CHAPTER IX.
CRITICISM OF APRIORISM.

§ 160. Every Absolutism is not necessarily an Apriorism. The Kantian doctrine that the possibility of experience presupposes not merely thought, but a definite thought-structure or a priori schema to which, in knowledge, all objects must conform, and without which knowledge could not exist, though still upheld in various forms by Dr. Caird and others, is not found in the Absolutism of Green or Mr. Bradley. All allow that the universe is intelligible, that it is built according to a definite plan, and that the relation of part to part and change to change is according to fixed and immutable laws, and again that these laws are logically prior to the details of phenomenal objects; but Apriorism asserts more than this. It asserts that that thought and cognition generally has a definite structure, which is the necessary and immutable condition of all experience. It maintains that the forms, categories, principles of analysis and synthesis which characterise human cognition are not due to the circumstances in which we find ourselves, nor yet built up by the constructive activity of thought, but belong to the a priori nature of mind itself. Forms, categories and principles are all arranged or systematised a priori according to a plan or schema, which everyone carries about with him, and which conditions all his thought-activity. The question therefore which I intend to discuss in this chapter is whether there is the slightest evidence for the existence of such a plan or schema of categories and principles as the necessary condition of all experience.

§ 161. Apriorism evokes a vigorous protest from all empiricists, and the pragmatist is not the least loud in his declamation. His favourite charge against Kant and Hegel is that the notions they have introduced into philosophy are ambiguous and futile. 'The conditions of all possible experience,' Dr. Schiller tells us, is an ambiguous phrase, for it may refer to psychical, to logical, or to aesthetic conditions. 'A priori forms' are ambiguous for they may be the products either of logical or of psychological analysis; and if the latter, they have a history which Kant has forgotten. 'Universality' and 'necessity' are ambiguous, for whatever meaning may be assigned to them it is ultimately reducible to a psychological and pragmatic necessity.^{1} A charge of ambiguity, however, even if well founded, is clearly insufficient to establish the refutation of any theory; for ambiguity may easily be remedied by more precise definition, and at once the difficulty vanishes. But is not the ambiguity of Kantism exaggerated by its pragmatic enemies? Are 'the conditions of all possible experience' really ambiguous? Will the Kantian theory bear the interpretations suggested for this expression by Dr. Schiller? Are Dr. Schiller's interpretations exhaustive? Are they mutually exclusive? It seems to me that the conditions of all possible experience in Kant are primarily neither psychological nor logical, nor yet aesthetic, but metaphysical. They may be called psychological if you mean by this that they are supposed to exist in concreto in the human mind, and they are also logical if you mean by this that the critical method by which they are obtained is a process of logical reasoning; but strictly they are metaphysical conditions, for though real and existing, according to Kant, they cannot be discovered as conditions by any psychological analysis and logic, after all, is used in every science. Again, 'universality' and 'necessity' cease to be ambiguous as soon as the conditions of experience are understood. For if no experience can be thought, except under the a priori forms by which as experience it is conditioned, clearly the application of those forms to experience both metaphysically and logically must be without restriction. Thus the law that each change must have a cause is universal and necessary, because all phenomena must fall under the category of causality if they are to exist at all as phenomena, i.e., to fall within our experience.

§ 162. The charge that Apriorism asserts mental forms which are static and immutable has better foundation. For though the Kantian and still more so the Hegelian admit and indeed insist upon development, they admit it in a form which is wholly inadequate to satisfy the demands of the pragmatist. Kant allowed that the acquisition of knowledge is gradual; that it depends upon the growth of experience, and that only in experience can we reflect upon the functioning of the mental forms of which we at first are unconscious. To this Hegel added both his Dialectic and also his Phenomenology, which latter may be regarded at once as the story of Absolute consciousness and as the history of his own philosophy in the making.^{2} But neither the (Dialectic nor the Phenomenology is capable of satisfying a modern evolutionist; and the reason is to be found in their Apriorism. It is of the very essence of Apriorism that mind has a structure in which categories and forms of synthesis are involved. Hence for Apriorism the only form of development which is admissible is one of which the final end is self-consciousness, but in which the self does not really develop but merely becomes known to itself. Development means that the mind acquires a knowledge of objects relatively distinct from itself, and by this means becomes conscious of its own a priori structure to which objects conform and under which they are, as it were, subsumed; while Absolute Knowledge, Hegel's highest stage of mental development, is realised when spirit, looking back upon the externalisation and manifestation of itself in the world of nature, sees there its own selfconscious evolution, and in so doing comes to know itself as spirit.

