Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/292

 280 GEOEGE J. STOKES : GOING BACK TO KANT. thought is always through an objective relation which it under- stands and in understanding which it is. To confound this objective relation with the movement of thought itself is the rock on which Hegel splits. These remarks are sufficient to indicate the point of view from which we would wish to raise again the problem of Kant : How are synthetical judgments a priori possible? Is it really true that it is possible to explain synthesis a priori only if we assume that the object must conform to our cognition, or is created by thought, whether that thought be itself subjective, objective, or absolute ? Now, it is the result of our foregoing criticism that the synthesis in thought has itself meaning only as the thinking of an objective synthesis, a synthesis in the object. It cannot therefore itself create that synthesis upon which its own essence and possibility depend. On the other hand, it is impossible to accept any psychological genesis of the intellectual synthesis, the synthesis in thought, from the objective synthesis, not merely because such genesis must always presuppose what it seeks to explain, but also because the objective synthesis has reality and meaning for intelligence, is in fact anything whatever only in relation to the correlative thought of itself by which its own intel- ligible being is conditioned. These two sides are thus co-ordinate. How then is their harmony possible? Now, if these two sides are conceived as independent, existing separately from each other, then their harmony must be pre-established. If we conceive them as not independent, but as having their being in each other, if we conceive thought and thing as springing into existence in immediate and mediate relation and correlation with each other, then the need for such a pre-established harmony ceases. The harmony is not artificial but natural and immanent. Towards such a modification of the Kantian principle much has been done to clear the way. In this respect to Materialism and Idealism a debt of gratitude is equally due. The successors of Kant in Germany have set the Kantian philosophy free from the trammels of mere subjective Idealism, and have reduced its principle to its finest expression. The study of their systems is mainly useful to give us the clearest consciousness of the extent of the problem which Kant attempted to solve within the narrow limits of the individual mind. Those great half-truths that there is Eeason in the world, that the world is essentially Thought, have an important meaning. It is true if we look these statements in the face they are downright nonsense. Eeason is not in the world and also in consciousness, just like a stick here in the water and there out of it. What is in the world is not Reason itself but that through which Eeason is Eeason, an order of fact correlative to the inner order of thought. In like manner it is true that the world is thought, and the things in it thoughts, but these thoughts are the thoughts of something more than thoughts ; they are the thoughts of realities, and the essence of things is not by any means exhausted or even affected by the thoughts of them.