Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/328

 THE WILL IN NATURE.

to take the concatenation of its parts for the absolute order of the Universe (relations between things–in–themselves), and to assume all this to exist even independently of the brain, would indeed be a leap! Here in fact, an assumption such as this must appear to us as the height of rashness and presumption; yet it is the foundation upon which all the systems of pre-Kantian dogmatism have been built up; for it is tacitly pre-supposed in all their Ontology, Cosmology and Theology, as well as in the aeternae veritates [eternal truths] to which they appeal. But that leap had always been made tacitly and unconsciously, and it is precisely Kant's immortal achievement, to have brought it to our consciousness.

By our present realistic way of considering the matter therefore, we unexpectedly gain the objective stand-point for Kant's great discoveries; and, by the road of empirico-physiological contemplation, we arrive at the point whence his transcendental-critical view starts. For Kant's view takes the subjective for its standpoint and considers consciousness as given. But from consciousness itself and its law and order, given a priori, that view arrives at the conclusion, that all which appears in that consciousness can be nothing more than mere phenomenon. From our realistic, exterior standpoint, on the contrary, which assumes the objective creatures that exist in Nature to be absolutely given, we see what the intellect is, as to its aim and origin, and to which class of phenomena it belongs, and we recognise (so far a priori) that it must be limited to mere phenomena. We see too, that what presents itself in the intellect can at all times only be conditioned chiefly subjectively, that is, can, together with the order of the nexus of its parts, only be a mundus phenomenon, which is likewise subjectively conditioned; but that it can never be a knowledge of things as they may be in themselves, or as they may be connected in themselves. For, in the nexus of Nature, we have found the faculty of knowing as a conditioned faculty,

PHYSIOLOGY