Page:Modern Rationalism (1897).djvu/116

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116
MODERN RATIONALISM.

causality, etc., were forms of the intellect, anterior to all sensation. Reason, the supreme faculty, had also "a structural relation to the three boundless yet necessarily-asserted objects—the World, the Soul, and God." But the characteristic feature of the transcendental system is that it deprives these supra-sensible forms and faculties of all objective value; only our sensations (and they denuded of their time and space elements) relate us to an objective world. Our ideas are only of objective value, in so far as they embody sense-elements, and the supreme synthesis into the World, Soul, and God is a purely subjective operation. Hence the agreement of the great German and English schools, in view of a rational solution of the world-problems, is obvious. Indeed, many eminent writers deprecate the supposed opposition between the two systems, and point out that the Germans have investigated the nature of knowledge, while the Empiricists have discussed its origin. Both agree that our knowledge is reduced to a knowledge of phenomena—the noumenon, the "thing-in-itself," is inaccessible to pure reason. Substance and cause are subjective notions—problems of origin, destiny, etc., are insoluble. But Kant's philosophy has been largely adopted in Theistic circles in virtue of a sort of appendix which appeared in the "Critique of Practical Reason." After demolishing every form of Theistic argument, Kant suddenly discovers that the practical reason (moral sense) brings us into relation with God and immortality. The objective value which he had refused to speculative principles is granted to the moral principles, and the moral law postulates a supreme Legislator and a sanction in a future life. That portion of Kant's system will claim attention later on.

An immediate disciple of Kant's, J. G. Fichte, developed his system as Hume had developed Locke's. He produced an idealistic and egoistic Pantheism. He thought Kant inconsistent in granting objectivity to sense-impressions and moral principles, and denying it to the categories. He consistently rejected the world of phenomena as well as the world of noumena, and was reduced to a subjective Idealism—the ego is the Absolute, the non-ego its subjective creation. Fichte was quickly followed by Schelling, who retains his Pantheism, but rejects his Idealism. His