第153章

This may be the proper place for referring to the relation in which Stewart stood toward Kant.I have already expressed my regret that Stewart should have entered on a criticism of Kant without a deeper acquaintance with his system.No doubt it might be retorted, that the criticisms of Stewart upon Kant are not more ignorant and foolish than those of the disciples of Kant upon Reid; but it is better to admit that Stewart committed a blunder in his review of the Kantian system.Some have supposed that, if he had known more of Kant, he would have formed a totally different opinion of his philosophy.And I admit that a further acquaintance with Kant's works would have raised Kant in his estimation; would have kept him from describing his nomenclature as "jargon," and his philosophy as "incomprehensible," from affirming that Kant has " thrown no new light on the laws of the intellectual world;" would have shown him many curious points of correspondence between the views of Kant and the profoundest of his own doctrines, and have enabled him, when he did depart from Kant, to give fair and valid reasons, and thus to help in what must be one of the tasks of philosophy in this age, -- the work of taking from Kant what is good and true, and casting away {305} what is evil, because false.While I admit all this, I am convinced at the same time that Stewart would never have given an adhesion to the peculiarities of Kanti**.He would have said, " My method of induction is better than your method of criticism, and my account of the intuitive convictions of the mind is correct when I represent them as fundamental laws of thought and belief; whereas you are giving a wrong account of them when you represent them as <a priori> forms imposing on the objects in all cognition something which is not in the objects." I cannot conceive him, in any circumstances, allowing to Kant (as Hamilton unfortunately did) that space and time and causation are laws of thought and not of thought and may have merely a subjective existence.His caution, his good sense, and his careful observation, would have prevented him from ever falling into a system of nescience such as that to which the relentless logic of Hamilton has carried him, founding, Iacknowledge, on premises which Stewart as well as Kant had furnished.He would have adhered, after knowing all, to his decision: "We are irresistibly led to ascribe to the thing itself (space) an existence independent of the will of any being." It is an " in comprehensible doctrine which denies the objective reality of time." " That space is neither a <substance>, nor an <accident>, nor a <relation>, may be safely granted; but it does not follow from this that it is nothing objective." " Our first idea of space or extension seems to be formed by abstracting this attribute from the other qualities of matter.The idea of space, however, in whatever manner formed, is manifestly accompanied with an irresistible conviction that space is necessarily existent, and that its annihilation is impossible," etc.He adds, " To call this proposition in question, is to open a door to universal scepticism." ("Diss.," pp.596, 597.)The great work which the school of Reid has done consists in its careful investigation, in the inductive manner first, of the faculties of the mind; and, secondly, and more particularly, of man's primary and intuitive convictions.For this they ought to be honored in all time.