Part 8

Immanuel Kant was originally a dogmatist in the school of Leibnitz and Wolf; that is, according to his trisection of all philosophy into dogmatic, sceptical, and critical, he was, upon all questions, disposed to a strong _affirmative_ creed, without courting any particular examination into the grounds of this creed, or into its assailable points. From this slumber, as it is called by himself, he was suddenly aroused by the Humian doctrine of cause and effect. This celebrated essay on the nature of necessary connection--so thoroughly misapprehended at the date of its first publication to the world by its _soi-disant_ opponents, Oswald, Beattie, &c., and so imperfectly comprehended since then by various _soi-disant_ defenders--became in effect the 'occasional cause' (in the phrase of the logicians) of the entire subsequent philosophic scheme of Kant--every section of which arose upon the accidental opening made to analogical trains of thought, by this memorable effort of scepticism, applied by Hume to one capital phenomenon among the necessities of the human understanding. What is the nature of Hume's scepticism as applied to this phenomenon? What is the main thesis of his celebrated essay on cause and effect? For few, indeed, are they who really know anything about it. If a man really understands it, a very few words will avail to explain the _nodus_. Let us try. It is a necessity of the _human_ understanding (very probably not a necessity of a higher order of intelligences) to connect its experiences by means of the idea of _cause_ and its correlate, _effect_: and when Beattie, Oswald, Reid, &c. were exhausting themselves in proofs of the indispensableness of this idea, they were fighting with shadows; for no man had ever questioned the practical necessity for such an idea to the coherency of human thinking. Not the practical necessity, but the internal consistency of this notion, and the original right to such a notion, was the point of inquisition. For, attend, courteous reader, and three separate propositions will set before your eyes the difficulty. _First Prop._, which, for the sake of greater precision, permit me to throw into Latin:--_Non datur aliquid_ [A] _quo posito ponitur aliud_ [B] _à priori_; that is, in other words, You cannot lay your hands upon that one object or phenomenon [A] in the whole circle of natural existences, which, being assumed, will entitle you to assume _à priori_, any other object whatsoever [B] as succeeding it. You could not, I say, of any object or phenomenon whatever, assume this succession _à priori_--that is, _previously to experience_. _Second Prop._ But, if the succession of B to A be made known to you, not _à priori_ (by the involution of B in the idea of A), but by experience, then you cannot ascribe _necessity_ to the succession: the connection between them is not necessary but contingent. For the very widest experience--an experience which should stretch over all ages, from the beginning to the end of time--can never establish a _nexus_ having the least approximation to necessity; no more than a rope of sand could gain the cohesion of adamant, by repeating its links through a billion of successions. _Prop. Third._ Hence (_i. e._ from the two preceding propositions), it appears that no instance or case of _nexus_ that ever can have been offered to the notice of any human understanding, has in it, or, by possibility, could have had anything of necessity. Had the _nexus_ been necessary, you would have seen it beforehand; whereas, by Prop. I. _Non datur aliquid, quo posito ponitur aliud à priori._ This being so, now comes the startling fact, that the notion of a _cause_ includes the notion of necessity. For, if A (the cause) be connected with B (the effect) only in a casual or accidental way, you do not feel warranted in calling it a cause. If heat applied to ice (A) were sometimes followed by a tendency to liquefaction (B) and sometimes not, you would not consider A connected with B as a cause, but only as some variable accompaniment of the true and unknown cause, which might allowably be present or be absent. This, then, is the startling and mysterious phenomenon of the human understanding--that, in a certain notion, which is indispensable to the coherency of our whole experience, indispensable to the establishing any _nexus_ between the different parts and successions of our whole train of notices, we include an accessary notion of necessity, which yet has no justification or warrant, no assignable derivation from any known or possible case of human experience. We have one idea at least--viz. the idea of causation--which transcends our possible experience by one important element, the element of _necessity_, that never can have been derived from the only source of ideas recognised by the philosophy of this day. A Lockian never can find his way out of this dilemma. The experience (whether it be the experience of sensation or the experience of reflection) which he adopts for his master-key, never will unlock this case; for the sum total of human experience, collected from all ages, can avail only to tell us what _is_, but never what _must be_. The idea of necessity is absolutely transcendant to experience, _per se_, and must be derived from some other source. From what source? Could Hume tell us? No: he, who had started the game so acutely (for with every allowance for the detection made in Thomas Aquinas, of the original suggestion, as recorded in the _Biographia Literaria_ of Coleridge, we must still allow great merit of a secondary kind to Hume for his modern revival and restatement of the doctrine), this same acute philosopher broke down confessedly in his attempt to hunt the game down. His solution is worthless.

