experience, but if we also 
equate Reality with it, we are for ever disabled from 
answering the inevitable question how far experience 
itself is real. And the logical result is solipsism. 
This is what happens with Dr. M Taggart. He 
would fain find his personal monads consenting to a 
mutual correspondence, but if there is no feature of 
negation in the immediate unity of self-consciousness, 
how can the monad ever get beyond anything other 
than itself ? It is certainly a pious and noble reflection, 
that if we could see clearly enough our minds would 
see a nature like our own in everything. 1 But this does 
not mean for him that everything bears the image of 
the heavenly, but that everything which is not able to 
bear this image is nothing at all. For by everything 
he does not understand every chair, every crystal, but 
that there are personalities behind them. 2 Whether 
there is a spirit hiding behind each group of chairs, or 
whether it may have a dash of crystals into the bargain, 
or whether finally there must be no nera/Sao-i? V aXXo 
&lt;ye i/o9, we are not told. But why should we be so 
anxious to force our own nature on everything ? If 
this is the kind of heaven to which these thinkers are 
travelling, where every corner is packed with experience, 
where there is no room to stand and nothing to sit 
down on, we at least are desirous of a better country. 
We want more room. 

It is the same tendency we find in Kant. In so far 

as organic forms have no consciousness of Freedom, 

they have no supersensible substrate but an external 

entelechy, and their purposive appearance is an accident 

1 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, p. 143. ^Ibid. p. 222. 



304 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

of our thought. Consequently, the sole basis for a 
Teleology of Nature is our moral consciousness, and 
it has no valid application except to persons ; in a 
secondary way, by a kind of subreption, it may be 
applied to animal organisms in order to assist our 
Understanding. 

There seems to be some doubt, however, as to 
whether this is Kant s real position. We should not 
wish to raise a critical point at this late stage, but it is 
important as it focusses the two different methods of 
interpreting the Critique of Judgment. Frost stands for 
the position we have taken, that Teleology requires the 
help of Practical Reason. 1 Stadler, on the other hand, 
is of opinion that this is not necessary, the Theoretic 
Reason being alone sufficient to account for Teleology. 
Then it follows that Mechanism is unbroken throughout 
as an exhaustive method of explanation, and Teleology 
is only called in as an auxiliary principle to complete 
this explanation. Wundt and Basch apparently endorse 
this interpretation. 2 But, as Frost pointedly observes, 
if it were really the case that Teleology is only a supple 
mentary principle to Mechanism, how could Kant speak 
of an antinomy between them ? 3 It is certainly true 
that Stadler has decided support in Kant s writings. It 
is very significant that in the original Introduction all 
judgments are divided into theoretical, aesthetical and 
practical. 4 In this passage, Teleology has no distinctive 
place at all in the system of philosophy. And near the 
end of the same essay, there is a whole page which is 

1 Der Begriffder Urtellskraftbei Kant, pp. 105, 1 16. 
^VEithetlque de Kant, p. 143. 

3 Kants Teleologie. Kantstudien, Bd. XI. 

4 \Jber Philosophic ilberhaupt: Rosenkranz, i. p. 600. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 305 

completely conclusive. There Kant says that what is 
distinctive in Reflexion is the aesthetical judgment 
alone, while Teleology follows the lead of Reason and 
does not need to base itself on any special principle. 1 

In view of these statements, which constitute a real 
difficulty, it will perhaps be sufficient to say that at least 
they need not be taken as representing Kant s final 
view. Stadler was evidently misled by Rosenkranz s 
statement in the introduction to his edition of Kant s 
works, that the writing in question first appeared in 
1794, four years after the Critique of Judgment? It has 
now been ascertained that the Uber Philosophic uberhaupt 
was written in its original form before the Critique of 
Judgment appeared. The fact seems to be that Kant 
had prepared an Introduction which he afterwards laid 
aside. This manuscript was the original Introduction 
in an extended form. When he saw the need for a 
more succinct statement, he characteristically wrote 
out an independent essay without caring to revise or 
elaborate what he had already written. This is an 
accredited feature of Kant s style. In the same way, 
the Prolegomena is a second and independent treatment 
of portions of the Critique ; and the Dissertation of 1770 
was not revised but embodied without change in the 

o 

Transcendental Aesthetic^ although it maintains a radical 
opposition between Sense and Thought which was 
foreign to Kant s critical purpose. Meanwhile, Kant 
had given the original manuscript to J. S. Beck to use 
at his discretion. Beck made extracts which he 
published in 1794, and these extracts make up what 
is known to us as the Uber Philosophic uberhaupt. Now 

1 Uber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 614. 
2 Rosenkranz, Werke, i. Vorrede, p. 37, note. 



306 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Stadler was under the impression that the Uber Philo 
sophic ilberhaupt was a recast of the official Introduction. 1 
But the fact seems to be that the official Introduction 
was a recast of the Uber Philosophic uberhaupt. Kuno 
Fischer dates the original manuscript as far back as 
1787,2 while Erdmann puts it down to I789. 3 

It is not, then, the case that this work, which con 
tains the principal evidence for Stadler s position, gives 
Kant s last words on the matter. It was in the closing 
years of the eighties that Kant first tried to effect a 
connection between Taste and Teleology. The first 
work in which this connection is systematically developed 
is the Uber Philosophic uberhaupt^ and he is so exclusively 
occupied with this particular problem in that work that 
he loses sight of Organic Teleology. At least, he 
has little more to say about it than he had already said 
in the Dialectic. If now we turn to the essay entitled 
c Concerning the use of teleological principles in Philo 
sophy, which was published about the time the Uber 
Philosophic uberhaupt was originally drafted (1788), we 
find that Organic Teleology is definitely based on 
a new principle, namely, our practical faculty of 
Reason, both pure and applied. The significance of 
this double use of Practical Reason will be explained 
immediately. But Stadler is not to be put down 
so easily. He is familiar with every passage in which 
Kant connects Teleology with Practical Reason. His 
contention is that this new principle is not necessary. 
In so far as organisms are only considered as effects, 
Stadler is correct. The relation of the organism to 

1 Kants Teleologie, p. 44. 

2 Kant und seine Lehre, ii. pp. 4.12-5. 

3 Kants Kritik der Urteihkraft, p. 341 ; Einleitung, s. xvi.-xvii. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 307 

its cause, however peculiar and enigmatic it may be, 
completely falls within the systematic teleology of the 
Dialectic. As we saw at the close of Chapter I., we 
may introduce a new principle in the shape of a psycho 
logical idea imported from ourselves, and think the 
Cause of Nature, organic and inorganic, as artisan. But 
although this may be more picturesque than the idea 
of Nature as a logical system, it is not necessary, and is 
only of use in helping us to complete that system. This 
is the point of Stadler s contention. Without receiving 
any hint from our moral consciousness, Theoretic Reason 
already instituted a logical Teleology of Nature, which 
is quite indifferent to the circumstance that some of 
Nature s objects are organic ; for the classification or 
specification of Nature as a system of ends, according as 
we start from the particular or the universal, is not 
derived from the constitution of objects but from the 
speculative interest of Reason in the completeness of 
knowledge. 1 

So far Stadler s argument is conclusive. As was 
pointed out in the preceding chapter, Kant has not 
fulfilled our expectations of his new principle. The 
psychological idea of Nature as conceived on the 
analogy of our practical causality, ought to mean a very 
different conception of Nature from that of a logical 
system. But this psychological idea does not tell us any 
thing new about the constitution of Nature : its sole 
significance for Kant is that of an additional heuristic 
principle in the extension of Nature as a mechanical 
system. There are some indications, however, that 
Kant was prepared to take his new principle in earnest. 
If in its aesthetic application this principle is responsible 
1 Appendix to Dialectic : Meiklejohn, p. 408. 



