know by means of it things as they arc.[1] This is but another way of saying that we are forbidden to assume it is anything more than a peculiarity of man. It is in effect represented as simply a limitation belonging to humanity. Whether its forms are those of possible other intelligences, of intelligence as such, we are told we can never know; and for the reason that we are shut in by the “limiting notion” of the thing-in-itself. This agnostic principle, now, Lange will carry out with unflinching comprehensiveness: it is extended to include even the fundamental distinction between our phenomenal world of experience and the noumenal Reality.
This aim of Lange comes from a genuine insight into the requirements of system. Not only is it true in general that a principle, to be such, must work in its sphere with unqualified universality, but, in this particular case, omitting from the compass of phenomenalism the contrast between consciousness and things would be fatal to the claims of phenomenalism as a principle. If the notion of the thing-in-itself be more than phenomenal, then there is a thing-in-itself, and in cognising the contrast in
- ↑ It deserves special notice, in passing, that this confusion of Kant’s Ding an sich, or thing-in-itself (something existing “on its own hook,” underived from other beings, independent of any one ego), with things as they are, is a very prevalent misconception of Kant. It is at the bottom not only of Neo-Kantianism, but of much other misinterpretation of him.
