KANT The system of Kant, or rather that part of his system ex pounded in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), though expressly distinguished by its author from scepticism, has been included by many writers in their survey of sceptical theories. The difference between Kant, with his system of pure reason, and any of the thinkers passed in review is obvious; and his limitation of reason to the sphere of experience suggests in itself the title of agnostic or positivist rather than that of sceptic. Yet, if we go a little deeper, there is substantial justification for the view which treats agnosticism of the Kantian type as essentially sceptical in its foundations and in its results. For criticism not only limits our knowledge to a certain sphere, but denies that our knowledge within that sphere is real ; we never know things as they actually are, but only as they appear to us. This doctrine of relativity really involves a condemnation of our knowledge (and of all knowledge), because it fails to realize an impossible and self contradictory ideal. The man who impeaches the knowing facul ties because of the fact of relation which they involve, is pursu ing the phantom of an apprehension which, as Lotze expresses it, does not apprehend things, but is itself things ; he is desiring not to know but to be the things themselves. If this dream or prej udice be exploded, then the scepticism originating in it—and a large proportion of recent sceptical thought does so originate— loses its basis. The prejudice, however, which meets us in Kant is, in a somewhat different form, the same prejudice which is found in the "tropes" of antiquity—what Lotze calls the "inadmissible relation of the world of ideas to a foreign world of objects." For,
as he rightly points out, whether we suppose idealism or realism to be true, in neither case do the things themselves pass into our knowledge. No standpoint is possible from which we could com pare the world of knowledge with such an independent world of things, in order to judge of the conformity of the one to the other. But the abstract doubt "whether, after all, things may not be quite other in themselves than that which by the laws of our thought they necessarily appear" is a scepticism which, though admittedly irrefutable, is as certainly groundless. No arguments can be brought against it, simply because the scepticism rests on nothing more than the empty possibility of doubting. This holds true, even if we admit the "independent" existence of such a world of things. But the independence of things may with much greater reason be regarded as itself a fiction or prejudice. The real "ob jective" to which our thoughts must show conformity is not a world of things in themselves, but the system of things as it exists for a perfect intelligence. Scepticism is deprived of its persistent argument if it is seen that, while our individual experiences are to be judged by their coherence with the context of experience in general, experience as a whole does not admit of being judged by reference to anything beyond itself.