must treat this also as phenomenal, and hence we cannot be sure if there is, or is not, a thing-in-itself. But he holds we cannot now silence the apprehension that there may be one. So the distinction remains, and the thing-in-itself becomes simply a notion, but a limiting notion. The antithetic formula Me and Not-me becomes the all-encompassing category,[1] which therefore causes all our cognition to seem merely subjective, whether it be so in reality or not, and thus compels us to limit our certainty to phenomena. The agnostic force of the formula is accordingly rather increased than diminished: we have now not a single cognition remaining that can pretend to belong to intelligence as such. Except unluckily (let us, the readers, add in passing), this very last decision that condemns every other, — the goblin of certainty which haunts the steps of all agnosticism, and which it cannot lay! This Nemesis of phenomenalism will presently appear in a clearer form.
For it cannot longer be concealed, that in setting out upon his chosen path Lange was in fact moving towards a goal he little suspected and still less intended. He has decided that to validate the phenomenal limitation of knowledge he must make the thing-in-itself a mere form a priori. But we have
- ↑ How Schopenhauer the Epistemologist must have blessed Lange for this stroke, so masterfully repeating his own!
