THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF NEO-KANTIANISM AND SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM.
IN a preceding article 1 I traced the insidious extension given by Kant to the term "experience," in virtue of which it comes to mean a quasi-independent world, identified neither with the facts of subjective consciousness nor with trans- subjective realities. We have now to follow the development of this conception of experience in the hands of the Neo- Kantians. In their hands it soon comes to figure as the ex- clusive reality, and the nature of their results will show us the danger of departing from the trans-subjective reference in knowledge. In Kant, as we have seen, this reference remains, but the experience-object thrusts the trans-subjective reality more and more into the background. Its existence became, therefore, the first point upon which the Kantian system was assailed. Jacobi, Aenesidemus-Schultze, Maimon, and Beck agree in pointing out the inconsistency of the thing-in-itself with other fundamental principles of Kant's philosophy. Jacobi' s saying is well-known, that ' without the supposition of the thing-in-itself it is impossible to find one's way into the system, and with this presupposition it is impossible to remain in it.' For if causality is a category of subjective origin and merely immanent applica- tion, it must be a flagrant transgression of the first principles of Criticism to apply it, in this transcendent reference, to the action of things-in-themselves. To Fichte it was simply in- credible that Kant could ever have meant to make such an assertion ; and accordingly he regarded the thing-in-itself as posited by the ego, that is to say, merely as a reflection of the ego, as a moment in the ego's own creative thought. The 1 This article follows closely upon the paper on " Epistemology in Locke and Kant " in the March number of this Review. 293