Thus mental growth for the Kantian and the Hegelian means the gradual approach toward selfconsciousness, or, in other words, the gradual acquisition of knowledge of our own mental structure. But the categories themselves do not grow. Their development in the Dialectic is logical, not real. Yet real mental development is a fact, and as a fact it appears to be more than the growth of self-consciousness. As Dr. Schiller says, there is no category which has not had a history, and a history in the individual mind as well as in the race. No one who reflects will deny that his concepts, one and all, become richer and fuller in content and significance as life progresses. Nor will he deny that some of them, at any rate, get intrinsically modified. We do not remember the time when we first began to think, and it is useless for our purpose to speculate on the psychology of the infant mind but we can trace the history of some of our concepts, such as those of time, or space, or substance, or the self, sufficiently well to know that they have developed. And though the growth of our concepts does not correspond to the growth of the objects about which we think, it is none the less a real growth in which our concepts actually change and become, sometimes in part, sometimes even wholly, other than what they were. Now, if all concepts develop in this way -- and I can find none, not even the categories of Aristotle, which do not undergo some kind of development and change, what becomes of the a priori structure of the mind which is supposed to function through and in these concepts? Has it changed, too? And if it has, in what sense can it still be said to be a priori and to have existed and functioned all along ? Again, if the 'forms' under which we think phenomena are a priori, how is it that men differ so much in regard even to the most fundamental of principles and the most general of notions, notions and principles which everybody has in his mind and uses day by day? About what have there been more disputes among philosophers than the categories of cause, and substance and thing, and being and existence? Yet these are notions which function in every man's mind and which for everyone have some sort of content. If, then, our concepts, almost without exception, are capable of development and change, and if, in addition to this, and for that matter, because of this, different men have different concepts of the same entities and things, what ground is there for affirming that within the mind of each there is "the general plan for a self-consistent natural system"?^{3} How is it that, if all men carry about with them and constantly use the same a priori 'schema' and 'framework,' no one is conscious of it, and no two philosophers have ever agreed as to its structural form? How comes it that no one yet has constructed a self-consistent 'natural' system if ready-made within him everyone has its plan?

§ 163. It may be said, perhaps, that I have taken this plan or 'schema' too literally and in too Kantian a sense. It should be restricted to the synthetic and analytic principles which belong to formal Logic or to a Logic such as that of Professor Bosanquet, which is described as the 'Morphology of Knowledge.' On this point Dr. Caird remarks:

As it is impossible to separate the form from the matter of knowledge, formal Logic is driven upon a curious dilemma. It has to choose between the alternatives of vanishing into nothing, and of including everything. If it is to give all the principles of synthesis in judgment, its principles are infinite in number, since any conception may be the ground of a synthesis, and, therefore, of the analysis corresponding. And, on the other hand, if it is to give only principles of analysis that are not principles of synthesis, it can discover no such principles at all. The only distinct line that can possibly be drawn between the formal and the material, must be drawn by considering all that is implied in thinking objects in general as opposed to any particular objects.^{4}

But this consideration does not help us much towards the discovery of an element in knowledge which is a priori in relation to the details of experience and the actual processes of thought. Personally, I can find no other a priori condition of rational experience except the power of thinking the many in the one and the one in the many, which presupposes again as its condition the unity of the thinking mind. Exclusive of the power of feeling and the faculty of will, which, in cognition proper, are subordinate to thought, there is nothing else required for thinking except something to think about and thought itself. Another question arises, of course, as soon as we ask where the object of thought comes from; but we are prescinding from this at present. What we have to discover are what kinds of a priori forms and principles of synthesis already exist in the mind before we think, and are, metaphysically as well as logically, prior to thought as its conditions.

