not be a statement about things in the real world. In the next ten years-his second period- he became convinced that the metaphysics of the Rationalists was impossible, and yet that the metaphysics of the empirical school of the English was equally absurd. His writings during this time are more strictly devoted to ques tions of metaphysics and epistemology. Then came his critical period. This was inaugurated by his celebrated Dissertation of 1770, followed by a period of eleven years of literary silence, a silence broken by the publication of his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Between 1781 and 1790 appeared the more mature works from Kant's pen. Among them were the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of Judgment (1790), formed on the model of the Critique of Pure Reason. Besides these, his minor writings were very numerous, and one notes an essay by him in the last year of his life. But the writings of Kant after 1790 treat in the main of the philosophy of law and conduct, and show themselves to be the writings of his declining years.

The Problem of Kant. The problem which Kant placed before himself was that of epistemology. Episte mology is the theory of knowledge, and Kant set to work to investigate the knowing process. The peculiar significance of Kant rests upon the fact that out of the various influences converging upon him and his time he matured a new conception of the problem and of the method of procedure, of philosophy. He was convinced that the problem of his time was not one of metaphysical speculation, although he felt the value of such speculation in the regions of religion and morals. Yet he saw that the metaphysical rationalism of Wolff had

proved itself inadequate because it was merely the logical operation of concepts, and had not dealt with real relations. He was equally sure that the empirical metaphysics of the Englishmen was inadequate because it was never certain of any truth. Rational metaphysics was logically true, but not real; empirical metaphysics was real enough, but never true. So Kant determined to find out the relation between the logical process of thought and the reality of things. He felt that the first problem in his time to be faced and settled was the problem of knowledge, the epistemological problem. He planned to face later the metaphysical problem, but he delayed this until too late in his old age. The problem of Kant can be put in the simple question, What can we know? The metaphysical problem that he deferred was, What is real? Yet his problem was not nearly so simple as this statement would seem to make it; for the epistemological problem which he set himself was complicated by the Wolffian metaphysical dualism which he always presupposed. Since Kant agreed with the Wolffian dualism-the theory that a great gulf separates mind and matter- his query about knowledge was not the simple question, What can we know? but the longer question, What can we know about the external world?

The Method of Kant. There is bound up with the epistemological problem a new method of procedure in solving it. How shall we find out what we can know? Kant calls his method the critical method. It is not only a criticism in a general sense, in that it weighs carefully the conditions of knowledge. It is also criticism in the special sense of confining itself to a restricted field. Kant pointed out that two methods may be employed, the dogmatic and the transcendental. He asserted that

the dogmatic method had been employed in the past and had proved itself fallacious. What is the dogmatic method? All philosophy was dogmatic to Kant which sought to find out what knowledge is true by showing how it originated and developed. Dogmatism is no solution; it is merely a psychological tracing of ideas to their sources. These sources will be either innate ideas, - Rat if we are Rationalists, or sensations, if we are Empiricists. The true method is the transcendental or critical method. What is this method? It is a study of the nature of the reason itself. It is an examination of the "pure reason" to see if its judgments have in any instance a universality beyond human experience, and yet are necessary to human experience. The logic of such judgments must be absolutely reliable; and yet at the same time the judgments must be applicable to the world of things. The method being transcendental, such judgments are transcendental; not because they transcend our experience, but because they are necessary to experience. The transcendental is not what is chronologically but what is rationally prior. The transcendental is the indispensable to knowledge. The critical method is the finding of this indispensable condition. Kant would search the whole field of the reason for this. Since to Kant thinking, feeling, and willing are the fundamental forms of the reason, he sought the 1 realm of thought for the transcendental principles of knowledge, that of the will for the transcendental principles of morality, that of feeling for the transcendental 3

principles of beauty.

The Threefold World' of Kant-Subjective States,

1 The word "world" is used for lack of a better. The reader is, however, again reminded that Kant's problem is one of epistemology and not of metaphysics.

2

Things-in-Themselves, and Phenomena. In his search for those indispensable conditions of knowledge of the external world, Kant unfolds the threefold character of the realm of human life. To Wolff the world had been twofold. In other words, Wolff had conceived the world as dual, in which there was a correspondence, part by part, of independent reality to the state of consciousness. To Wolff reality is independent of consciousness, and yet we are conscious of that reality. Now Kant never gave up entirely the Wolffian dualism, but he came to see that in such a situation there could be no knowledge. For how can we be conscious of what is absolutely independent of us? Consequently Kant plundered the Wolffian worlds of independent realities to build up an intermediate world, a world of phenomena. He dissolved the sharpness of Wolff's dualism into a world with three divisions; and he gave to each division a new epistemological value. These were the realm of the subjective states or the inner consciousness of the individual, the world of phenomena or the realm of knowledge, and the world of absolute reality or that of things-in-themselves. The value of the world of phenomena consists in its being the realm of knowledge. The other two realms have values of their own, which we shall describe below.

Wolff's twofold world may be thus compared with Kant's threefold world:

Wolff.

1. Mind.

Kant.

1. Subjective states.

2. Phenomena - the realm of

knowledge.

1

2. Matter.

3. Things-in-themselves.

1. The realm of subjective states evidently is not a realm of knowledge. For it is the realm of intuition and immediate apprehension of the individual's own ideas and sensations; and this is not what we mean by knowledge. This subjective world is that in which I live alone. It is a realm of which nobody else is conscious, a realm which gives to me my individuality. The only connecting linkage between my various purely subjec tive states is the accidental order of time in which, empirically or by association, they occur. Animal intelligence possesses only such sense-perceptions and sensations, and these are modifications of its subjective consciousness. Such a mental constitution has not the capacity for knowledge, but only the haphazard associa tion of ideas. Kant looked upon the content of subjective consciousness as the object only of psychological investigation.

2. The realm of things-in-themselves is not to Kant the realm of knowledge. By things-in-themselves Kant, distinctly does not mean things-for-us, not material bodies, not nature objects. It must be remembered that Kant has plundered the material realm of the dualist. The things-in-themselves which are left behind as a residuum lie outside all sense-perception and so beyond all knowledge. A divine intelligence might have the things-in-themselves as objects of knowledge, but not we human beings. The thing-in-itself is the unknown and unknowable. But if this realm of things-in-themselves is so absolutely independent of us that we cannot in any way know it, how can we say that it exists?! Kant replies to this: while we cannot say what a thingin-itself is, we are obliged to say that it is. For although beyond even our sense-perception, it stands as a neces