Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/412

Rh Why just these principles and no others? “That is inexplicable,” replies Kant. Very well, then, suppose we give up applying to experience those arbitrary principles of ours. Suppose we choose to stop thinking of experience as causally connected. What then? “But you cannot stop,” says Kant, “Your thought, being what it is, must follow this one fashion forever.” Nay, we reply, how knowest thou that, Master? Why may not our thought get a new fashion some day? And then what is now a necessary principle, for example, that every event has a cause, would become unnecessary or even nonsensical. Do we then know a priori that our a priori principles must always remain such? If so, how come we by this new knowledge?

So Kant leaves us still uncertain about any fundamental principles upon which a sure knowledge of the world can be founded.

Let us, then, examine a little deeper. Are there any certain judgments possible at all? If one is skeptical in a thorough-going way, as the author tried to be, he is apt to reach, through an effort to revise Kant’s view, a position something like the following, — a provisional position of course, but one that results from the effort to accept nothing without criticism: “Kant’s result is that our judgments about the real world are founded on an union of thought and sense, thought giving the appearance of necessity to our judgment, sense giving the material. The necessity of any judgment amounts then only to what may be summed up in the words: So the present union of thought and sense makes things appear.