Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/36

20 is. And, just as we cannot tell what the acorn is until we have seen it develop into the oak, so it is impossible correctly to characterize Reality until thought has done its perfect work, and reached the ultimate phase of conception. Absolute Idealism maintains that thought when completely developed reaches the conception of the real as a self-conscious organic Unity, and that all other conceptions are the less developed forms of this ultimate thought. In other terms, Idealism affirms that a knowledge of Reality, as it truly is, is possible for man, and in a sense is attained by every man. For the idea of the Unity of all things is the impulse of knowledge and constitutes an intellectual atmosphere, which is ever present, though usually it is not brought before consciousness in an explicit reflection. Let us see the bearing of this general view of knowledge upon the doctrine of Kant.

It is assumed by Kant that, if we could but find a sensible object that possessed an isolated independence, we should then have a knowledge of something absolutely real: it is just because no such object can be presented in space or time that our knowledge is declared to be only of the phenomenal. Now, it may be safely affirmed that a reality such as is here desiderated is unknowable not only by us, but by any possible intelligence. If existence were made up of an infinite number of atomic individuals, there would not be one universe, but an infinite number: each monad, as Leibnitz said, would constitute a little universe by itself. But no such monad, except by a gratuitous assumption, can be conceived to have any knowledge of the other monads: it must be as absolutely alone as if nothing but itself existed. It is thus obvious that the ideal of perfect knowledge which Kant borrowed from Leibnitz is a false ideal. The knowledge of man cannot, therefore, be stigmatized as phenomenal, on the ground that we cannot know an isolated individual or monad. Yet a real difficulty is brought into relief by Kant, when he points out that no knowledge of the world as a complete whole can be obtained so long as we seek to reach completeness by the conception of quantity. No smallest or largest quantum can be known, because it is of the very nature