Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/364

352 EDMUND MONTGOMERY : elusion that objective validity cannot be otherwise secured to any concept (or proposition) than through reference to corresponding sensible presentation (Anschauung) . Conse- quently, beyond the boundaries of sensible manifestation, and therewith of all possible experience, there can be ab- solutely no cognition." l Just realise what a concession for one who, during a life of research, had in opposition to his own steadfast faith become reluctantly conscious of the utter futility of all previous metaphysical methods ; and, at last, after the sup- posed discovery of synthetical propositions a priori, had set out with the fond hope of having found a way to penetrate by dint of this new, veritably constructive agency to his cherished realm of transcendent metaphysics. But alas ! in whatever manner he tried, metaphysics refused to let itself be constructed after the mode of pure mathematics. An exhaustive investigation of the efficiency of synthetical propositions a priori forced the inflexible truth upon him : that the synthetical forms remain empty, that the synthe- tising power has nothing to exert itself upon, if sensible 'presentations are not given to them. No experience, no know- ledge without sense-material. Objects conceptually origi- nated have no validity. There is no science of transcendent metaphysics ; only a science of the a priori principles of natural knowledge or immanent metaphysics. Now, is there anything in this final outcome and verdict of the Critick that Transcendentalists can accept ? Surely, no philosophical school can allow itself to push lightly aside as irrelevant and obstructive the principal conclusion, the very core of the system which, on the whole, it professes to adopt. It is evidently the compulsory contents of percepts that Kant so emphatically opposes to conceptual understanding, declaring the latter to be void of objective validity, unless it is elaborating such compulsory material. In this sense, in the sense, namely, that concepts, or propositions of whatever kind, have no objective validity unless they have reference to compulsory perception that is, to perception, which through powers not our own, may be forcibly and normally aroused in us, we Naturalists fully concur in the result of Kant's Critical investigation. And we feel bound to assert, that an unbridgeable chasm severs us from such thinking as strives to reverse the direction of the objective field upon which we have to exert our understanding, wilfully seeking 1 Vol. i., p. 403, Rosenkr. Ed.