Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/468

II. KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AND EMPIRICAL REALISM. BY C. M. WALSH. THE terms Transcendental Idealism and Empirical Kealism are incomplete. They have no meaning unless the objects be designated of which transcendental ideality and empirical reality are predicated. The term Empirical Kealism might suggest that it predicates reality only of empirical objects. The term Transcendental Idealism would then, by analogous interpretation, imply that ideality is to be predicted only of transcendental objects. This is, in each case, a wrong dis- junction of the component terms. The predication intended by Kant is not of ideality or of reality to transcendental or to empirical objects ; but it is of transcendental ideality and of empirical reality, and the question is, to what objects these attributes are applied. They are intended by Kant to be applied to the same objects, spoken of in general as the objects of the senses, or more particularly, as the objects of in- tuition and of experience. Both the Transcendental Idealism and the Empirical Eealism are meant by Kant to be in respect to Time and Space and to the Sensible Objects appearing in them, or in general, in respect to Intuitions and Phenomena. It would, however, be well not to use these terms simply, but to add to them the reference to the objects intended ; for they may be applied to still other objects. Kant himself, conceiving of a world of things-in- themselves, whose existence he admitted, maintained a doctrine of Transcendental Kealism in respect to Things-in- themselves ; while at the same time he rejected a doctrine of Transcendental Kealism in respect to Time and Space and the Sensible Objects or Phenomena in them. Before examining the possible systems that may be framed by combination of these things, we must firmly grasp the meanings in which Kant used the four characterising terms. They are made to fall into two groups, in' which each term