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 H. HOFFDING, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. 403 attain completeness to " hang the chain of thoughts on an ever higher peg " ; to form an absolute system as correlatum of the synthesis which is the ground-form of thinking. Having concluded his exposition of Kant's theory of "Forms" (of intuition, understanding, reason) Hoffding asks is the distinc- tion between the three classes of forms really as sharp as Kant would have it ? Continuity, causality, Time and Space, as con- ceived by Kant, possess an ideal completeness, to which no experience is adequate. Continuity is an idea which finds only approximations in experience. What Kant named ' forms ' are, in fact, only abstractions, or ideals, which we, by the nature of our knowledge, set up and use as standards and rules of investiga- tion. Hence the "principles" are hypotheses, not proven truths. Experience itself, in the sense in which this word is used by Kant in his transcendental proof, is an ideal ; and the point which Hume, whose doubt of the causal principle Kant wished to over- come, actually contested, was that there is any experience in Kant's sense of the term. Kant, therefore, has not solved Hume's problem, which, indeed, is perhaps insoluble ; but he has done the service of bringing into prominence a side of the problem, or rather, a side of our cognition, which Hume neglected, and has thus advanced Erkenntnistheorie a long way. Kant's enthusiasm for the " Copernican principle " led him to ascribe more cogency to his proofs than really belongs to them. Instead of being content to represent his " forms " as types, or models, or anticipa- tions, he tried to produce a stringent proof of their validity ; but in this he failed. Kant had, in his heart, as little doubt of the existence of things per se as he had of the validity of Newtonian science. His grounds for assuming the existence of more than mere "pheno- mena " are threefold, (a) It is improbable that ours is the only possible mode of cognition. To assume this would be like the error of the pre-Copernicans who took the earth for an absolute standpoint, (b) It is only as to its form that cognition has its ground in our nature, its matter, or content, being given to us in sensation, and having therefore a cause, (c) Reason falls into contradictions when it transcends experience, which contradictions can be solved only by assuming a distinction between phenomena and things per se. On the second of these grounds critics in general have fastened, declaring that it involves an illicit use of the prin- ciple of causality, which has (according to Kant himself) no extra- experiential validity. This criticism, made as early as Jacobi and Schulze, is, from Kant's standpoint, unanswerable ; yet, Hoffding continues, Kant would have been consistent if he had merely asserted that the matter of cognition cannot be explained from its form, that the varying and specific elements cannot be derived from the constant and unvarying outline. The possibility of ex- perience ceases, indeed, if no sensations arise; but how they arise is a question with which Erkenntnistheorie has properly nothing to