Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/246

 232 G. H. HOWISON : too, I have relied on the plain force of the essentially social nature of the self-defining consciousness to lead my readers to see how irrelevant Kant's agnostic tenets are. (See, particularly, my pp. 351-353, and cf. pp. 173-175.) That is to say, the Kantian agnos- ticism is annulled, so far at least as concerns the certainty of the existence, even the noumenal or eternal existence, of the self. In fact, however, my reviewer is a trifle out in saying I depart from Kant on this point, for Kant himself never supposed that this was unknown or unknowable : what was unknowable was, not the existence, but the nature of the noumenon. If nowhere else, then at all events in the Prolegomena, Kant declares unmistakably that the existence of selves as Dinge an sick is a known certainty. "That there are no Dinge an sich," he says in substance, "is absurd ". (Gf. the Prolegomena passim, but especially in 57.) (2) A more serious complaint is that which Mr. McTaggart makes that my reasons for treating the Categories as applicable to the self, when I refuse to describe it in terms of Sense Forms, are " not brought out anywhere in the book ". This fault, if it is a fault, I have to confess. Within the limits of the brief volume I could not compress everything pertaining to a complete vindica- tion of my general view. In particular, Mr. McTaggart's centrally pertinent question Why are not the Categories in exactly the same position as Time, as to being necessarily trascended by the noumenal self ? could only be answered after a complete re-exam- ination, going to the foundations, of the whole problem of epistem- ology. This would need to be taken up along Kant's own lines, and followed to the point where (at the end of the Transcendental Analytic) one gets into the position to show that, and just why, Kant has failed to establish the objective character of even natural science. It would then appear that, in order to give really ob- jective value to a priori syntheses in Space and Time, we must combine a pure use of the Categories a use unmixed with Sense Forms with their use as "schematised" with the help of these Forms. Thus we should learn that there is no possible escape from the transcendent use of the Categories even when we attempt to employ them only transcendentally. But not only did I feel that this epistemological inquiry was at once too long and too subtle for the public to which I chiefly addressed my book ; I was also, in the case of more expert readers, relying upon a previous warning as to the general path the in- quiry must follow, which I had given in my contribution to the volume entitled The Conception of God, at pp. 124-127. Still, Mr. McTaggart is quite right in pointing out that all this needs to be done in full detail before one can claim to have made a proof of Personal Idealism clear of all queries. And this I hope some day yet to accomplish. (3) My reviewer finds a "weakness " in that part of my argument concerning the existence of God which aims at showing God's soleness (monotheism), in opposition to the charge of "polytheism"