Kant, however, having caught the original scent from Hume, was more fortunate. He saw, at a glance, that here was a test applied to the Lockian philosophy, which showed, at the very least, its _insufficiency_. If it were good even for so much as it explained--which Burke is disposed to receive as a sufficient warrant for the favourable reception of a new hypothesis--at any rate, it now appeared that there was something which it could _not_ explain. But next, Kant took a large step in advance _proprio morte_. Reflecting upon the one idea adduced by Hume, as transcending the ordinary source of ideas, he began to ask himself, whether it were likely that this idea should stand alone? Were there not other ideas in the same predicament; other ideas including the same element of necessity, and, therefore, equally disowning the parentage assigned by Locke? Upon investigation, he found that there were: he found that there were eleven others in exactly the same circumstances. The entire twelve he denominated categories; and the mode by which he ascertained their number--that there were so many and no more--is of itself so remarkable as to merit notice in the most superficial sketch. But, in fact, this one explanation will put the reader in possession of Kant's system, so far as he could understand it without an express and toilsome study. With this explanation, therefore, of the famous categories, I shall close my slight sketch of the system. Has the reader ever considered the meaning of the term _Category_--a term so ancient and so venerable from its connection with the most domineering philosophy that has yet appeared amongst men? The doctrine of the Categories (or, in its Roman appellation, of the _Predicaments_), is one of the few wrecks from the Peripatetic philosophy which still survives as a doctrine taught by public authority in the most ancient academic institutions of Europe. It continues to form a section in the code of public instruction; and perhaps under favour of a pure accident. For though, strictly speaking, a _metaphysical_ speculation, it has always been prefixed as a sort of preface to the _Organon_ (or _logical_ treatises) of Aristotle, and has thus accidentally shared in the immortality conceded to that most perfect of human works. Far enough were the Categories from meriting such distinction. Kant was well aware of this: he was aware that the Aristotelian Categories were a useless piece of scholastic lumber: unsound in their first conception; and, though illustrated through long centuries by the schoolmen, and by still earlier Grecian philosophers, never in any one known instance turned to a profitable account. Why, then, being aware that even in idea they were false, besides being practically unsuitable, did Kant adopt or borrow a name laden with this superfetation of reproach--all that is false in theory superadded to all that is useless in practice? He did so for a remarkable reason: he felt, according to his own explanation, that Aristotle had been _groping_ [the German word expressive of his blind procedure is _herumtappen_]--groping in the dark, but under a semi-conscious instinct of truth. Here is a most remarkable case or situation of the human intellect, happening alike to individuals and to entire generations--in the situation of yearning or craving, as it were, for a great idea as yet unknown, but dimly and uneasily prefigured. Sometimes the very brink, as it may be called, of such an idea is approached; sometimes it is even imperfectly discovered; but with marks in the very midst of its imperfections, which serve as indications to a person coming better armed for ascertaining the sub-conscious thought which had governed their tentative motions. As it stands in Aristotle's scheme, the idea of a category is a mere lifeless abstraction. Rising through a succession of species to genera, and from these to still higher genera, you arrive finally at a highest genus--a naked abstraction, beyond which no further regress is possible. This highest genus, this _genus generalissimum_, is, in peripatetic language, a category; and no purpose or use has ever been assigned to any one of these categories, of which ten were enumerated at first, beyond that of classification--_i. e._ a purpose of mere convenience. Even for as trivial a purpose as this, it gave room for suspecting a failure, when it was afterwards found that the original ten categories did not exhaust the possibilities of the case; that other supplementary categories (_post-prædicamenti_) became necessary. And, perhaps, 'more last words' might even yet be added, supplementary supplements, and so forth, by a hair-splitting intellect. Failures as gross as these, revisals still open to revision, and amendments calling for amendments, were at once a broad confession that here there was no falling in with any great law of nature. The paths of nature may sometimes be arrived at in a tentative way; but they are broad and determinate; and, when found, vindicate themselves. Still, in all this erroneous subtilisation, and these abortive efforts, Kant perceived a grasping at some real idea--fugitive indeed and coy, which had for the present absolutely escaped; but he caught glimpses of it continually in the rear; he felt its necessity to any account of the human understanding that could be satisfactory to one who had meditated on Locke's theory as probed and searched by Leibnitz. And in this uneasy state--half sceptical, half creative, rejecting and substituting, pulling down and building up--what was in sum and finally the course which he took for bringing his trials and essays to a crisis? He states this himself, somewhere in the Introduction to his _Critik