Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/188

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172
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. III.

other. If Idealism is to be a tenable theory at all, it must endeavor to show that Reason underlies the objective world, not by imagining the self to direct its relating activity upon a hypothetical manifold of sense, but by demonstrating the fundamental laws of Nature to be nothing but thought-forms or categories of the mind. It must exhibit the inter-connection of these categories and trace them up to the highest principle, viz., Absolute Self-Consciousness. The only materials with which Green sets to work are a unity of self, a manifold of sense, and certain relations. He nowhere enters upon a full discussion of the nature of these relations. His use of the single word 'relation' would seem to indicate that, according to him, all relations are on the same level. An object—perhaps, to exactly represent Green, we should say a feeling—is related to another object, and the objective world as a whole is related to the unity of self-consciousness. Are both the relations of the same kind and of the same value? The serious mistake of characterizing all the categories of thought by the single word 'relation' has been pointed out by Mr. Arthur Eastwood in a recent issue of Mind, and I need not, therefore, dwell upon it more at length here.

The fact is that Green and the Neo-Hegelians have been led into various difficulties by following Kant too closely. To speak plainly, they ought to have been more faithful to Hegel, who, in Dr. Stirling's expressive language, "alone of all mankind has succeeded in eating the historic pabulum all up out of the vessel of Kant." Green's method, Professor Seth tells us, "is Kantian. It uses Hegel only as a means of surmounting Kant's subjective presuppositions." It is just in this that the weakness of Green's system consists. Kant's theory, it must never be forgotten, is Epistemology, and Epistemology can never replace Metaphysics proper. Professor Seth thinks that some of the Neo-Hegelians have fallen into the error of making a confusion between Epistemology and Metaphysics. It is so because they have neglected to follow Kantian Epistemology into its legitimate conclusion, viz., Hegelian Ontology. Kant, from his epistemological stand-