308 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

for a real purpose in the subjective mind, it ought also, 
in its scientific application, to sanction a real purpose in 
Nature as something more than the external reflection 
of our discursive Understanding on Nature. Now, 
in his later theory of organic evolution, Kant suggests 
the much deeper view of Nature as a creative process 
in which mechanism is a subordinate factor ; and this 
conception of Nature would answer somewhat to the 
psychological idea of his new principle. And further, 
in what seems to be a distinction between an organism 
considered as effect and an organism considered as itself 
a cause, he recognises the need of basing Organic 
Teleology on the moral consciousness, instead of ex 
plaining it as being due to the discursive Understanding. 
The significant consequence is that the conception of 
organic Nature is largely due to an attitude of mind, 
namely, the conative, which, unlike discursive Under 
standing, depends for its validity on the reality of 
natural purposes. I have noticed that Kant distinguishes 
the two ways in which an organism may be regarded by 
a very subtle difference. We have already observed 
the thorough distinction which he draws between techni 
cally practical, and morally practical, Reason. When 
he is thinking of the cause of organisms, he appeals to 
our technical Reason which is a mixture of Understanding 
and Will. (" Wir kennen aber dergleichen Krafte, ihrem 
Bestimmungsgrunde nach y durch Erfahrung nur in uns 
selbst, namlich an unserem Verstande und Willen, 
als eine Ursache der Moglichkeit gewisser ganz 
nach Zwecken eingerichteter Produkte, namlich der 
Kunstwerke"} * What is important in the application 



Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophic : Kirch- 
mann, p. 171 ; Hart, iv. p. 493. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 309 

of technical Reason is not the organism so much as 
the architect. 1 But when he is thinking of the 
organism as itself a cause, he seems to appeal exclu 
sively to our Pure Practical Reason as the means of 
explanation. 

Two decisive passages may be noted. Kant says that 
the inner teleology in an organism " is not analogous 
to any physical, i.e. natural, faculty known to us ; nay 
even, regarding ourselves as, in the widest sense, belong 
ing to Nature, it is not even thinkable or explicable by 
means of any exactly fitting analogy to human art." 2 
The significance of this passage is negative. It excludes 
the use of technical Reason to explain organisms as 
themselves causes. The following passage, of which I 
give a paraphrase, contains a positive statement, and 
insists on the use of a faculty which is not natural but 
supersensible : While we can quite well see that there 
must be a nexus of causes and effects, it is impossible 
to say a -priori that there are ends in Nature. Therefore 
the use of the teleological principle in Nature is always 
empirically conditioned. It would be the same with the 
ends of Freedom if our motives came to us from Nature, 
and were formed simply by comparing natural needs and 
inclinations with one another. But this is not the case. 
Practical Reason has pure a -priori principles which 
specify the end of Reason a priori. This is the true 
finalism. Consequently, if the use of the teleological 
principle can never sufficiently specify the ultimate 
ground of teleological connection in natural purposes, 
because it is limited by empirical conditions, we must 
expect this complete explanation from a Pure Teleology 
which can be no other than that of Freedom, whose 
1 See Bernard, pp. 290-1. 2 Ibid. pp. 279-80. 



3io THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

principle contains a priori the relation of a Reason in 
general to the totality of all ends. l 

It must be confessed that we seem to be making the 
most of a poor case. But I think everyone who has 
read Kant with close attention will acknowledge that, 

o * 

while he has confused these two aspects of Organic 
Teleology, he intended to keep them apart. Were it 
not for our moral consciousness, there would be no 
Organic Teleology and no really new principle. Such 
ends as Nature presents to us would remain what they 
are, empirical observations of which we can make 
nothing, if our moral consciousness did not encourage 
us to take them seriously. Our moral personality is 
the only clear instance of a self-contained end, there 
fore of a natural purpose, and it is from this instance 
in ourselves and from it only, that we are able to 
think of other purposive appearances as having inner 
teleology. 

Thus the final outcome of the third Critique is 
Ethical Teleology. If our moral consciousness insti 
tutes Organic Teleology, it also determines its limits. 
Wherever the Idea of Freedom fails to apply, Organic 
Teleology ceases to be a certainty and becomes a 
subsidiary speculation. Kant s ostensible reason for 
this restriction is that we have an intuitive perception 
of Freedom as a fact in ourselves, which we can there 
fore apply to a society of persons who are able to sustain 
this Idea. The implication is that since we have no 
a priori intuition of biological unity, our judgments on 
organisms must only be analogical. But this is an 
unreasonable assumption. Our discursive thought is 

1 ^ber den Gebrauch tekologischer Principien In der Philosophic : Kirch- 
mann, pp. 172-3 ; Hart, iv. pp. 494-5. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 311 

good enough, provided it is a reciprocating conscious 
ness. As Kant himself acknowledges, this trumpery 
Idea of abstract Freedom has no existence in fact. The 
consciousness of Freedom may be an immediate cer 
tainty, but it is not therefore an unmediated perception. 
We come into the consciousness of Freedom through our 
discursive intercourse with persons in a society of Ends. 
What George Meredith says tentatively of Nature in 
the Egoist may be said of our moral personality, that it 
is not so much a fact as the effort to master a fact, in a 
progressive culture. Kant s mistaken assumption is the 
error in all Intellectualism, a one-sided criterion of 
interpretation as reposed in a pre-conceived unity. In 
every case this dogmatism makes no serious attempt to 
explain the diversity. In Plato it is non-being ; in 
Spinoza, all determination is negation ; in Leibniz, 
truths of fact are ideally truths of Reason, but they only 
become intelligible by an arbitrary choice of the Best as 
if the essences of Reason existed prior to the divine 
Mind ; for Mr. Bradley it is mere appearance, so that 
in its highest manifestation as personality, " he y as such, 
must vanish " ; ~ L Dr. M Taggart confesses that we must 
come to a halt somewhere in our system, and that 
whereas there is much which is far from being individual 
and has a non-spiritual appearance, we must be content 
to leave it unexplained ; a confession which, after so 
brilliant a display, is almost as remarkable as Hume s. 2 

The history of philosophy is a fair indication that we 
are on the wrong road when we insist on an uncon 
ditioned unity as capable of interpreting the diverse 
forms of existence. As I have heard Professor Stout 

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 419. 

2 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, chap. v. 



312 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

say at the meeting of the Aristotelian Society in 
Birmingham, 1909, we are not to seek for a unity 
which will interpret the diversity, but a unity which 
the diversity can adequately interpret. That is to say, 
our consciousness of Reality must be reciprocating, and 
it is because the organic facilitates this kind of conscious 
ness that it is more easily within the reach of our 
understanding than anything else. One recalls what 
St. Augustine said about plants making advances to our 
knowledge of them, by inviting our admiration. Kant 
thinks that it is we who project everything into the 
organism. But our thought becomes coherent pre 
cisely in the measure that the organism reciprocates 
our consciousness of it. 

Kant, however, was aware to some extent that if the 
conception of Nature as organic must have the sanction 
of our moral consciousness, our moral consciousness 
must be reinforced by our consciousness of Nature as 
organic. Apart from his familiar position that the 
validity of Ethics involves, as an essential hypothesis, 
the subordination of Nature to a moral purpose, he 
expressed himself more particularly with reference to 
the problem of Teleology in the passage we have just 
paraphrased, and which we now continue : c Granted 
that this pure Practical Teleology is destined to realise 
its ends in the world, it ought not to neglect ensuring 
the possibility of these ends as effect, and to do this 
both with reference to the final causes given in the 
world and also the organisation of all ends as the effect 
of a supreme world-cause ; in short, it must not neglect 
to substantiate Organic Teleology and also Transcen 
dental Philosophy, or the possibility of Nature in 
general, in order to ensure objective reality to the ends 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 313 

of Practical Reason. l The ends of Freedom can only 
be realised if Nature will glow with some spark of fire 
in her grey ashes and discover a real kinship to our 
moral personality. The ends of Nature, of which 
we have only a dim presentiment in empirical observa 
tion, but which Freedom devoutly elaborates into a 
system of Ethical Teleology, are not of Freedom s 
making. They are favours of Nature, and without 
this concession on the part of Nature, Freedom would 
go darkling. Moral culture is impossible except in a 
world which is itself informed with a moral intention. 
The deep without must answer to the call of the deep 
within. Already in her Beauty, Nature becomes respon 
sive. But in organic forms there is a nearer approach 
to the nature of man. We have not only the picture but 
the fact of Freedom ; organic Nature is the instinctive 
enactment of our ethical personality, or the realisation 
of moral ends in a natural way. 

But Kant goes much farther. The moral earnestness 
in virtue of which we appeal to Nature as a system of 
real purposes, is only an accident of our practical faculty, 
as the discursive method of thought is a defect in our 
intelligence. In a Being whose Understanding is in 
tuitive, the distinction between c ought and is does 
not exist, because the possible is itself actual. 2 From 
this it should follow that if the manifestations of purpose 
in organisms are delusions of discursive Understanding, 
our Practical Reason is responsible for the fictitious 
belief in moral persons, and the Idea of personality is 
as much an external entelechy as the Idea of biological 

1 Uber den Gebrauch tcleologischer Principien in der Philosophic . Kirch - 
mann, p. 173 ; Hart, iv. p. 495. 

2 Bernard, 76, p. 317. 



THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

unity. Perhaps Kant hardly realised the far-reaching 
consequences of this admission, which is the root of 
ethical scepticism. 1 With the identification of Theoretic 
and Practical Reason, as it was developed by Fichte, 
morality ceases to be unconditioned and becomes phe 
nomenal like the knowledge of sense-perception. 