§ 164. Let us consider the subject-predicate form in which our judgments are usually expressed. Is this an a priori condition of all thought? It hardly seems to be such. Most of our thoughts take this form, and all of them can be and are de facto almost without exception expressed in a proposition which has both a subject and a predicate. Yet we can think without analysing what we think into a subject and a predicate. In a perception, for instance, in which we subsume instantaneously an object under a universal idea, there seems to me to be no analysis into subject and predicate. The nature of what we perceive and think about in perceiving may be apprehended immediately without any separation of its ' what ' (content) from its 'that' (real existence); and this is especially the case when an object is familiar. Doubtless, such a judgment, when expressed in words, must take some such form as (v.g.) 'That is my hat;' but this does not seem to show that we did not apprehend without analysis the nature of the object in question. Again, when one has been thinking long over a difficult problem, one sometimes seems to get a grasp of it as a systematic whole, without consciously determining any part of this system as subject rather than as predicate. Indeed, thought of this kind seems to me to be much more common than one would imagine, for one is apt to overlook this aspect of thinking, owing to the fact that one always does try to express one's thoughts and to express them in subject-predicate form. Yet even in the verbal expression one may find confirmation of what I have said, for often it is quite optional what element in thought's content one takes as subject and what as predicate, and sometimes it is not easy to choose. For instance, when predicating relations, we may say either that 'X is similar to Y,' or that 'Y is similar to X,' or, again, simply that 'X and Y are similar;' and each of these forms of expression seems to express equally well the thought that was in our mind. From which I infer that while thought implies analysis and synthesis, or 'the power of apprehending the many in the one and the one in the many,' it need not necessarily express itself in subject-predicate form, but does so, as a rule, because we first think of an object, then study it in detail, or in its relation to other objects, and finally refer the result of our analytic examination back to the object itself, which thus becomes the subject of a proposition.

The subject-predicate form of judgment is due to the fact that objects come to us bit by bit, so to speak; and again by the fact that our minds are finite and cannot take in things all at once, but have to attend first to one aspect of them and then to another. First of all, we apprehend a thing existing in the concrete, and this becomes our subject, that which we desire to know. Then we observe certain characteristics of that thing or its connection with other things which are near to it or like it. These we predicate of the former either as qualities or relations, since we regard them as belonging to, qualifying, or in some way or other giving us knowledge of, the original thing to which our attention was first directed. Thus predication about a 'subject' is the natural way in which we express the knowledge we gradually acquire about first one thing and then another; and all other forms of predication are derivative from this. There is no need, therefore, of any a priori structure of mind to account for what is already objectively necessitated by the process in which knowledge of finite obj ects is gradually acquired by a finite mind.

§ 165. In a similar way may be explained both the 'quality' and the 'quantity' of judgment. The affirmative judgment has been explained above. The negative seems to be due to the fact that we try to make an affirmative judgment but cannot. Somebody or something suggests that a certain P belongs to a certain S, but when we examine S, or when we recall it in thought, we find it has no P, and, therefore, we are forced by the objects concerned to assert that S is not P, instead of saying the contrary, as was suggested.^{5}

The possibility of negation presupposes finite objects, and the same may be said of 'quantity.' We observe one thing, then a second, then a third, and so on, till finally we decide, arbitrarily or on account of some common characteristic, to put an end to our counting, and to call what we have got a class.^{6} The members of this class, taken distributively, then become all, and any one or more of them some. Once again, therefore, we have no need of a priori forms, but only of finite objects presented to a finite mind and presented in a finite way. The multiplication of the finite is of itself sufficient to account for number and quantity, provided there be a mind to which it is presented and which is capable of apprehending the many in the one, and again the one in the many.

§ 166. Lastly, the origin of our notions of both 'space' and 'time' can be explained objectively; not wholly objectively indeed, for, as usual, they imply a mind which can abstract, but objectively as regards their fundamentum. Given a number of finite objects mutually exclusive, and given extension in three dimensions, we have the wherewithal for our concept of space, while another extension of a different kind, viz., duration, provides us with data for our notion of time. From the thing-hood and the qualitative and quantitative differences of things presented simul and side by side we abstract, and thus are left with extension pure and simple, which is the fundamentum of our concept of space. Similarly, abstracting from the thing-hood and also from the qualitative changes of one thing or of a succession of different things we have pure duration, which is the fundamentum of our concept of time. Pure duration, however, is not time, for in time measurement is implied. Indeed, measurement is closely connected both with space and time, for in both notions 'dimension' is involved. Yet measurement, though as such it is an act of the mind, is none the less objectively determined. The only conditions required are (1) the presentation to a mind of objects, things or qualities, each of finite extension or of finite duration and mutually exclusive in regard to its neighbours, and (2) the arbitrary selection of one of these extensions or durations as a unit (as the one), and its application to the others (to the many) as a measure or basis by which to compare their respective dimensions. Thus, for Aristotle, time implied the measurement of changes by means of a unit of duration, the extent of which might be fixed by selecting any two points in the time-series; and similarly place (locus) implied the measurement of material things quâ movable (mobile) by means of space -- or distance-units determined by the superficies of some arbitrarily chosen object. Tempus est mensura motus, says Aquinas, sicut locus est mensura mobilis.^{7}

