Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/267

NORMAN SMITH, Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy. 253 of his monadism. The influence of Descartes' rationalism over Locke is especially felt in the Fourth Book of the Essay. " For Locke, as for Descartes, mathematical reasoning, falsely inter- preted, remains the ideal of knowledge. Empirical knowledge when compared with this ideal is condemned in every respect." Our author, indeed, gives excellent grounds for justifying one in regarding Locke as essentially a rationalist, his sensationalism being " but externally tagged on to his rationalism ". This is good criticism, but it seems a remarkable oversight that in this connexion Bacon's influence over Locke should not have been taken into account. Bacon's own empiricism is weighted with a theory of forms which, like Descartes' theory of abstract concep- tions, is rooted in the scholastic theory of essence, itself a product of Greek thought, and it would be more just to attribute to this hoary prejudice, which is par excellence the butt of modern Idealism, the responsibility for atomic rationalism wherever it appears as a philosophy, whether in Bacon or Descartes, Leibniz or Locke, than to press the central responsibility back upon Descartes. The excising of the spiritualism and rationalism from the Carte- sian system, together with the Occasionalism they involved, an Occasionalism which reached its climax in Berkeley's spiritualistic system, is shown to be due to Hume. Hume is, however, only a half-emancipated Cartesian, though he is working towards Kant's position. He is still under the spell of the doctrine of representa- tive perception, holding the Cartesian view ' that the -function of knowledge is to reduplicate an independent reality '. At the same time his logical position, like that of Kant, is rather phenomenalism than subjective idealism. He is logically committed, not to the contention ' that we know nothing but purely subjective states,' but rather to the view ' that nothing subjective as distinguished from objective is conceivable by us '. The transition to Kant by which the Cartesian assumptions are transcended is peculiarly well treated. The theory of representa- tive perception falls before the Copernican idea that as cognition cannot be made to conform to objects, it may well be that objects conform to our ways of knowing ; and in the Objective Deduction of the Categories this revolutionary thought is tempered by what amounts to the admission that it is as true to assert that nature makes the Self possible as that the understanding creates Nature. As regards Kant's method the refreshing confession is made that " the outlandish title of ' transcendental ' need not conceal from us that it is simply the hypothetical method of physical science applied in the explanation of knowledge," and the con- clusion is drawn that, starting as Kant does with experience (and indeed not with experience as a whole, but with the simplest act of knowledge, viz., Consciousness of Time), Kant is alone the truly - empirical philosopher, Hume's method being by contrast a priori and dogmatic. We are thus introduced by Kant to the true concrete, experimental point of view whence ' Modern Philosophy makes a fresh start '.