This ethical nihilism is the worst form in which the 
conception of an Intuitive Understanding could be 
presented, and is a very doubtful speculation. It is 
stated in an extreme form by Mr. Bradley when he 
says : "most emphatically no self-assertion nor any self- 
sacrifice, nor any goodness or morality, has, as such, any 
reality in the Absolute." 2 We do not say that the con 
ception is altogether fictitious. .The motiveless morality 
which Schiller saw typified in the Greek statues, repre 
sents a real attitude in the life of sainthood. Holiness 
is more than virtue. It is the state of soul which knows 
all imaginable forms of evil but will not image any of 
them, the state of sublimation in which the soul main 
tains its calm above the earth-storm of the will. In 
our unsanctified morality the will is only exercised in 
self-defence, at random ventures, and it is little better 
than an accident if we come off victorious; it is a 
negative reaction to an external irritant rather than 
spontaneous expression. In Holiness the will is watch 
ful and wakeful, the issue is foreclosed, the way of the 
battle determined, before the suggestions of evil arise. 
He is indeed noble who wins a victory over temptation 
in the fierce struggles of the will, but at the best it is a 
grudging victory. Much nobler is he who, like Perseus 
on his winged sandals, rises above temptation s level 
and engages with the dragon from above. 

1 Cp. Dorner, Kantstudien, iv. 2 Appearance and Reality, p. 420. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 315 

Now this exalted state is anything but motiveless. 
It requires a far greater expenditure of effort to main 
tain this level than to keep our ground in the struggles 
of the will. For the same reason, I do not think that 
obligation loses its meaning even for the divine mind. 
The existence of moral evil would be a hopeless enigma 
unless it had its ultimate ground in the nature of God. 
As Theaetetus said to the Stranger, this may seem to 
be a "terrible admission." But if we say that obliga 
tion is confined to the finite mind, we are positing 
something which God does not understand, and there 
fore something by which the absolute nature of His 
being is limited. To be absolute the nature of God 
must contain the element of finitude, and in such a way 
that His finite nature shall not be regarded as evanescent 
appearance but as a permanent feature of His existence. 
This is the truth expressed in the Christian doctrine, 
that the Son retains his humanity in His state of exalta 
tion. It would be impossible for men to sin unless the 
possibility were present to the mind of God. When 
we say with Plato that God cannot possibly do evil, we 
mean that it is His nature to be good, and we do not 
express anything different in the alternative statement 
that He is good because He wills to be good. But the 
simple statement that He is good just because it is His 
nature, altogether neglects the element of striving in 
the life of God. The goodness of God would mean 
nothing to us unless it were possible for Him to be 
otherwise. And if the nature of God is such that this 
contingency shall never happen, it is because the necessity 
to be good is maintained by continuous assertion of 
His self-hood. There is no reason, in existence or out 
of it, why God should not let go the rudder of the 



316 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

universe, except that He has chosen not to do so, and 
the maintenance of His eternal choice is a state of being 
which is unthinkable, apart from the conception of 
something corresponding to moral obligation. 

But there is sufficient in the distinction between the 
intuitive and moral will as we have understood it, to 
destroy Kant s laborious edifice. At least we have 
forced him into a consistent scepticism. The moral 
consciousness is not a fixture any more than the dis 
cursive Understanding. The issue is so uncertain, the 
end of conduct which we confidently set before us as 
supreme and absolute, becomes so transformed into the 
commonplace of action, that it is possible to doubt our 
freedom and to regard all persons as complexes of animal 
functions ; the moment of free choice which we enjoyed 
before action, resolves in retrospect into a series of inevit 
able causes. So much does the mere consciousness of 
Freedom mean for us. Freedom is not a fact sufficiently 
stable to support the idea of personality in ourselves 
or others, until it has ceased to be self-conscious. The 
sanction for an Ethical Teleology does not lie in the 
consciousness of Freedom but in a habitude of Freedom, 
which is much more akin to the aesthetic than to the 
moral consciousness itself. But we do not need to 
wait upon this habitude, for which a life-time may not 
suffice, in order to believe in personality ; this habitude 
of Freedom already exists in us instinctively as a lower 
immediacy, in the original disposition of our mental 
functions. Our belief in personality is due to some 
thing in us which is deeper than the consciousness of 
moral freedom, it is what constitutes the basis of 
personality itself. There is the further important 
consequence that, since we are conscious of this basis 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 317 

as natural rather than as moral liberty, this fundamental 
consciousness of ourselves is also favourable to our 
belief in the existence of organic Nature, or the enact 
ment of our moral freedom in a natural way. The 
moral consciousness is only an episode in the process 
from a lower to a higher immediacy, the lowest phase 
of which contains the consciousness of personality. 

This problem of the relation between Aesthetic and 
Teleology brings our study to a close. There is a 
curious fascination in the way Kant brings together 
these different attitudes of consciousness. Our principal 
source is the original Introduction. In this essay, Kant 
defines his position in two completely contradictory 
statements. On the one hand, it is said that the intro 
duction of the Urteilskraft into the system of philosophy, 
rests wholly on its peculiar, transcendental principle, 
that Nature specifies her causality in accordance with the 
idea of a system. 1 Teleology of Nature is therefore the 
sole justification for Reflexion. On the other hand, it is 
argued with equal emphasis, that the aesthetical judgment 
is the only distinct and peculiar element in Reflexion. 2 
In so far, then, as Teleology has a place at all in 
Reflexion, it is because of the aesthetic principle. But 
it is in this antinomy that the solution lies. These two 
statements are necessarily abstract and untrue because 
they are independent expressions of a single fact. 
Aesthetic and Teleology are complementary attitudes of 
consciousness which stand to each other in the relation 
of content to form. The content in Reflexion is the 
consciousness of harmony in our mental states, the form 
is the principle which makes this harmony possible, 

1 Dber Philosophic uberhaupt: Rosenkranz, i. pp. 612-3. 
id. p. 614. 



3i8 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

pure teleology or the principle of adaptation in general. 
Thus, in a passage which Stadler regards as a slip of the 
pen, Kant is able to say, that the aesthetical judgment 
alone contains the principle of adaptation without which 
Understanding could not find itself in Nature. 1 Stadler 
very naturally considers that this is a confusion of 
aesthetical with systematic Teleology and an oversight 
on Kant s part. 2 But I think he meant it. Undoubtedly, 
the connection of the teleological principle with the 
aesthetic process was made easy for Kant by his pre 
decessors, and it may quite well be nothing more than 
a confusion. What we should call beautiful Art was 
confused in Leibniz with technical skill, and this 
explains why a moral end or purposed intention clings 
to Aesthetic in the subsequent philosophers. 3 The prin 
ciple of Teleology is Technic, the conception of Nature 
as artisan in the disposition of her laws, and of course 
this conception has nothing immediately to do with 
beautiful Art. It is exactly the same in sense as the 
rexviTw Aoyoff of Irenaeus, and indicates the original 
meaning of the Greek word, technical or industrial Art. 
But the use of the same word, Kunst, to denote both 
beautiful and technical Art, made a confusion easy. 
Kant is by no means free from this ambiguity and takes 
advantage of it. There is a deeper justification, how 
ever, for the connection of Aesthetic with Teleology, 
which cannot be explained away as a confusion of 
terms. Kant s meaning in the above passage is 
that the essence of the aesthetic disposition of our 
faculties consists in their formal harmony, that is to 
say the harmony, not of particular representations, 

1 Bernard, Introd. p. 36. 2 Kants Teleologie, p. 113. 

3 Erdmann, Hist. Phil. ii. p. 198. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 319 

but of the faculties themselves as unspecified content 
in a particular representation : the harmony, therefore, 
of Imagination and Understanding, Sense and Thought, 
Nature and Mind. The ground-work in Aesthetic is an 
Erkenntniss uberhaupt, an Understanding in general, that 
is to say, the organised Imagination in general, and 
this can only mean the first and original application of 
Understanding to Nature; 1 it therefore contains the 
original hypothesis that Nature is adapted to our in 
telligence. 

