Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/28

12 events—the perception, desire, and volition—on precisely the same footing as the physical movements by which it is preceded and followed. Events in the external world are in unbroken continuity with the internal stream of ideas. If Kant still persists in maintaining the freedom of man, it is not without a clear apprehension of the apparent strength of the determinist's case. How, then, does he seek to escape from the realm of pure mechanism? It is here that the distinction of phenomenal and real is made to play an important part. "If our actions," says Kant, "are nothing more than events in time, freedom cannot be saved. On the contrary, we must hold man to be a mere puppet or automaton. No doubt this automaton will be conscious of himself, but if he imagines that he is therefore master of his own actions, he will be under a pure delusion." The actions of man, in other words, must be capable of being viewed, not only as events,—which, in a certain aspect,—they undoubtedly are, but as events which issue from a being who is not an event or series of events. To estimate the precise meaning and value of this distinction we must ask how it came to be held.

A full account of the steps by which Kant reached the conclusion that all objects in space and all events in time are phenomena, will be found in Mr. Caird's book. Here it will be enough to indicate the general course of his development. Kant rather overstated the case when he spoke of being "aroused by Hume from his dogmatic slumber." In point of fact his slumber was by no means profound even before he had read a line of Hume, nor would he have been aroused to any purpose had his own prior development not proceeded upon very different lines from that of the English empiricists. To Leibnitz in particular he owed at least as much as to Hume. It was Leibnitz who prepared the way for the doctrine of the transcendental ideality of space and time by maintaining, in opposition to Descartes, that space and time are but confused ideas of the true elements of reality, and that when this confusion is cleared away by the analytic activity of thought, all modes of existence are found to be inextended, indivisible, and unchangeable