Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/90

 78 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR. existent must be relations apart from that which is related ; and if relations require a source, so must that which relations qualify. I am unable therefore to agree with the modern exponents of the Kantian philosophy who see in Kant's doctrine of ' Things-in-themselves ' the results of inveterate prejudice, a mere survival of a mode of thought which Kant himself supplied the means of destroying. Holding, as he did, that the ' Pure Ego ' which for the purpose of the present argument may be identified with the Spiritual Principle of his English followers is the source of relations (cate- gories) and of these alone, he seems to me more logical than they in seeking elsewhere a source for that element in the knowable which does not consist in relations. And if (which I am far from denying) his doctrine be open to the objection made against it by Green (p. 44) and others, namely, that in asserting things-in-themselves to be the cause of phenomena, Kant was employing a category to explain the world of experience which could only be legiti- mately used within that world ; Kant might retort that whether true or not, it scarcely lies with his Neo-Kantian critics to make the charge. For if Green's canon as to the limits within which the categories may be applied permits him to say that "nature results from the activity of the spiritual principle," it surely cannot be very seriously violated by Kant's assertion that nature is in part caused by the action of ' things-in-themselves '. These observations naturally bring us to the consideration of the second principle of Green's theory of relation, namely, that relations, and therefore a world which consists of rela- tions, are the work of self-conscious intelligence. Now it must be noted that this principle involves two propositions, the first of which is that relations exist only for a self-con- scious intelligence, the second of which is that relations are due to the activity of a self-conscious intelligence ; and of these two propositions, while the second can hardly be held without the first, the first may well be held without the second. The second, however, though not treated separately by Green, is an essential part of his system. The active, productive, creative character of mind is too often and too earnestly dwelt on by him to leave any doubt as to the importance which he attributed to it. On it, as it relates to the universal spiritual principle, depends his Theology ; on it, as it relates to individual intelligences, depends his theory of the Freedom of the Will, and through this the whole scheme of his Ethics. In considering the proof therefore