But, so far, it is only the connection of Aesthetic 
with Teleology in general that Kant has in view. 
There does not seem to be any distinctive reference to 
Organic Teleology in this relation, and it is precisely the 
connection of Aesthetic with Organic Teleology that is in 
question. Organic Teleology is, of course, included in 
Formal or Systematic Teleology, for this latter means 
that Nature specifies her causation into new kinds of 
causality, such as mechanical reciprocity and organic 
teleology, and always in keeping with the conception 
of Nature as a systematic unity. Kant, however, has 
taught us to believe hitherto that this disposition of 
Nature is purely logical, and therefore quite indifferent 
to the particular constitution of the objects which come 
under its notice. It arises altogether out of the logical 
interest of Reason in systematic unity, and therefore 
what matters is not what we find in Nature but what 
we are able to put into Nature, so as to satisfy our 
intelligence. There may be a good deal left unexplained 

1 Kant says in the Analytic, that the synthesis of Imagination " is 
the first application, and so the condition of all other applications, of 
understanding to objects that we are capable of perceiving." Watson s 
Selections , p. 78. 



320 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

in the nature of particular objects, but that is of no 
account so long as our interpretation, which is altogether 
subjective, gives a satisfactory result. It makes no 
difference to Reason that there are organisms, whose 
existence is so far individual and whose causality is so far 
independent, that they cannot be exhaustively explained 
as subsidiary to higher ends of Nature. It would make 
no difference to Reason if angels with wings appeared 
on its ground ; Reason would soon accommodate them 
to its principle. Thus in Kant s view of Teleology 
there is no real difference between organic and 
inorganic, so far as our judgment is concerned. The 
so-called Teleology of Nature in the Critique of 
Judgment adds nothing to the regulative function of 
Reason in the Dialectic. For we are told that the 
predicates of Organic Teleology are reflective or logi 
cal, and therefore do not refer to real qualities of 
Nature. Considered as elements in a logical system of 
Reason these predicates may be regarded as a priori, 
because the subjective principle of teleology in general 
lies at the basis of all cognition ; but considered as 
science they are purely empirical. The purpose in an 
organism is a purpose which is none of ours, and Kant 
would seem to think that the recognition of such a 
purpose as a real constituent of the organism, is quite 
inconsistent with the subjective principle of the con 
sciousness of a purpose in ourselves. Accordingly, 
whenever Teleology pretends to be Science, it is 
disowned by the subjective principle of logical purpose 
and is dismissed under the ban of Criticism. The 
logical or reflective teleology, on the other hand, which 
we attribute to Nature, does fulfil a purpose in us, the 
unification of our knowledge in a system : it is a 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 321 

harmony of concepts as Aesthetic is a harmony of 
unthinking representations. 

But now we wish to address a final question to Kant. 
Whence did Reason obtain this logical interest in 
Nature? From itself? No indeed. It is what is Nature 
in the subject that gives rise to the logical interest of 
Reason. For the consciousness of our subjective har 
mony is the felt knowledge of that very principle accord 
ing to which Nature is specified in the organisation of 
her parts, and therefore the consciousness of a harmony 
in ourselves is based upon the implicit consciousness 
of a real harmony in Nature. The interest of Reason 
cannot, then, be merely logical, it must be transcen 
dental. There is something deeper in us than the 
logical function of Reason as there is something deeper 
than the mere consciousness of our subjective freedom, 
and that is our personality, the fundamental conscious 
ness of ourselves as natural liberty. We are now able 
to lay our finger on the source of so many contra 
dictions in the Critique of Judgment. Kant has been 
using Reflexion in two different senses throughout : in 
the Critique of the Aesthetical Judgment Reflexion is 
transcendental, in the Critique of the Teleological Judgment 
it is logical. Thus the unity of Kant s original plan, 
if he had any, is completely broken. But the official 
* deduction or justification of Reflexion is given in the 
Critique of the Aesthetical Judgment, and Reflexion is there 
expressly identified with the conception of mental play 
as the basis and condition of all explicit knowledge, 
and is consequently entitled to an a priori sanction that 
is transcendental or immanent in experience, and not 
an a priori that is merely logical or contingent to 
experience. As I have said in the preceding chapter, 



322 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

the aesthetic consciousness, which is the typical expres 
sion of Reflexion, has more affinity with sensation than 
with logical process, 1 although it is not sensation. 
Hence the significance of Kant s derivation of Reflec 
tive Judgment from the Feeling of pleasure and pain 
(Gefuhl\ which he defines as a peculiar form of 
sensation (Empfindung).* There is no reason, there 
fore, why the Judgment in the domain of Organic 
Teleology should be denied the name of Science ; its 
a priori sanction must be more than logical, that is, 
necessary from a particular point of view which may be 
quite contingent to experience, for it is only empirical 
in the qualified sense that it is a synthesis which is a 
further analysis. If, as we saw, the aesthetic conscious 
ness may be taken as the content in Reflexion, of which 
the principle of pure teleology is the form, Organic 
Teleology, or a genuine inductive synthesis which 
reveals the true nature of the individual, will be a 
further specification of this indeterminate content which 
is the consciousness of ourselves as Nature, and not a 
purely empirical procedure. 

It was surely the light of genius that led Kant, not 
simply to state the community of Aesthetic and Tele 
ology, which his predecessors had rendered easy in 
their confusion of beautiful with technical Art, but to 
reiterate and insist on this relation. The real signifi 
cance of his association of Judgment with Feeling is 
that notionless experience, as the indeterminate con 
sciousness of a principle, conditions the application of 
this principle in the use of concepts. Probably this is 
the meaning of a baffling passage which it is almost 

1 Vide supra, p. 257. 

2 \Jber Philosophic uberhaupt : Rosenkranz, i. p. 598 ; Hart, vi. p. 388. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 323 

impossible to render in coherent English. With the 
omission of certain unnecessary reiterations, what Kant 
says is as follows : Although teleology must be supplied 
to the judgment empirically on every occasion, still the 
judgment on these particular organisations of Nature 
obtains a claim to universality and necessity, through the 
relation of the subjective teleology of the given representation 
to the a priori principle of pure teleology : and thus an 
aesthetical reflective judgment can be regarded as 
resting on an a priori principle. 1 The concluding 
reference to the aesthetical judgment is quite inconse 
quent and ought to stand first. What he should 
have said is that Teleology has the same original 
claim to universality as Aesthetic, because of the 
necessary relation between the consciousness of a 
harmony in our faculties and the disposition of the 
same according to a certain principle. There is originally 
a subjective element in a teleological judgment, 
although its predicate is found in empirical observation ; 
our activity fulfils a purpose in ourselves which inspires 
and directs our voyage of discovery. But this sub 
jective harmony is itself the felt knowledge of a 
principle which must be a priori, because it is the 
principle on which the faculties of our mind are 
originally disposed to one another, namely, the har 
mony of our consciousness of Nature with the con 
sciousness of ourselves. The teleology of Nature 
takes its rise in the sense of wonder, which is an 
indeterminate psychological process without specific 
predicate ; or, to put it in another way, a judg 
ment of purpose is originally a purposive judgment 

1 fiber Philosophic ilberhaupt \ Rosen kranz, i. p. 613 ; Hart, vi. p. 

400. 



324 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

and therefore has the same claim to universality as 
the notionless experience of the aesthetic conscious 
ness. We can have proleptic ideas of Nature which 
are true predicates, because Nature is anticipated 
by us in the consciousness of our own personality. 
For this fundamental consciousness of ourselves, though 
notionless, is not the arbitrary source of spontaneous 
variations whose novelty surprises Omniscience itself, 
as the late Professor James believed, but the felt 
knowledge of that very principle on which Nature is 
discovered to be constituted. It is intelligence in its 
elemental self-identity, but it is intelligence. In Hegel s 
words, " the nature of the universe, hidden and shut 
up in itself as it is at first, has no power which can 
permanently resist the courageous efforts of the intelli 
gence : it must at last open itself up ; it must reveal 
all its depths and riches to the spirit, and surrender 
them to be enjoyed by it." l 

Teleology is the method of philosophy in making 
this unspecified content coherent and intelligible as it is 
reflected in the diversity of Nature. But if Teleology 
sets off to pick up empirical concepts on its own account, 
without any sanction from immediate experience, it 
need not expect to find anything more than a colloca 
tion of empirical elements. If we try to interpret 
Nature in the so-called disinterested attitude of the 
scientist, with an open mind, free of all prejudice and 
supposition, recognising only what our senses register, 
we shall certainly find that matter is utterly dead and 
moreover that life is resolved into material processes. 
If we approach Nature empty-handed, we shall un 
doubtedly go empty away. To him that hath shall be 
1 Quoted in Caird s Hegel, p. 195. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 325 

given. We are empowered, nay, necessity is laid upon 
us, to proceed in our investigation with the conviction 
that Nature is spirit. This may be an unreasoning 
assumption, but it is not unreasonable ; it carries 
irresistible conviction (TO KaraXijTrriKov) which, after the 
manner of Zeno, we are prepared to maintain with 
clenched fist against all the world. 1 We have the key 
to the interpretation of Nature instinctively in the 
consciousness of our own personality ; for the greater 
and deeper part of personality is not what is consciously 
willed by us, but what worketh in us to will and to do, 
that is, the consciousness of ourselves as natural liberty ; 
and therefore the supersensible substrate in ourselves is 
the same as the supersensible substrate in Nature. 

