Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/293

 ABSOLUTISM AND EMPIRICISM. 281 Nevertheless, we ought by no means to underestimate the value of the contributions of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. It is probable that in Kant there is by far the greatest supply of material for philosophical thought, that his system is the most intrinsically valuable, but the general plan and extent of the building can only be learned from the former. And in this sense, and from this point of view we ought to go back to Kant. Kant has indeed been lately studied amongst us as introductory to Hegel. But if there is truth in what we have urged in the fore- going it would be better to reverse this procedure and to study Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, not in order to accept their conclu- sions as final results of philosophical speculation, but in order to turn over once more all that is implied in Kant's method of answering the question How are a priori synthetical judgments possible ? ABSOLUTISM AND EMPIRICISM. By Prof. WILLIAM JAMES. Xo seeker of truth can fail to rejoice at the terre-a-terre sort of discussion of the issues between Empiricism and Transcendental- ism (or, as the champions of the latter would probably prefer to say, between Irrationalism and nationalism) that seems to have begun in MIND. It would seem as if, over concrete examples Like Mr. J. S. Haldane's, both parties ought inevitably to come to a better understanding. As a reader with a strong bias towards Ir- rationalisrn, I have studied his article in No. XXXIII. with the liveliest admiration of its temper and its painstaking effort to be clear. But the cases discussed failed to satisfy me, and I was at first tempted to write a Note animadverting upon them in detail. The growth of the limb, the sea's contour, the vicarious function- ing of the nerve-centre, the digitalis curing the heart, are un- fortunately not cases where we can see any throw ili-and -through conditioning of the parts by the whole. They are all cases of reciprocity where subjects, supposed independently to exist, ac- quire certain attributes through their relations to other subjects. That they also exist through similar relations is only an ideal supposition, not verified to our understanding in these or any other concrete cases whatsoever. If, however, one were to urge this solemnly, Mr. Haldane's friends could easily reply that he only gave us such examples on account of the hardness of our hearts. He knew full well their imperfection, but he hoped that to those who would not spon- taneously ascend to the Notion of the Totality, these cases might prove a spur and suggest and symbolise something better than themselves. No particular case that can be brought forward is a real concrete. They are all abstractions from the Whole, 19