in contrast to a beyond, and therefore the absolute, as really extended, is undeniably made relative. Should it be replied that this relativity is fallacious because it is only a relation to unreality, as real space is finite, and so the pretended beyond on which the Actual is said to depend is a pure illusion, the empty “infinite of the imagination”: then we should have the worse case, that the Actual has to be relative to this phantasmal act of consciousness ; and we should end in the contradiction, that the absolute is conditioned by its own unreal product. So impossible is it to define the Real except in terms of thought.
The insufficiency of the Actual exposes itself still further, when Dühring comes to discuss the origin of consciousness and the reach of knowledge. He takes a fatal step when he seeks the “common root” of sense and understanding in a time-and-space prius, ignoring the fact that he has given no answer but bald denial to the Kantian doctrine of the ideality of space and time; and that, until the supports of this doctrine are removed, there can be no use of these elements to locate a root of consciousness: to search for the prius of something, in a region still presumably the result of that something, is an industry not likely to be largely rewarded. Dühring’s entire dialectic, like the part of it shown in his attempted refutation of the Kantian antinomies, rests on the assumption, which
