Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/228

Rh der of mere inadvertence is no doubt stimulated by the incessant activity of the pure categories, but its primary provocative is that very deepest principle of our conscious life, the consciousness of our relation to other minds; and it is this principle which Lange’s analysis persistently overlooks.

This primal consciousness of our relation to others is the real secret of our belief in noumena, and contains their only true meaning; and it supplies the element which carelessly and wrongly united with Space and Time gives rise to a sensuous misinterpretation of things-in-themselves. This primal conscious principle Lange, as just noted, quite omits to investigate; and this omission is the central defect of his analysis of the noumenon. The oversight leaves his account of the nature and function of this notion seriously inadequate — a deficiency of which something further presently. By the misapplication of Space and Time to the thing-in-itself, we are prompted to think it extended and enduring; and this, even when we view it as the soul or as God. Here is the source of that mechanical psychology and that faultily anthropomorphic theology — we should call it zoomorphic, instead, if we spoke correctly — which have always been the bane of religion, the constant cause of religious scepticism and indifference. With the