The above account of the origin of our notions of space and time, and of the quantity and quality of judgments, does not of course pretend to be in any way adequate. On each of these subjects whole treatises might be, and have been, written. All that I wish to show is that all that our various categories and forms of judgment presuppose, are (1) finite objects, and (2) a mind capable of apprehending the many in the one and the one in the many, or, in other words, capable of analysing, synthesising, abstracting and comparing; but not necessarily endowed with any a priori forms either of analysis or of synthesis. And, in brief, my argument is, that whatever category or form of analysis or synthesis one may take, it can be shown to be explicable a posteriori, and to differ from other concepts clearly and admittedly a posteriori only in regard to the degree of abstraction or generality involved.

§ 167. Dr. Caird seems to make a similar statement in the passage quoted above, and again when he says "the idea of the discordance of the Logic of thought (formal Logic) and the Logic of reality is a fiction, and the problem of their reconciliation is a self-made difficulty."^{8} He points out also that Kant seems to have confused logical with real wholes, for he "overlooked the fact that the combination of species under an abstract genus is just the reverse process to the combination of parts in a concrete or individual whole."^{9} There are in fact two ways in which we may combine the many in the one. There is the synthesis of qualities in a concrete thing, and the synthesis of specific differences under a genus; and these two forms of synthesis are not to my mind equally real. The first implies the apprehension of the many in the one, and the second the apprehension of the one in the many. The first form of synthesis is, I take it, admitted to be a datum forced on us a posteriori and is strictly real. The second is a synthesis which has foundation in fact, since the 'one' apprehended in the many is qualitatively the same; but the synthesis itself neither seems to be real nor a priori. It is not real, for there is not the slightest evidence for supposing that qualities identical in nature but appearing in different objects are really one. Yet this is frequently assumed, and it would appear that it was upon some such basis as this that Kant hoped to construct the a priori form of mind. He seems to have thought that within the mind ideas are arranged according to their generality, the more general embracing the less general and so on.^{10} And this is doubtless a fact for the fully developed mind as association seems to indicate. But the 'plan' thus formed is only gradually built up by the experience of the individual, and is not an arrangement which is presupposed by experience, still less a plan of the real structure of the universe. The synthesis again is not a priori, as is shown by the fact that the way in which ideas are classified varies from man to man, and by the fact that in no case is the classification complete. In fact, whether we start a priori or a posteriori it is impossible to construct a plan either of the mind or of reality. If we begin with the individual, we find there are an indefinite number of paths by which we may ascend to genera and higher genera and summa genera; and the road becomes too involved for any human mind to work it out. And if we start from the most abstract concept, 'being,' and work downwards as with Hegel, the result is the same. Each genus comprises an indefinite number of specific differences each of which we ought to select in turn, and so proceed from genus to genus, which would involve an almost endless process. It is true, as Dr. Caird remarks,^{11} that "thought always proceeds from the less to the more determinate," and that "in so doing it cannot determine any object positively without determining it negatively;" but it is not true that thought proceeding a priori cannot determine an object negatively (i.e., reject some one species under a certain genus) without determining it positively (i.e., without selecting some other species under the same genus to which it must belong), for the species contained under a given genus may be indefinite in number. To proceed by dichotomy is impossible unless both the summum genus and the infima species are fixed; and even then between the infima species and the individual concrete object the distance is indefinitely great. To attempt to construct the world a priori is acknowledged to be absurd; and the demand for "a complete and consistent system of categories" seems to me to be scarcely less absurd. At any rate, since such a system of categories has never been constructed, nor does it seem likely that it ever will be constructed, it is perfectly gratuitous to suppose that such a system is "implied in the synthetic process by which the dispersed data of sense are elevated into an organised whole of experience," so long as that process can be accounted for quite as well without such a hypothesis.