In its empirical method of investigation, Teleology 
has inevitably lost much of its original impulse received 
in immediate experience, it has shed the features of its 
early nurture in the bosom of elemental mind. And 
this is not a loss in itself, it is altogether gain if it only 
mean that the intuition of philosophy must be supple 
mented by empirical science. To quote Hegel again : 
" Science, therefore, must work into the hands of 
philosophy, that philosophy in turn may translate the 
universality of reflection which science has produced 
into the higher universality of the reason, showing how 
the intelligible object evolves itself out of the intelli 
gence as an organic whole, whose necessity is in itself." 

On the other hand, we do not see any advantage in 
decrying the discursive nature of our intellect as utterly 
misleading. Intelligence has paid the price for its 
self-consciousness at a loss of instinctive insight. But 
we do not need to bemoan our lot. We venture 

1 Cicero, Acad. ii. 47. 



326 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

beyond the security of Instinct in the praiseworthy 
effort to substantiate and extend what is intuitive in 
our thinking by the methods of empirical investi 
gation. If we are thinking to any good purpose, not 
a shred of our thinking is merely logical. It is insti 
tuted and sustained by a transcendental feeling, in this 
instance the schema of Nature s conformity to our 
intelligence. It is only when our thinking is disin 
genuous or fictitious in its purpose that it is merely logical. 
To take an extreme instance, Hegel did not come by 
his great discovery of the Absolute Idea by a dialectical 
process, although he expounded it in a dialectical 
process, but by a kind of divination. Therefore even 
the conception of final causes, however remote it may 
be from the ultimate truth, need not be discarded 
altogether as a false anticipation. Lord Bacon s l state 
ment that the inquisition of final causes is barren, and 
like a virgin consecrated to God produces nothing, has 
been nobly supplemented by the rejoinder : that although 
final causes may be themselves unfruitful, yet like the 
vestal virgins they guard the sacred fire of the temple. 
If philosophy will do this alone, it will do perhaps all 
that is needful. Nature, in grateful recognition, will yield 
up her secrets and complete our knowledge. There is 
a real danger, however, and it is here that M. Berg- 
son s criticism applies, that the intellect in its aggressive 
self-consciousness should force its own anticipations on 
Nature. If we are convinced that Nature is spiritual, 
this must not mean that we are prepared to find a 
nature like our own in everything the position to 
which modern Pluralism is committed, and that where 
we fail there is nothing to find. We must abase 
1 Advancement of Learning, Bk. III. chap. 5. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 327 

our thought to Nature s intimations "in a wise 
passiveness." Our consciousness of Nature must be 
reciprocating. 

In conclusion, Kant was fundamentally sound in 
making Ethical Teleology rather than Aesthetic the 
middle term in the Critical Philosophy. Only, we 
should not understand Teleology as an abstract inter 
pretation of Nature, which exploits the organic as a 
passing show, without individual existence of its own, 
in order to satisfy our intelligence and so to promote 
the higher culture of humanity. Moral culture may 
be the highest end in Nature, but that is no reason why 
there should not be other subordinate ends which are 
equally real. As was hinted at the close of Chapter II., 
the anomalous position of Teleology as half in and half 
out of immediate experience, constitutes the bridge 
between Nature and Freedom. The common inter 
pretation of the Critique of Judgment, that Nature and 
Freedom are reconciled in the aesthetic consciousness, 
is misleading. In Teleology alone do we unite the 
consciousness of a harmony in our immediate experience 
with the cumulative perception of a harmony in Nature 
herself, and so render intelligible the realisation of 
Freedom in the world. It is not enough for philosophy 
to point to Aesthetic as the reconciliation of Nature 
and Freedom. The only real proof philosophy can 
offer is to be found in the process of interpreting 
Nature, and that is Teleology. The aesthetic con 
sciousness has no other actuality than that of a symbol, 
the kind of Freedom it embodies is the deliberate 
refutation of moral Freedom as it is realised in the 
world. While, therefore, the aesthetic consciousness 
as symbolic expression is a real interpretation of Life, it 



328 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

is essentially abstract when it is substituted for the life- 
consciousness as the actual realisation of Freedom in 
Nature, and is even found to be inconsistent with moral 
Freedom. 

It is a significant fact recorded by Schiller, that in 
almost all periods of history when Art flourished, 
society was in a state of political and moral decadence. 
In the golden age of Pericles, virtue was a vice on the 
lips of a Socrates and in the life of a Phocion ; the 
Romans were corrupted by Oriental luxury and their 
strength was exhausted in the strife of civil war, before 
their inflexible character could assimilate the spirit of 
Greek Art ; in modern Italy Art did not arise until the 
cities of the Lombard League had lost the spirit of 
independence. Everywhere Art founded its kingdom 
on the ruins of Freedom. 1 It is no reproach to Art 
that it has nothing to do with morality, for it already 
contains morality in and for itself as it is passed through 
the crucible of natural liberty. But it is all the more 
certain that Art is quite indifferent to the actual struggle 
of Freedom in the world, and realises the unity of 
Nature and Freedom by ignoring the opposition 
between them. If it cannot be said that Art is 
immoral, then it is a-moral. So long as the artistic 
consciousness is able to take pleasure in a representa 
tion which is indifferent to morality, it is deliberately 
abstracting from the life-consciousness and has very 
little to do with morality indeed. And although the 
aesthete, by reason of his indifference to the moral 
issue, may be free from all taint of impurity, it is clearly 
a very different case from the experience in which the 
moral consciousness is not ignored but elevated to 
1 Letters on the A esthetic al Education of Man, x. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 329 

unthinking goodness. Such an aesthetic consciousness 
recognises no distinction between what is immoral and 
a-moral, and is equally intolerant of either. 

The complete reconciliation of Nature and Freedom 
has no actual existence until it is achieved through 
moral culture in the final destination of humanity, and 
for philosophy this practical determination is expressed 
in a teleological interpretation of Nature, whose highest 
end is ethical. But, for this very reason, moral culture 
cannot present the Ideal, for the Idea of humanity is 
not completely realised in the individual : " we see not 
yet all things put under him." Aesthetic alone can 
do this in its complete immediacy as symbol. As 
the typical expression of our personality in its first 
entelechy, Aesthetic prefigures the higher immediacy 
of realised capacity, when that which is in part shall be 
done away and we shall know even as we are known. 
For as the ideal expression of our mental functions in 
their naive simplicity. Aesthetic integrates the divergent 
expressions of consciousness, theoretical and practical, 
and resolves the opposition of whole and part, thought 
and sense, conception and perception, possibility and 
actuality, creative intuition and moral obligation. To 
this complete destination we hope we are travelling, and 
meanwhile Aesthetic is its symbol like the rainbow in 
the sky. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONCLUSION. 

WE have now completed a very summary review of 
Kant s Teleology, aesthetical and physical. The con 
clusions are well-worn and apparently of no vital 
interest even to the student of philosophy. But, in 
the close study of an author, we inevitably come into 
touch with the inarticulate motive of his work, and it is 
this deeper motive which has engaged our attention in 
the present study. So far as actual results are con 
cerned, the Critique of Judgment is hardly a success, and 
must be regarded as the least satisfactory of Kant s 
writings. In the first place, he sought to maintain the 
purity of Aesthetic and at the same time to inspire it with 
a serious purpose ; but finding that purity and purpose 
would not mingle, he divorced the Beautiful from 
artistic expression. Secondly, he pointed out the limi 
tations to the argument from design. In this latter 
venture Kant has been eminently successful, and what 
he has done need never be done over again. But he 
gained his point at too dear a price. His criticism of 
the teleological argument turns mainly on the distinc 
tion between real or internal and relative or external 
purpose in Nature ; and, while his exposition of organic 
purpose is of permanent value, he practically reduced 
the organic to the level of the inorganic under the 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 331 

vague principle of Formal Teleology. From the em 
pirical point of view he clearly recognised the irre 
ducible difference between an organism and any other 
piece of finite Nature ; but whenever he looked from 
the a priori standpoint, this genuine difference seemed 
to fade away in the dissipating function of a discursive 
Understanding. The result is a false theory of Induc 
tive Science. Induction and Reflexion are character 
istically defined by Kant as the qualification of empirical 
perception by a merely problematical idea : Science never 
comes directly into touch with Reality. This sceptical 
theory of knowledge has had a profound influence on 
subsequent speculation. It has become fashionable with 
present-day philosophers, who do not blush to own the 
consequence that the channels in human nature through 
which the Real may be supposed to enter and com 
municate itself to us are irrational. But we may be 
confident that so wanton an abandonment of reasonable 
knowledge cannot long continue to satisfy the thinking 
mind. It is surely a damaging contradiction that our 
practical and emotional nature, which is supposed to be 
alone capable of settling for us the riddles of the Uni 
verse, is itself in its supposed isolation from intelligence 
quite unconscious of the distinction between Appearance 
and Reality, and therefore incapable of even appreciating 
the problems which it is thought to solve. 

