Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/365

 THE OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE. 353 for it in the dim and distant recesses of the intellectual sphere, instead of humbly accepting it at the sensible surface, where it is so ostensibly placed in nature. Transcendentalists, who understand both their own sys- tem and that of the Critick, have for the reasons just given to repudiate any affiliation with a persuasion so ex- plicitly denying any knowledge save that of sensible mani- festations. Nevertheless, with Kant's own wings, or rather by force of his transcendental magic, they may find a ready and telling way of exultingly soaring over the vexatious encumbrances and realistic scruples of the Critick. Kant, with all his caution, took one fatal flight, which, in spite of his many remonstrances, inevitably involves the complete surrender of his Critical system to unmitigated Transcendentalism, the very Idealism he felt so indignant at being accused of. If, namely, as taught by Kant under influence of his rationalistic training all synthesis of mental elements is performed by an action of the understanding, then it clearly follows that there can be found nothing whatever in consciousness that is not already put together by this sole agent of synthetical action. If it is indeed the in- telligible Ego that through the synthetical categories accom- plishes all combinations, then appearances or percepts are just as well formed by it as any other kind of mental manifestation. All mental phenomena, sensorial appearances included, are in time, and therefore with time evanescent in each lapsing instant. If, notwithstanding, they are per- ceived or conceived as durable, it must necessarily be the synthetising principle that unites into simultaneous apper- ception the transitory instants of presentation. Kant, who believed that appearances are given in passive space, imagined that, in the duration of such appearances, he had discovered a positive proof of the existence of foreign things, as furnishing the material of sense. And pushing this presumed discovery to the utmost he further concluded that only through such duration of extended appearances is the experience of our inner self in time rendered possible. In his scientific abhorrence of Schicarmcrei he, for once, allowed himself to chuckle audibly at having thus turned the tables on the Idealists, who pretend to infer foreign existences, only indirectly, by means of inner experience. He reasoned as follows : The consciousness of our own selves is given to us in empirical experiences, but only through the inner sense in time. Now, in time, there is nothing lasting to stay and to consolidate the fleeting moments of this inner experience. Something perceptually