Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/375

. THINGS IN THEMSELVES, PHENOMENA. 353 thought of as entirely different from, and opposed to, the mechanical causality of the sense world. Kant's judgment is, also, no more stable concerning the value of the knowl- edge of the suprasensible, which is denied to us. "I do not need to know what things in themselves may be, because a thing can never be presented to me otherwise than as a phe- nomenon." And yet a natural and ineradicable need of the reason to obtain some conviction in regard to the other world is said to underlie the abortive attempts of meta- physics ; and Kant himself uses all his efforts to secure to the practical reason the satisfaction of this need, though he has denied it to the speculative reason, and to make good the gap in knowledge by faith. From the theoretical^ standpoint an extension of knowledge beyond the limits off phenomena appears impossible, but unnecessary ; from the practical standpoint it is, to a certain extent, possible and indispensable. There is, then, a threefold distinction to be made: (i) "Citings in themselves, which can never be the object of our knowledge, because our forms of intuition are not valid for them. (2) Phenomena, things for us, nature or the totality of that which eitlfier is or, at least, may be the object of our knowledge (here belong the possible inhab-" itants of the moon, the magnetic matter which pervades all bodies, and the forces of attraction and repulsion, though the first have never been observed, and the second is not perceptible on account of the coarseness of our senses, and the last, because forces in general are not perceptible; nature comprehends everything whose existence " is con- nected with our perceptions in a possible experierice" *). (3) Qur represeniatio ns of phenomena, i. e., that of the l^t- ter which actually enters into the consciousn ess of the empirical individual. In the realm of things in themselves jthere is no motion whatever, but at most an intelligible cor- •elate of this relation ; in the world of phenomena, the 'Grid of physics, the earth moves around the sun ; in the f'orogress from this to other possible perceptions." '* To call a phenomenon a 'i"' ^eal thing antecedent to.perception, means. , . it{&lmht progress of experienu ' litre must meet with such a perception."
 * " Nothing is actually given to us but the perception and the empirical