Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/312

284PROP. X.———— vital. But in Kant's case the inconsistency is vital: it touches an essential part; it saps the foundation of his system. Kant's error, when traced to its source, is to be found in his refusal to assume, as his foundation, some necessary truth of reason—some law binding on intelligence, simply considered as such. In consequence of this deliberate neglect, he was unable to fix "things in themselves" (dinge an sich) as contradictory. Hence, if things in themselves (matter per se) are not contradictory, the sensible impressions—the intuitions, as he calls them—to which these things give rise, need not be contradictory either. But if they are not contradictory, they must, when presented to the mind, be, to some extent at least, intelligible. At any rate, when supplemented by the intuition of space, which Kant calls the form of the sensory, and which he regards as a pure mental contribution, they must present some apprehensible appearance. This, accordingly, is Kant's doctrine. The sensible intuitions, though at first scattered, disjointed, and undigested, are not altogether nonsensical. They are in some degree intelligible. They are merely reduced to a higher degree of order and luminosity when united to the form of the sensory (space), and subjugated to the categories of the understanding. If this be a misconception of Kant's doctrine, it is one which he has been at no pains to guard against. At all events, whatever Kant may have intended to say