der reinen Vernunft_; and the passage is a memorable one. Fifteen years at the least have passed since I read it; and, therefore, I cannot pretend to produce the words; but the substance I shall give; and I appeal to the candour of all his readers, whether they have been able to apprehend his meaning. I certainly did not for years. But, now that I do, the passage places his procedure in a most striking and edifying light. Astronomers, says Kant, had gone on for ages, assuming that the earth was the central body of our system; and insuperable were the difficulties which attended that assumption. At length, it occurred to try what would result from inverting the assumption. Let the earth, instead of offering a fixed centre for the revolving motions of other heavenly bodies, be supposed itself to revolve about some one of these, as the sun. That supposition was tried, and gradually all the phenomena which, before, had been incoherent, anomalous, or contradictory, began to express themselves as parts of a most harmonious system. 'Something,' he goes on to say, 'analogous to this I have practised with regard to the subject of my inquiry--the human understanding. All others had sought their central principle of the intellectual phenomena out of the understanding, in something external to the mind. I first turned my inquiries upon the mind itself. I first applied my examination to the very analysis of the understanding.' In words, not precisely these, but pretty nearly equivalent to them, does Kant state, by contradistinction, the value and the nature of his own procedure. He first, according to his own representation, thought of applying his investigation to the mind itself. Here was a passage which for years (I may say) continued to stagger and confound me. What! he, Kant, in the latter end of the 18th century, about the year 1787--he the first who had investigated the mind! This was not arrogance so much as it was insanity. Had he said--I, first, upon just principles, or with a fortunate result, investigated the human understanding, he would have said no more than every fresh theorist is bound to suppose, as his preliminary apology for claiming the attention of a busy world. Indeed, if a writer, on any part of knowledge, does _not_ hold himself superior to all his predecessors, we are entitled to say--Then, why do you presume to trouble us? It may _look_ like modesty, but _is_, in effect, downright effrontery for you to think yourself no better than other critics; you were at liberty to think so whilst no claimant of public notice--as being so, it is most arrogant in you to be modest. This would be the criticism applied justly to a man who, in Kant's situation, as the author of a new system, should use a language of unseasonable modesty or deprecation. To have spoken boldly of himself was a duty; we could not tolerate his doing otherwise. But to speak of himself in the exclusive terms I have described, does certainly seem, and for years did seem to myself, little short of insanity. Of this I am sure that no student of Kant, having the passage before him, can have known heretofore what consistent, what rational interpretation to give it; and, in candour, he ought to own himself my debtor for the light he will now receive. Yet, so easy is it to imagine, after a meaning is once pointed out, and the station given from which it shows itself _as_ the meaning--so easy, under these circumstances, is it to imagine that one has, or that one could have, found it for one's self--that I have little expectation of reaping much gratitude for my explanation. I say this, not as of much importance one way or the other in a single case of the kind, but because a general consideration of this nature has sometimes operated to make me more indifferent or careless as to the publication of commentaries on difficult systems, when I had found myself able to throw much light on the difficulties. The very success with which I should have accomplished the task--the perfect removal of the obstacles in the student's path--were the very grounds of my assurance-that the service would be little valued. For I have found what it was occasionally, in conversation, to be too luminous--to have explained, for instance, too clearly a dark place in Ricardo. In such a case, I have known a man of the very greatest powers, mistake the intellectual effort he had put forth to apprehend my elucidation, and to meet it half way, for his own unassisted conquest over the difficulties; and, within an hour or two after, I have had, perhaps, to stand, as an attack upon myself, arguments entirely and recently furnished by myself. No case is more possible: even to apprehend a complex explanation, a man cannot be passive; he must exert considerable energy of mind; and, in the fresh consciousness of this energy, it is the most natural mistake in the world for him to feel the argument which he has, by considerable effort, appropriated to be an argument which he has originated. Kant is the most unhappy champion of his own doctrines, the most infelicitous expounder of his own meaning, that has ever existed. Neither has any other commentator succeeded in throwing a moonlight radiance upon his philosophy. Yet certain I am, that, were I, or any man, to disperse all his darkness, exactly in that proportion in which we did so--exactly in the proportion in which we smoothed all hindrances--exactly in that proportion would it cease to be known or felt that there had ever been any hindrances to be smoothed. This, however, is digression, to which I have been tempted by the interesting nature of the grievance. In a jesting way, this grievance is obliquely noticed in the celebrated couplet--