We have reason to believe that the inner develop 
ment of Kant s thought is not consistent with this 
sceptical basis. Evidence has been led to show that 
his Teleology of Nature results in a true theory of 
Induction. This is the first and most obvious inference 
to be drawn from the relation between Aesthetic and 
Teleology. It is to the concrete conception of human 



332 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

faculty which we find in Kant s aesthetic theory that 
this advance in his theory of Induction is directly due. 
Teleology can no longer be regarded as an external 
reflection on Nature, for the content of our judgment 
takes its character from the way in which we are affected 
by Nature. And if our judgment is a priori^ it is 
because our consciousness of Nature presupposes and is 
conditioned by the consciousness of ourselves as Nature. 
The conception of natural liberty which constitutes the 
basis of the aesthetic Spiel der Krtifte, is fundamental in 
every expression of human faculty. This is what we 
have called the psychological aspect of Teleology, and, 
strangely enough, the designation indicates the objec 
tive aspect of Teleology at the same time that it 
primarily draws attention to its subjective side. To 
say with Kant that Teleology is only logical is to say 
that it is subjective or empirical. 

But there is a second and even more important infer 
ence to be drawn from the relation between Aesthetic 
and Teleology. Reflexion as Teleology of Nature is 
more than Inductive Hypothesis ; it is also Ethical 
Teleology, and it is in this latter aspect of Teleology 
that its connection with Aesthetic is most manifest. 
The highest level of reflective consciousness is neither 
Art nor Life, neither aesthetic nor organic purpose, but 
Religion a type of Science which is neither dependent 
for its expression on artistic symbols nor equipped with 
the methods of scientific observation, but which is as 
articulate as artistic expression and as certain in its con 
clusions as anything in Science. This is not what Kant 
means by Ethical Teleology, but unless Teleology is 
capable of this special and final interpretation its con 
nection with aesthetical Reflexion must remain an enigma. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 333 

Teleology as Science of Nature has only that initial 
relation to Reflexion which every form of experience 
must have, as it is based on the fundamental conception 
of our natural liberty; it is not itself Reflexion, the 
emotional but reasonable apprehension of what is real. 
It is in this Ethical Teleology, and only in Scientific 
Teleology in so far as it is ancillary to Ethical Tele 
ology, that the reconciliation of Nature and Freedom is 
found. Aesthetic indirectly contributes to the realisa 
tion of this end by its symbolic representation of man s 
immediate unity with himself and with Nature. The 
aesthetic harmony of human faculty is not yet an 
achieved state ; it only happens in moments which, 
though imperishable in their significance, nevertheless 
pass away. It is in the teleological interpretation of 
human life as progressive moral culture that the inci 
dental intuitions of Art acquire a permanent character : 
man s final destination is being already realised as the 
partial fulfilment of his complete perfection or second 
entelechy. And as the basic element of the first ente- 
lechy is natural liberty, that of the second will be some 
analogous, concrete power such as love, in St. Paul s 
beautiful language the cincture of perfectness, which 
holds in harmony every other power of heart and mind. 
Now it is evident that whenever Teleology becomes 
a distinctive method of interpreting human life, it has 
changed its character. Scientific Teleology or Induction 
is always supplied with more or less definite empirical 
data, while Ethical Teleology in its distinctive aspect is 
characterised by their absence. There are of course 
empirical perceptions which indicate the moral and 
spiritual life, and these are quite as capable of inductive 
interpretation as the observations of physical science. 



334 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

But the true character of our spiritual manhood is not 
revealed to us in this external way : the kingdom of 
heaven within us cometh not by observation. Intro 
spection is the first and final method of Psychology, 
and the comparative and experimental methods, not 
withstanding the wealth of detailed information they 
contribute, are only subsidiary instruments of explana 
tion. To be assured of our immortal destiny, to secure 
it as a possession of which we can be as certain as any 
thing in Science, to envisage the things that are invisible, 
we can no longer avail ourselves of the ordinary methods 
of Science. It is something far more tenuous and less 
palpable than emotional expression, voluntary or in 
voluntary, or indeed any kind of sensible evidence, that 
procures for us this higher knowledge of our inner life 
and its ghostly environs. We have recently been 
reminded by a great authority 1 that every level of 
experience has logical coherence, if it is real. And I 
do not mean to deny for one moment that the elements 
of Inner Sense have a coherent content and are there 
fore capable of inductive synthesis. But this is some 
what beside the point. To assert that all experience is 
ultimately capable of coherent interpretation may only 
mean that it is so for a superior Understanding such as 
the mind of God, but not necessarily for us. There 
are phases of experience which may never be intel 
lectually coherent for us, existing in the form of realised 
contradictions, and we can only escape the consequence 
that they are practically irrational by recognising a 
different method of coherence from that of intellectual 
unities. If we persist in affirming that every coherent 
content must be intellectual or logical, we simply 
1 B. Bosanquet : The Principle of Individuality and Value. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 335 

destroy the distinctive meaning of Logic and Intelli 
gence. 

At this point of our argument Mysticism is fain to 
enter with a gesture of approval. But it must not be 
supposed that we have any intention of paving the way 
for Mysticism. On the contrary, we should wish to 
reclaim for Knowledge the "cloud of unknowing" under 
which Mysticism has stolen a precarious shelter. Why 
should Mysticism be allowed to riot in phases of experi 
ence which are really susceptible of a sober Science ? 
If Mysticism has made converts, philosophers have 
themselves to blame. They have not recognised, unless 
with disdain, the experiences of the distinctively spiritual 
life ; and because these psychoses are judged to be 
incapable of logical consistency, they are swept out of 
court without a hearing. If our immortal destiny is a 
real thing, if the impalpable environs of our inner life 
have any actual existence, they must be the objects of a 
genuine Science. And though this Science is distinct 
from the Science of Nature because it is occupied with 
a different plane of experience, it is at least not less 
valid than the Science of Nature, for it fulfils the same 
epistemological conditions. 

I am quite aware that the arguments which have just 
been advanced may appear to have little in common 
with Kant s discussion of Ethical Teleology. But it is 
not in his discussion of Ethical Teleology that our 
interest lies so much as in the original and profound 
conception of Reflective Judgment, which constitutes 
the motive of the third Critique unless we take the 
view that the Critique of Judgment has no literary unity 
at all. Kant himself favoured a kind of mysticism. 
For him both ethical and scientific Teleology were 



336 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

regulative, and the real and only ground of certainty he 
could find was in an immediate conviction or practical 
intuition which has no scientific value whatsoever. But 
there are suggestions in his aesthetic theory of a moral 
type of knowledge which has an equal claim to validity 
with the Science of Nature. Then the whole of Tele 
ology, scientific and moral, ceases to be formal and 
becomes a genuine interpretation of Reality. 

Kant s indirect contribution to this moral type of 
knowledge is his discovery of a new power of Imagina 
tion. The ideal of Epistemology which we have traced 
in Kant s criticism, consists of a more congruous relation 
than is found. in ordinary knowledge: the factors of 
possibility and actuality are homogeneous so that thought 
is not unduly in advance of sensation. Knowledge is 
imperfect while whole and part are diversely appre 
hended, the former intensively the latter extensively. 
In the higher forms of existence, which have a real 
intensive unity, the discrepancy tends to disappear. 
Aesthetical, biological and ethical unities, the three 
representative objects of Reflective Science, approximate 
to the ideal type of knowledge for which Reflexion 
stands : the parts can only be perceived as elements in 
their intensive relation to the whole. But in the lower 
forms of existence which fall below the category of 
biological unity and which have only an external ente- 
lechy, the discrepancy is more glaring : there is an 
unequal adjustment of sense and thought. The parts 
are sensuously apprehended while the unity is not per 
ceived or imaged but imagined or conceived. The 
result is that when we have a clear and distinct appre 
hension of diversity, the unity tends to be merely ideal 
or practically non-existent, and consequently the diversity 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 337 

itself must be prevailingly synthetic and therefore unreal ; 
and, on the other hand, when we have a clear apprehension 
of the unity, we lose sight of the diversity, and the unity 
itself must consequently be analytic and therefore unreal. 

