This universality of judgments that give expres sion to knowledge furnishes a problem to the inves tigator. What justifies it? Various answers have been given. Sonic philosophers say that nothing can justify it; seine say that it is practically justified by repeated tests; others say that the procedure bears its own warrant; still others say that the universalization is justified only if there is in experience an element which is the product of the mind's creative activity; for only what the mind makes, say they, can the mind predict. These four answers represent the four logical schools of particularism, empiricism, dogmatism, and transcendental idealism. Particularism is untenable for the reason that it is self-contra dictory. It makes a universal statement denying the validity of universal statements. If it at tempts to escape the charge by modifying its position in such a way as to make an exception of its own principle, it falls into dogmatism. Its creed would then run: universal statements except this one are unwarranted." This is dog matic; for a general statement is here made with nut any reasons given, and no reasons can lie given so long as general statements are barred.
The trouble with empiricism, or the doctrine that universal judgments can he attested by re peated experience of their truth, is that it starts with an unjustified assumption—viz. that all statements are at first of particularistic validity. Now, out of a combination of ten truths, each of particularistic import, it would seem that all we could legitimately get would be merely a com bination of ten particularistic truths. If a thou sand sheep are by experience known to be white, well—then they are white; but what. about the thousand and first? To this an empiricist of Hume's type makes answer that we get into the habit of expecting sheep to he white, and that the generalization of the whiteness of sheep is only a statement of the past particular experiences, plus the fact of an expectation which we have, based on a habit we have formed of associating whiteness with sheep. Tf the habit has never been broken, we are told, the expectation may become so irresistible that at last it becomes inconceivable that I he expectation should not he fulfilled. Thus arises the universality of judgments. But in reply it must he said that the whole point of our question is missed. What is to be made out is not how, as a matter of psychological history, men come to make imiversal judgments, but whether they have a right to make them. In other the fact that the judgment is made, however psyehologically inevitable it. is, is no justification of the judgment as a statement of fact. But this limuian empiricism from still anollwr defect. It can explain the origin of an irresistible expectation only on the tion that under certain conditions expectations arise. But this is to assume the validity of at least one universal judgment—viz.. the one ex pressing the psychologieril law of the origin of expectation. :\nd if this universal judgment could he successfully used for explaining the ori gin of all universal judgments, still the question remains: What justifies this one universal judg ment? 'This question empiricism, as defined above, has never answered, and it. Cannot be seen how it could possibly answer it. At first sight transcendental idealism scents to avoid all these difficulties that beset rival theories. It starts with the apparent fact that there are two sorts of judgments we can make, one sort, conditional and the other unconditional. We cannot, for ex ample, predict even eclipses with certainty. be cause we arc not absolutely sure that before the eclipse can occur some unknown cause may not destroy either sun, moon, or earth, or all of them. But there are judgments, it is alleged,
which are unconditionally true—e.g. that two and two make four, and that every event has a cause.
This alleged difference between two sorts of judgments has led the transcendentalist to assume a corresponding difference hetween the elements constituting experience. Experience, says he, is a complex product, constituted by the superinduc tion of certain principles of perception and thought upon the materials furnished by sense. These principles are invariable ways we have of perceiving and thinking objects. these ways are ways of consciousness and tint ways of the object, consciousness can predict them, we are told, with certainty; and not only so, but it can also predict those elements in experience which are the effects of these operations of conscious ness. But those elements in experience which are due to the influence exerted by other things upon consciousness are unpredictable, while everything lying outside of the limits of experience, every ultimate reality, in other words, is unknowable. Upon examination this view is seen to be as dis appointing as any of its rivals. This presupposi tion that the (dements which mind contributes to experience are predictable is surely not self e•ident, for it is clearly seen to depend on the assumption of unchangeableness in the way mind acts. Why should eonsciousness lie any more certain of the way in which it is going to act than of the way in which something else is going to act? As a matter of fact, we are all quite mutable agents. and no one of its finds it nearly as easy to say bow lie is going to act to-morrow as to say how some objects in external nature are going to act. In reply to all this it may he said that there are, however. things we do that are unchangeable, and in so far as future experience is determined by these our uniform modes of action, it is predictable. This reply would be satisfactory if we were sure of our uniform principles of action. Where does the knowledge of the immutability of these ways of pereeiving, and thinking come from? Is it an a priori truth that we have these immutable forms of perception and these categories? No, not even Kant took such ground. He merely argued that if we had not these eonstitntive principles of perception and thought. we mild not form a priori synthetic ,judgments. 4 See A PRInItI, and ANALYTIC JtmumENTs.) This dic tum contained in the preceding sentence is the foundation-stone of transcendental idealism. But what justifies this An unwarranted subjectivism. i.e. the theory that the only things we can know are mental states and mental pro cesses. or at least the theory that the only laws of net ion we can be sure of are the laws of mental action, underlies this dictum. If it be true that only logical laws, and time and space as percep tual forms, can be known to be invariable, then of course it would follow that only such objects of experience as are determined by logical laws, and by temporal and spatial forms, can be pre dicted; and not only so, but only such aspects of these objects as are directly due to the opera tion of these perceptual forms and logical laws could properly be subjects of universal judg ment. The whole question therefore turns upon the validity of the assumption that we can know only those forms and laws which are of a sub jective origin. Kant nowhere justifies such an assumption. He merely makes it, and then pro ceeds to call the philosophical results that follow from it a Copernican revolution.