The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Carus - Are there Things-in-Themselves?
The term "thing- in-itself" in the sense of a thing as it is independent of sensibility, would better be called "the objective thing," and we shall so call it, to distinguish it from Kant's thing-in-itself. The idea of a thing-in-itself has found support in a mistaken conception of the unity of certain things, especially of organisms. The mind is a product of the world; it is a system of symbols representing the things of the world and their relations, including such possible relations as are worthy of aspiring for. The idea of a thing-in-itself, and the unknowableness of the thing-in-itself are the basis of all agnosticism. Neither nominalism or realism are right, but if properly interpreted they are complementary: "universals are real," says the realists, i.e. the forms and relations of things are actualities; "universals are laws," says the nominalists, i.e. the relations and forms in which we describe the world are mental symbols. Positivism, i.e. the representation of facts without any admixture of theory or mythology, is an ideal which in its purity perhaps will never be realized. Science cannot dispense with hypotheses, with theories, with mythology. The world is not rigid being but activity, not absolute existence but a system of changing relations, not an abstract Sein but a concrete Wirklichkeit — constant working of cause and effect. There is no dualism in this, for the Wirklichkeit is one and undivided. These are not separated things, in the sense of isolated, absolute, or abstract beings, although we may speak of them as such for our ephemeral purposes.