'Had you seen but these roads before they were made, You'd lift up your hands and bless Marshal Wade.'

The pleasant bull here committed conceals a most melancholy truth, and one of large extent. Innumerable are the services to truth, to justice, or society, which never _can_ be adequately valued by those who reap their benefits, simply because the transition from the early and bad state to the final or improved state cannot be retraced or kept alive before the eyes. The record perishes. The last point gained is seen; but the starting-point, the points _from_ which it was gained, is forgotten. And the traveller never _can_ know the true amount of his obligations to Marshal Wade, because, though seeing the roads which the Marshal has created, he can only guess at those which he superseded. Now, returning to this impenetrable passage of Kant, I will briefly inform the reader that he may read it into sense by connecting it with a part of Kant's system, from which it is in his own delivery entirely dislocated. Going forwards some thirty or forty pages, he will find Kant's development of his own categories. And, by placing in juxtaposition with that development this blind sentence, he will find a reciprocal light arising. All philosophers, worthy of that name, have found it necessary to allow of some great cardinal ideas that transcended all the Lockian origination--ideas that were larger in their compass than any possible notices of sense or any reflex notices of the understanding; and those who have denied such ideas, will be found invariably to have supported their denial by a _vitium subreptionis_, and to have deduced their pretended genealogies of such ideas by means of a _petitio principii_--silently and stealthily putting _into_ some step of their _leger-de-main_ process everything that they would pretend to have extracted _from_ it. But, previously to Kant, it is certain that all philosophers had left the origin of these higher or transcendent ideas unexplained. Whence came they? In the systems to which, Locke replies, they had been called _innate_ or _connate_. These were the Cartesian systems. Cudworth, again, who maintained certain '_immutable ideas_' of morality, had said nothing about their origin; and Plato had supposed them to be reminiscences from some higher mode of existence. Kant first attempted to assign them an origin within the mind itself, though not in any Lockian fashion of reflection upon sensible impressions. And this is doubtless what he means by saying that he first had investigated the mind--that is, he first for such a purpose.

Where, then, is it, in what act or function of the mind, that Kant finds the matrix of these transcendent ideas? Simply in the logical forms of the understanding. Every power exerts its agency under some _laws_--that is, in the language of Kant, by certain _forms_. We leap by certain laws--viz. of equilibrium, of muscular motion, of gravitation. We dance by certain laws. So also we reason by certain laws. These laws, or _formal_ principles, under a particular condition, become the categories.

Here, then, is a short derivation, in a very few words, of those ideas transcending sense, which all philosophy, the earliest, has been unable to dispense with, and yet none could account for. Thus, for example, every act of reasoning must, in the first place, express itself in distinct propositions; that is, in such as contain a subject (or that concerning which you affirm or deny something), a predicate (that which you affirm or deny), and a copula, which connects them. These propositions must have what is technically called, in logic, a certain _quantity_, or compass (viz. must be universal, particular, or singular); and again they must have what is called _quality_ (that is, must be affirmative, or negative, or infinite): and thus arises a ground for certain corresponding ideas, which are Kant's categories of quantity and quality.

But, to take an illustration more appropriately from the very idea which first aroused Kant to the sense of a vast hiatus in the received philosophies--the idea of _cause_, which had been thrown as an apple of discord amongst the schools, by Hume. How did Kant deduce this? Simply thus: it is a doctrine of universal logic, that there are three varieties of syllogism--viz. 1st, Categoric, or directly declarative [_A is B_]; 2nd, Hypothetic, or conditionally declarative [_If C is D, then A is B_]; 3rd, Disjunctive, or declarative, by means of a choice which exhausts the possible cases [_A is either B, or C, or D; but not C or D; ergo B_]. Now, the idea of _causation_, or, in Kant's language, the category of Cause and Effect, is deduced immediately, and most naturally, as the reader will acknowledge on examination, from the 2nd or hypothetic form of syllogism, when the relation of dependency is the same as in the idea of causation, and the _necessary_ connection a direct type of that which takes place between a cause and its effect.

Thus, then, without going one step further, the reader will find grounds enough for reflection and for reverence towards Kant in these two great results: 1st, That an order of ideas has been established, which all deep philosophy has demanded, even when it could not make good its claim. This postulate is fulfilled. 2ndly, The postulate is fulfilled without mysticism or Platonic reveries. Ideas, however indispensable to human needs, and even to the connection of our thoughts, which came to us from nobody knew whence, must for ever have been suspicious; and, as in the memorable instance cited from Hume, must have been liable for ever to a question of validity. But, deduced as they now are from a matrix within our own minds, they cannot reasonably fear any assaults of scepticism.