The Kantian Centennial [pp. 394-424]

THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL.
The false position thus taken was weakened rather than
strengthened by the expedient resorted to by Kant in order to
defend and justify it. The receptivity thus assumed,'so far as
man is concerned, is obviously shut up forever within the flam ing bounds of space and time. Whether the objects we know
are objects of sense or experiences of the soul, we must know
them as extended or enduring-one or both. This Kant
was forward to assert, and here he finds the first example
of a transcendental element in sense experience. How, then,
could he connect this higher and necessary element with the passive receptivity from which he had apparently bargained away
its prerogative to attain to any necessary or permanent truth?
Fortunately for him, the shadows of a defunct philosophy had
not all vanished, and he proceeds to endow this passive receptivity with form. Form here came to his aid-that magic
term with which Aristotle had displaced the ideas of Plato, and
which had served the Schoolmen many a turn in their metaphysical perplexities. So far as the mind is receptive in sense and
consciousness, it has to do with the matter of human experience.
So far as it is active it receives this matter in sundry forms that
are universal. These forms are space and time-the one for
the outer and the other for the inner sense. This magic term
was no sooner suggested than it seemed whispered by some
philosophic Egeria in the holy cave of musing contemplation.
First of all, it squared with the conception of receptivity already
assumed of sense as contrasted with thought. Next, if man is a
recipient of the universe in sense, he cannot receive the whole of
it at once-it must be divided into morsels and poured out into
goblets; then, too, the viands must be served in order, and over
against the infinitude and possible chaos without, there must be
subjective capacities to receive after a particular fashion provided
in the constitution of each recipient within. Then again, space
and time relations are in their nature different from the commonly recognized attributes of matter and spirit, and refuse to
be classed with those sensible qualities which presuppose them.
Above all, Space and Time themselves are something ultimate,
which are assumed in all special and determinate relations of
place and shape, now and then. To all these requisitions the
word form seemed admirably adjusted.
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