Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/28

12 infinite; the infinite always escapes from its grasp. This is precisely what happens in Hamilton's antithesis. If he showed that the imagination could grasp the whole of space, it would then establish the antithesis and there would be a real contradiction. As it is, the failure of the imagination to grasp space as a whole is a negative proof of the thesis, which therefore is left with two proofs and no refutation.

The best proof of the truth is always drawn from the attempted refutation. Hamilton's thesis is presupposed as true even by the argument in the antithesis, for we could never affirm that the attempt to imagine space would in all cases fail unless we knew that it (space) extended beyond all possible limits and always is "its own other or beyond."

So, too, Kant's thesis is in reality presupposed and thus indirectly proved by the argument of the antithesis. The unity of experience demands the search for causes of events. This happens, because events are seen to be incomplete and derivative, thus presupposing a complementary being that originates them. To find this complementary being that originates them is the purpose of the further inquiry which prompts observation and leads to further experience. Were the mind convinced at start that it is impossible to find the cause, it would not give further attention to the phenomenon. The Brahman knows by his doctrine of the Absolute that the world is an illusion, and hence he abstains from investigation and never discovers the relations of facts and events to each other. The Christian European, being convinced that the world is a revelation of Divine Wisdom seeks the traces of Personal Reason in the concatenation of things and events. It asks for the relations of natural things and forces to each other and inquires into personal motives of the beings that possess transcendental freedom.

V. The Truth of Kant's Doctrine.—We are prepared now to say that the main purpose of Kant, namely, to show a necessary contradiction in the mind in its thought of a first cause, is not fulfilled, inasmuch as all causality has to do with the origination of movements or changes, and hence with