Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/38

22 words, the conception of the world as a system of causal relations is simply the conception of it as quantitative, when the latter has become aware of what is presupposed in it. Hence we must deny the Kantian doctrine, that the quantitative determination of things is inapplicable to things as they truly are. The true view is that things are related quantitatively, not merely for our intelligence, but for all intelligence; though, at the same time, they have much deeper relations. The various stages of knowledge are not connected in the way of mutual exclusion: the physical sciences do not overthrow, but build upon the foundation of the mathematical: the mental sciences build upon both.

These considerations may help us to see the inadequacy of the Kantian conception of man as a free being. It seemed to Kant that freedom can be saved only if we suppose that man is in his real nature independent of time. For, whatever is in time, as subject to the law of causation, must occur in a fixed and unchanging way. The natural desires seemed to Kant to be such events, and hence he was forced to say that, so far as we look at man simply as an emotional being, there is nothing to show that he is different in nature from the animals, or even from inorganic things. To preserve human freedom, Kant therefore denied that in his rational nature man can be viewed as in time, and, as knowledge is only of that which is in time (or space), he further denied that we have a knowledge of ourselves as free beings. We do not know ourselves as free, though the fact of our possessing an idea of the moral law necessitates the belief in our freedom.

The fundamental mistake of Kant here is his assumption that to be above time, it is necessary to be out of time, or, what comes to the same thing, that man can only be free if he is independent of all natural inclination. The truth, however, is, that man is in time and yet above it; that his desires, though they must in one point of view be regarded as events, are yet more than events. That desire precedes volition, as volition precedes the physical movements by which an action is carried into effect, is true and has its own value, but it is not