In its most reasonable form the attitude of Pragmat 
ism to this problem of knowledge is : that if phenomena 
are only artificial make-shifts, not an exact interpretation 
of the actual but a merely ideal expansion of the actual, 
we ought to limit the function of thought to those 
actual connections which are consistent with practical 
interest. The resulting experience will be a more or 
less satisfactory adjustment of sensation and thought ; 
that it is satisfactory is itself a sufficient criterion of its 
validity. This point of view pervades the whole ten 
dency of modern culture. The significant reality for 
modern culture consists of accurate correspondence to 
environment. We are taking in earnest the enlighten 
ment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in our 
demand for clear and distinct ideas. 

So far this position, which may be called Scientific 
Sensationalism, has the same epistemological ideal as has 
been suggested by Kant s criticism. But it is really at 
the other end of the scale from the point of view of 
Ethical Teleology. The scientific sensationalism of 
modern culture professes not to understand the ethical 
and spiritual life as an independent reality, and regards 
the significance of human life as exhausted in an engros 
sing relation to the environment. If there is a minimum 
of discrepancy in Scientific Sensationalism, it is because 
thought is made to square with a narrow and limited ex 
pression of itself, namely, sensation : we not only take our 
cue from the environment but also our final conclusions. 

There are thus two different interpretations of the 



338 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

epistemological ideal, Scientific Sensationalism and 
Ethical Teleology. While the former is an adequate 
and perfectly adjusted response to environment, the 
latter accepts the environment only as the condition of 
its world. As Kant would say, the basis of Reflexion 
is not sensation but that peculiar form of sensation which 
cannot constitute an immediate connection with envir 
onment. The one type of knowledge may be said to 
begin where the other leaves off, and takes for its basis 
the feeling or affection of the subject in which sensation 
is apperceived. These two types of Science are distinct 
and cannot be translated into terms of each other. 
They are not therefore antagonistic, for they co-exist in 
the same individual experience. But within the same 
experience they constitute distinct forms of apprehension 
which are not meant to be reconciled or confused, how 
ever intimate their relation to each other may be : 
just as our senses are supplementary to each other but 
are none the less distinct avenues of sensation. To state 
the point in a concrete but somewhat narrow way, 
Science and Religion will remain independent worlds so 
long as there are elements of Inner Sense which cannot 
be realised in terms of Outer Sense. The basis of 
Science is sensation (Empfindung), the basis of Ethical 
Teleology is empathy (Einfuhlung). 

Such a distinction will be meaningless in that final 
stage of culture of which Aesthetic is the symbolic 
expression and of which Ethical Teleology is the pro 
gressive realisation. But meanwhile we are compelled 
to accept the distinction ; and it is the duty of the 
philosopher to examine the conditions of a possible 
Science of those spiritual psychoses, which cannot be 
adequately conceived by the categories of Science nor 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 339 

realised in the symbolic representations of Art. In his 
aesthetic theory, and particularly in his doctrine of the 
Sublime, Kant has suggested how such a type of know 
ledge is possible. While the aesthetic Imagination is 
extensive, ideational, the Sublime calls for a new order 
of Imagination which is intensive, volitional or mystical. 
It is certainly an error on Kant s part to suppose that in 
the Sublime the extensive or ideational Imagination is 
totally displaced by an intensive or mystical Imagina 
tion, for the ideational Imagination is re-instated by 
sympathetic reaction in so far as the sublimity is also 
aesthetical. Kant s doctrine of the Sublime, however, is 
not aesthetical, and has more in common with religious 
and mystical experience than with the sublime objects 
of Art. When the ideational Imagination struggles to 
grasp the intuitions of our moral Reason which are 
inarticulate for both Science and Art, it breaks down 
and never regains its footing; but at the moment when 
it reaches the limit of its effort, it passes over into a new 
phase of its activity and then it is no longer the instru 
ment of Understanding but "the instrument of Reason." 
It is by this " strength of usurpation " that the moral 
Imagination reveals in a flash the invisible world. 
Although we cannot have extensive images of these 
spiritual realities, we can compel them into our presence 
by this instrument of moral Reason. 

This moral Imagination is nothing else than a higher 
power of apperception. It will be remembered how Kant 
defines Reflexion as the power of comparing and holding 
together given representations, either with others or 
with the whole faculty of representation. 1 There is a 

1 fiber Philosophic uberbaupt: Rozenkranz, i. p. 589; Hartenstein, 
vi. p. 381. 



340 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

striking parallel to this definition in St. Paul s writings. 
St. Paul is making a distinction between the natural and 
the spiritual consciousness : the natural man cannot 
receive nor even know the things of the Spirit because 
they are spiritually discerned ; but the spiritual man 
fathoms 1 the deep things of God, comparing spiritual 
things with spiritual (TrvevfMTueois TrvevjmaTiKa a-vvKpivovres 
i Cor. ii. vv. 14-15 taken with vv. 10 and 13). 
Following the suggestive rendering of the German 
version, spiritual knowledge is the method of bringing 
heavenly things to expression in heavenly speech. In 
common apperception it is the schema that initiates the 
cumulative tendency towards ideational form. Reason 
is also schematic, and when Imagination fails, it institutes 
an apperceptive process peculiar to itself: inarticulate 
intuitions by rubbing together gather significance and 
produce something analogous to ideational form. 

There is no good reason to deny that Ethical Tele 
ology as the apprehension of what Professor Eucken has 
called the independent spiritual life, is a form of true 
Science. It constitutes a closer adjustment of cognitive 
factors than anything which Scientific Sensationalism can 
procure. For in this higher plane of experience there 
is no alien faculty of Imagination to compete with the 
intuitions of Reason, and therefore no occasion for the 
discrepancy which may arise in common apperception. 
There is no tendency to swelling, such as can happen in 
the damp atmosphere of phenomena, no hyperstructure 
of a merely ideal content. Ethical Teleology is the 
highest type of Science because it fulfils the ideal con 
ditions of Science. 

1 On basis of German version dvaK/oivei = ergriindet intensive as 
contrasted with extensive knowledge. 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 341 

There is an obvious objection, however, which must 
now be noticed. It will of course be urged that there 
is a perfect adjustment of cognitive factors in this 
sublime science, simply because there are no real cogni 
tive factors at all. There are only intuitions of Reason, 
empty possibilities, and there is nothing corresponding 
to sensation. How then can we speak of an adjustment 
of factors ? The supposed mental synthesis can only 
be a bare analytic point of abstraction. But this is not 
true. It is frankly acknowledged that there is no 
element of sensation. Indeed the Imagination, which 
is the highest faculty of Sense, is avowedly discarded, 
whether in the form of scientific category or artistic 
symbol, as inadequate to utter the meaning of the inner, 
spiritual life. But let us ask ourselves what it is that 
constitutes cognition. It is certainly not contact with 
sensation ; and even if a sensation could enter con 
sciousness full-blown from without, it would not of 
itself provide universality which is the real criterion of 
cognition. For it is not objectivity that makes univer 
sality but universality that makes objectivity. Sensation 
as a distinctive form of sense-affection is after all a 
highly specialised product of thought ; and the initial 
shock of confused sense-affection which an undeveloped, 
consciousness may be supposed to feel and which is the 
nearest approximation in our developed consciousness to 
an external contact, is nothing more than the significant 
point of reference or focus of attention in a systematic 
world of consciousness. Judgment or cognition is the 
process of making explicit relations in this world at any 
such point of reference. Now, in the higher type of 
apperception there is something corresponding to sensa 
tion or affective consciousness, which constitutes the 



342 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

centre of attention. The inarticulate intuitions of Reason 
are brought to a focus, not in sensation, but in an 
empathy, the deep self-affection of the subject which 
constitutes just as truly the fulcrum for a universal pre 
dication as any form of sense-affection. This self- 
affecting consciousness is also the shifting centre of a 
coherent world, and the judgments based upon it are at 
least as capable of universal communication as the sin 
gular judgments of Art. An empathy is not a subjective 
state, it is not the after-glow of common apperception 
but an objective quality of consciousness corresponding 
to sensation. Indeed it is the least solipsistic of all 
mental states, for it is the deepest expression of the con 
sciousness of ourselves as Nature, transcending the 
distinction between consciousness as affective and as 
affecting. 