§ 168. I find it difficult to reconcile Dr. Caird's admission that the a priori principles of synthesis are infinite in number with his tenacious adherence to the doctrine that somehow or other they are systematised and brought to unity in the very nature of thought. We are expressly warned that the Logic of Hegel must not be taken as an attempt to construct the world a priori; and yet we are told that Formal Logic, Transcendental Logic, and the Logic of Reality are one and the same. "There is no purely formal logic," says Dr. Caird, "for the process of intelligence is a determination of the object by the categories." "Objects exist only for the conscious self and through the application of the categories," which are " but elements or moments in a truth which is completely stated only in the idea of self-consciousness," or again "stages in a process whose unity the mind is," and between which there is said to be "a logical order, an order which is immutable and depends on the process of thought."^{12}

All this seems to indicate that Dr. Caird believed that in thought there was some definite structure or schema, arranged category above category and synthesis above synthesis, a structure to which all knowledge had to conform and which was gradually brought to consciousness as mind developed. For such a view I can find not the slightest foundation. Hegel's "triadic law of thought" has a meaning when applied to the development of living truth in philosophy or religion for often enough we do proceed from thesis via antithesis to a higher and richer synthesis, but as applied to categories in the way in which Hegel applied it, it seems to me quite meaningless. I cannot even make the first step from being to becoming, for becoming seems to me a notion far lower and less real than the concept of being. Unity in difference, again, is a notion which applies admirably to the concrete living whole, but its application to genera and species is only per analogiam and in no way reveals the real structure of the universe.

§ 169. A discussion of Hegel's Logic, however, and of other logics of the purely transcendental type belongs to the history of philosophy rather than to problems which press at the present day. I will not say that Apriorism is dead. So long as reality and thought are identified there will still be attempts to discover the a priori structure of the latter. But, fortunately, attempts of this kind are becoming less frequent. There is small trace of Apriorism in Green, and Mr. Bradley's scornful rejection of the 'bloodless categories' is well known. Transcendental deductions have ceased to be the favourite occupation of Hegelian and absolutist philosophers.

The decline of Apriorism is due largely to the extension of the doctrine of Immanence to cover the noumenal as well as the phenomenal object of knowledge. The Immanence of subject and object in knowledge is now regarded as strictly universal. It embraces all objects and it extends to all minds, bringing them together in the unity of an individual whole. The function of a priori forms, therefore, has gone. There is no longer any need of a priori categories and principles of synthesis to bring together what is not really distinct. The immediate successors of Kant did not realise this, and for a time philosophy was over-burdened with attempts to construct the universe a priori. But the futility of such philosophising has at length been recognised. Gradually it has dawned upon the philosophic mind that to build up a universe out of the variable and indefinite notions framed by human thought is a sheer impossibility, and that, however true it may be that the Absolute thinks in us, it is practically useless to try to look at the universe from the Absolute's point of view until such time as we become the Absolute.

§ 170. The ratio essendi of Apriorism has ceased to be. Philosophers now no longer start from a transcendental point of view and argue downwards; they prefer now to start from a more empirical and more human point of view, and, accepting the data of experience as they appear in human consciousness, to argue upwards from these data to the Absolute which alone can make them intelligible. This does not mean that philosophy has renounced the Critical method of Kant. It merely means that it has been found possible to dispense with the intermediaries which Kant placed between the ultimate subject and object. Absolutism still enquires into the metaphysical conditions and presuppositions of what is given; and still finds that these conditions take us beyond the human mind, that the theory of human cognition leads us on to a metaphysic of the Absolute, and that even ethics is incomplete without its metaphysical prolegomena. With such a method I have no fault to find, nor do I wish for one moment to suggest that either ethics or epistemology can be made intelligible apart from metaphysics. On the contrary, I fully agree that they cannot. But it is still open to question whether the Critical method necessarily leads to Absolutism, and whether Absolutism is capable of rendering much service toward the understanding of human cognition, or even toward making the universe intelligible; and it is to this question that we must now direct our attention.

{1} 'Axioms as Postulates,' §§ 11-13

{2} Wallace, article ' Hegel ' in Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 618.

{3} Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, pp. 18, 19.

{4} The Philosophy of Kant, p. 306.

{5} Cf. an article of mine in Mind, July, 1906, entitled 'The Nature of Incompatibility', where I endeavoured to show that all contradiction and all incompatibility is objectively determined.

{6} This is not an account of the origin of the universal idea, but of 'quantity' in judgment. All ideas are potentially universal as soon as they are formed.

{7} Comment. in Aristotle Physics, lib. iv., lec. iv.

{8} The Philosophy of Kant, p. 313.

{9} Ibid., p. 319.

{10} cf. ibid., p. 328.

{11} Ibid., p. 313.

{12} Hegel (Blackwood Series), pp. pp. 157, 187, etc.