Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/475

 IDEALISM AND EMPIEICAL EEALISM. 461 importance of the distinction, the moment attention is called to it, is obvious. Our sensations, and consequently, too, the matter of our sense-perceptions, exist only in our sensibility, and have no existence when we do not perceive them. 1 But that which corresponds to them is distinct from them, and does not necessarily cease to exist when we do not sensibly perceive it through the medium of the sensations it excites in us. In accordance with these differing definitions Kant represents Empirical Kealism in two different ways, of the distinction between which he likewise does not appear to have been clearly conscious. In general, sensible objects, whether taken for representa- tions in me or for objects corresponding to such representa- tions, are regarded by Kant as (phenomenally) real which I, awake, and in possession of all my faculties, in a normal state, experience. The justification for calling these real is that we find that other men have similar experiences and there is possibility of intercourse on the supposition that we are experiencing the same objects, so that these objects are " objective," i.e. are objects for all men in common. There is little room here for divergence of doctrine, unless it be in regard to the use of the term " same " applied to the sensible objects of different persons, for which it may be con- tended we ought in strictness to substitute the word " like ". The divergence is first and most plainly noticeable in dealing with things of which we do not happen to have, or possibly cannot have, actual sense-perception, such as the walls of this room when my eyes are shut, or the centre of the earth, or the historical person Caesar, or the things in the world before the appearance of man, which we yet think of as real objects and distinguish from imaginary objects, such as chimeras, or from objects in our dreams. The difference, first being noticeable in dealing with the unexperienced real objects, becomes apparent later also in dealing with the real objects which we actually experience and while we experience them. The doubleness, then, of Kant's Empirical Eealism tion, iv., 57, and the latter is the empirical, iv., 32, so that empirical reality could only be the latter and not the whole Wahrnehmung. Thus he says sensatio is realitas phenomenon, iii., 146, and again : " In aller Erfahrung muss etwas empfunden werden, und das ist das Reale der sinnlichen Anschauung," iv., 370. He even gets the same difference into the matter of Erscheinung and of Wahrnehmung, denning it both as being sensation itself, iii., 72, 159, 195, etc., and as corresponding to sensation, iii., 56, 483, or as being an object of sensation, iv., 370. 1 Cf., " Das Reale ausserer Erscheinungen ist also wirklich nur in der Wahrnehmung und kann auf keine andere Weise wirklich sein," iii., 602.