The Kantian Centennial [pp. 394-424]

THE PRINCE TON REVIEW.
profession penetrate beneath its phenomena, and find there a
nature or constitution capable of moulding the universe of sense
and matter by subjective forms, categories, and ideas. They
propose to show that all the knowledge which man can attain
is only phenomenal, and this by an analysis into the nature of
the soul itself. They find beneath the forms, the categories,
and the ideas the soul with a nature which compels it to mould
and connect and systematize and interpret the phenomena of
the inner and outer universe by the relations and into the products which its own constitution requires. This is the logic
,of the entire treatise, the height of whose great argument
would have been reached had Kant climbed with careful steps
Vto its summit, and reviewed its result somewhat as follows:
The pure reason is an agent known to and by itself as so constituted, or of such a nature that it discerns the phenomena
which it is capable of receiving, under those relations by which it
necessarily connects and explains them. So far as the soul can
,,critically examine and study these experiences-so far does it
penetrate into its own nature as an agent or thing in itself.
Philosophically conceived, a thing in itself-whether it be matter
or spirit-is known and is knowable so far as its powers to act
-or achieve effects under varying conditions are known. The
effects achieved, as distinguished from the agents which produce
them, are phenomena. The One Mind that originated and sus"tains the universe of things alone knows all the capacities of
any of the agents which he creates, and he alone fully knows
~the nature of the simplest as well as the most complex, as it is
in itself. Surely Kant ought to have conceded that if nothing
else is known to man as a thing in itself or a noumenon, this is
true of the reason itself as revealed to itself by the critical
process.
As we have seen, our philosopher reached no such conclusion, but wandered in endless mazes till he often seems bewildered and lost. But whatever else he loses he never loses cour.age. In his extremest bewilderment he ever and anon catches
up his clue and threads his way backward and forward till he
seems to strike his path afresh and go forward with unabated
courage. But he never could overcome the fatal inconsistency
involved in the attempt to analyze the essential nature of the
.,412