be so eminently reasonable, Kant sets aside with an ill-concealed impatience that is somewhat difficult to understand. But if the metaphysical heterogeneity of the two sides is tacitly presupposed, then unquestionably the notion of a pre-established harmony does become no better than a deus ex machina, and you have no guarantee that any such friendly, and as it were miraculous, interposition has taken place. And in this way, it seems to me, Kant's contemptuous treatment of the idea may be understood. But the error lies in the original supposition of heterogeneity; it is this abstract dualism which necessitates the mechanical idea of a special interposition to establish correspondence. If the first unfounded supposition is dropped, then harmony does not require to be established by special decree; it has the presumption on its side. We may go further, and say that when the matter is duly considered, this is the necessary assumption of metaphysical thought. Epistemological investigation, therefore, if it is not to lead us back to the sceptical idealism, or to the impasse of an Unknown and Unknowable, must tacitly presuppose this metaphysical unity of the subjective and the objective, or, to put it more strictly, the harmony of the subjective function with the universe from which it springs. Starting from this basis, epistemology may afterwards return to prove its own assumption, so far as we can talk of proof in such a case. Epistemology supplies the indirect proof that this is the only hypothesis which can be consistently thought out without dissolving in absurdity or contradiction.
| Andrew Seth. |
| University of Edinburgh. |
THE ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF DETERMINISM.[1]
Miss Ritchie's able article with the above title, in a recent number of this Review, is typical of a class of writings which represent determinism as compatible with freedom and moral responsibility. The logical fallacy of equivocation, frequently observable in such discussions, has not been escaped by the author of the article in question.
1. There is an equivocation in her use of the word 'causation.'
a) Causation may mean physical causation, which is simply and solely the invariable sequence of consequent on antecedent. In the
- ↑ By Dr. Eliza Ritchie. The Philosophical Review, No. 11.