D 

It is hardly necessary to insist that the interpretation 
of this sublime empathy which has just been offered, is 
quite different from that which is associated with sub- 
consciousness. This latter, which in its fashionable use 
to-day is little more than a psychological name for the 
solar plexus or abdominal brain, is professedly irrational, 
while the empathic consciousness is the highest expres 
sion of a reasonable soul. And I have no serious 
objection to the claim that, in so far as this empathic 
state is reasonable, it must be intellectual or logical. 
On the contrary, it has been asserted that the apprehen 
sion of our spiritual life as an independent reality, is not 
only a form of Science but that it is the nearest approxi 
mation to the ideal conditions of Science. Still it is 
worth while contending for a reasonable form of appre 
hension which is not at the same time intellectual, for 
this reason : philosophers who insist on the thorough 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 343 

application of logical coherence to experience, will not 
recognise the validity of psychoses which cannot be 
turned out on the table and conceived as a whole of 
parts. It is a miserable reflection that the beliefs which 
are dearest to the human heart and which the common 
reason of mankind has never seriously doubted, have 
either been asserted by philosophers on a basis of 
scepticism which is almost worse than useless or have 
been brushed aside in scorn as cobwebs of the brain. 
Kant s proofs for the existence of God, the Soul and 
Immortality have been declared irrational. This is well, 
but what has Idealism been able to offer in their place ? 
Nothing but a blank vacuity. The forgiveness of sins, 
the peace of God thatpasseth Understanding^ the renewing 
grace of Holy Spirit, the life everlasting and the sense 
of continued fellowship with our dear and holy dead : 
these are things in comparison with which the greatest 
achievements of Science are illusive gain, and on these 
precious intuitions Idealism is silent. We are only told 
that everything is spiritual : an act of cognition is 
spiritual ; fish and fowl are low down in the scale, but 
they are none the less objects of spiritual experience. 
The result is that, although a difference of levels is 
maintained, the distinctive meaning of Spirit has been 
squandered. For those who cherish such beliefs as 
have been mentioned, there is no shelter in the groves 
of Philosophy unless it be irrational philosophy, and 
that we do not want. We are disinherited to herd with 
mystics who love the way of unreason ; we are fain to 
lend our ears to the fabulous reports from another world 
of so-called Spiritualism, reports which are anything but 
spiritual and much more nearly resemble the gibberish 
of forlorn devils shivering on the cold shell of Reality 



344 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

or the distant sound of muffled voices from behind a 
frosted pane ; or we are left at the mercy of sub-conscious 
incursions which may hail from a hell as often as from 
heaven. 

We are therefore driven to maintain the validity of 
our beliefs if need be in spite of logical consistency. 
But this unwelcome course is hardly necessary, for logical 
consistency is itself based upon experience which is not 
distinctively intellectual. Our consciousness of Nature 
is conditioned by the consciousness of ourselves as 
Nature, which is not an intellectual content but indeter 
minate coherence. Logical coherence is a system of 
relations which are only necessary within the limits of a 
wider contingence ; and although this apparent con- 
tingence is coherent in and for itself, its coherence can 
hardly be of the same character as that of a logical 
whole. The experience which is more than intellectual, 
the experience which assimilates Intelligence as one of 
its elements, does not need to wait upon a logical criterion. 
To insist that this empathic experience is intellectual 
would be as misleading as to say that thought is sensa 
tional because sensation happens to be a limited and 
particular expression of thought. 

Without this method of indeterminate coherence, we 
are for ever incapable of appropriating the independent 
spiritual life. The scientific Intelligence, unaided by the 
empathy of Reason, knows practically nothing about its 
own ultimate hypothesis, except in the form of an intel 
lectual torso. And Philosophy as criticism of Science is 
apparently content not to know any more, provided that 
the method of Science, that is, of logical coherence, is 
exhaustively applied to every plane of experience. The 
ultimate unity of existence is not perceived by scientific 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 345 

Intelligence but conceived or imagined in the form of a 
heuristic principle. It is only a unity which can inter 
pret the diversity, not a unity which the diversity can 
adequately interpret : that is to say, a unity which is 
completely coherent in and for itself and not problemati 
cally coherent as it is revealed to the finite Intelligence. 
This latter conception is what Hegel meant by the 
Absolute Idea. But so long as we insist on the uni 
versal application of logical coherence as the criterion of 
experience, the Absolute Idea can never be revealed to 
us except in the form of hypothetical reality unless our 
philosophy is irrational, and then the Absolute Idea may 
communicate itself to us as a plurality of finite gods. 
The ultimate unity of existence must not simply be con 
ceived, but perceived in a way that is homogeneous with 
the perception of the parts, that is, in some way analogous 
to sensation. In no other way is it possible to have 
a direct and characteristic revelation of the ultimate 
Reality. Any other method, such as that of intellectual 
apprehension, is confined to manifestations, which how 
ever true, and they are very true, may be infinitely 
remote from the inmost nature of that Reality. The 
ultimate unity must be known to us, if we are to have 
a real knowledge of it, as the unity of a whole which is 
exhaustively realised in its diversity, and not simply as 
a heuristic principle which is only realised in so far as it 
can interpret the diversity. This does not mean that 
God must be known to us as extensive magnitude 
coterminous with the boundaries of existence, but that 
what we know of Him must be expressive of Himself 
as He is for Himself and not a problematical conception. 
It is impossible to think that we are unprovided with 
a power of apperceiving what is beyond the grasp of 



346 THE CROWNING PHASE OF 

Imagination and Understanding. We do not need to 
appeal with Kant to an Intuitive Understanding outside 
of us. The Intuitive Understanding is within us; for, 
as was shown in the preceding chapter, the nature of the 
ultimate Ground of existence and the nature of the 
human mind are of the same character, namely, pur 
posive reality without a purpose or indeterminate coher 
ence. And it is not wonderful if this intuitive power, 
which is the motive of all Science and productive of its 
schemata, should also exist in us independent of the 
discursive Understanding which it institutes. This 
intuitive or empathic consciousness is alone capable of 
apperceiving God, precisely because it transcends the 
distinction between a hypothetical unity and its particular 
instances, between possibility and actuality, between 
Understanding and Imagination, between sensation and 
thought. This is that peculiar form of sensation which 
does not refer to any determinate object and whose 
content is indeterminate coherence. It is also the purest 
form of Science because it realises most perfectly the 
ideal conditions of Science. Even in Art, where the 
unity between whole and part is very close, there may 
be a discrepancy : for example, there are musicians who 
prefer reading the score to hearing the music. Even in 
an organic whole the unity is hypothetical or incom 
pletely realised in the parts. But in Empathy it cannot 
be so, for the Imagination, the highest faculty of Sense, 
is not allowed to compete with thought but is produced 
at will by the intuitive power of thought itself. Some 
one can say : c I believe in God, but I cannot express 
what I feel. It is not enough to say that God is Father, 
it is more than that ; I simply feel that I live in Him 
and He in me, but I cannot form any conception or 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 347 

image of what it means to me. That is enough. But 
it is not logically coherent ! 

Uncle mihi lapidem, uncle sagittas ? 

If it cannot be approved as logical coherence, it is because 
it is more than logical coherence. It is the apprehension 
of the whole not as it is hypothetically, but as it is 
exhaustively, realised in its diversity ; and still it is not 
that whole as it is imaged extensively, but as it is inten 
sively revealed to us in the elemental feeling of our own 
identity. The ideational Imagination only enters into 
this experience as a negative factor, in so far as its futile 
effort to grasp the divine totality provokes the creative 
energy of our moral nature. This moral power of 
Imagination is not the private possession of Genius but 
is in the gift of our common humanity, and we have 
not realised it only because we have not cultivated it. 
In the consecrated effort to live the life that is in God, 
to appropriate the inmost essence of Truth as Spirit, 
our wills become perceptive. Heavenly things find 
expression in heavenly speech. It is in this progressive 
culture that the reconciliation of Nature and Freedom 
is realised. By long dwelling in fellowship with spiritual 
things, the eyes of our spiritual Understanding are 
enlightened ; and while the Imagination of common 
apperception sacrifices its freedom, it acquires " an 
extension and a might greater than it sacrifices." " But 
we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the 
glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image 
from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit." 



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