the norms of thought, considered as categorical prescriptions which act as our guides in the search for truth, and the natural laws of psychology, in accordance with which objects are presented to the mind, thoughts change and pass away, and the empirical content of the consciousness is transformed: the a priori must not be regarded as an innate idea, but rather as the basis of sensible experience and of the world of speculation.[1] Schultze,[2] another adherent of the neo-Kantian school, observes that the psycho-genetic theory does not in the least advance the critical problem, i.e. the analysis of the conditions essential to knowledge at the present stage of our thought. Both Liebmann[3] and Schultze,[4] however, agree with Lange in the doubt he expresses of the existence of the thing in itself, leaning, as they do, towards phenomenalistic idealism, and viewing the noumenon as a mere product of feeling, a poetical creation of the mind.
6. Criticism of the Neo-Kantian School. — The theories
of the neo-Kantians, whilst thus striving to overcome
the difficulties arising from the conception of the thing
in itself, and from its relations to phenomena, do but
increase those difficulties. We cannot possibly
understand how that which is absolutely outside consciousness
can stand in any sort of relation to feeling and
imagination, the most intimate and subjective functions
of the mind of man. The thing in itself, problematic
as it may be, is ever present, like some mysterious
deity, behind sensible appearances, and our absolute
ignorance of its function forbids us to take for granted
that the stream of phenomena of which it is the source
will always be content to flow in the channel of forms
and intellectual categories. Our mental organism may
subject phenomena to law, but the Absolute is
completely beyond its jurisdiction, and might at any moment
reveal an aspect of itself antagonistic to our nature, and
by so doing imperil the universal character of science.
Are the sensations imparted to us by the unknowable
object purely plastic and amorphous? If so, it is
