GEDEON GOBY, L'Immanence de la Raison, etc. 259 This defect is a confusion of the regressive process of thought by which certain transcendental principles are found implicit in ordinary experience, with a process of mere abstraction. By the latter process we arrive only at abstract products of thought which we then attempt to make into determinations of realities beyond experience. This is the "transcendent" use of Eeason which is rightly declared by the author to be impossible ; but apparently he has not considered the possibility of the other view. The critical reflexion here I quote Dr. Caird "is not a process by which we empty experience of certain elements which distort its apprehension of things in themselves, but a process by which we recognise behind and beneath experience certain elements of which it does not usually take account ; though without these elements experience could not apprehend anything, and for want of the consciousness of them it does not apprehend anything as it really is. Hence the object of the critical philosopher must be, not to dismiss any of the elements of experience that he may find the pure expression of truth in what remains [i.e., reason is not transcendent in the sense intended by M. Gpry] : but rather to correct our ordinary abstract and incomplete view of the world by taking account of the factors which that view neglects." If this line of thought is developed we are led to reject the thesis which M. Gory, following Eenouvier and Taine, makes the basis of his system : i.e., that " experience " or the " sensible representation " is " spontaneous, independent, and absolutely true ". At the same time we are led to reject the view of the thing-in-itself with which Kant started, not, however, with M. Gory, in order to regard ex- perience as self-contained : but in order to regard it as being in its very nature an intelligible, but partial and fragmentary, revelation of an absolute Reality. This line of thought is wholly ignored by the author : presumably because so far as the evidence of this book goes he appears to have no comprehension of the philo- sophical principles developed by Kant's successors, or even of the deeper elements in the Kantian philosophy itself. His position is worked out as follows. The question which Reason propounds is What is the ultimately Real? The Ideas of Reason are the principles and predicates by which it endeavours to interpret the nature of the Real ; hence the question, What is the sphere of their legitimate derivation and application ? is the question of philosophy. The Real is experience itself, in the analysis of which the Ideas find their only just and legitimate use : knowledge is simply the analytical development of the "representation". This is the " Immanence of Reason ": "dire que la Raison est immanente, c'est dire que 1'Etre lui-meme est connu dans 1'experience, et qu'en dehors d'elle il n'y a d'aucune realite ni aucune possibilite quelconque ; c'est dire que la Raison peut trouver dans 1'experience une pleine et entiere satisfaction, et que la pensee est capable de connaitre la vrite " (p. 4 ; cf. pp. 42, 43). On the other hand, to say that Reason is transcendent, is to
