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TFfs PREFACE.
IF modern philosophy goes "back to Kant" at the present time, it is certain to go forward to Fichte again after a due interval.
Kant made a new epoch in the history of philosophy by exploring the subjective factor of cognition. It was obvious to him that knowledge is a product of two factors: the object entering as one factor and the con stitution of the knowing subject forming the other. He suggested that in order to solve the problems of philo sophy it is necessary to make a careful exploration of the subjective factor of knowledge. If we can learn to recognize the subjective coefficient in our experience — in other words, if we can make allowance for what the rnind itself adds to the object in the process of knowing it — we are in a condition to know the object in its purity, or as it is in itself.
On this ground the attempt of Kant and his followers seems promising. They essayed to take a complete in ventory of the forms that belong to the constitution of the mind. Long practice in this kind of investigation gave them such power of introspection that for the first time in the history of human thought psychology began to be a real science. We all remember, if we have studied the writings of this school of philosophers, how A IV PREFACE.
completely unintelligible their language seemed at first. There were words and an apparent statement of pro gressive insights, but we could not understand even the words, much less verify in our own introspection the progressive insights: we had not any sufficient power of sustained introspection or inward observation. We had rarely ever observed other objects than external ones. We had used our powers of sense-perception only, and had reflected only on their data. When we had con templated spiritual or mental facts we had done so in a symbolical mode of thinking. We had used mental pictures and images, and thus objectified and material ized the operations of the mind and contemplated them as things existing in space.
By the study of the Kantian writings we came to acquire by degrees the new faculties of introspection. We acquired some power of seeing internal processes without the aid of mental pictures and images. Then the words and apparent statements of progressive insights began to have precise and reasonable meaning to us, and a new realm of knowledge arose before our souls with continually increasing clearness. Its clearness in fact •was of such a character that all previous knowledge seemed quite dim in comparison. We found ourselves learning to see truths that are universal and necessary — " apodictic," as Kant calls them. Previous views of tiuth had not seemed exhaustive. Existence might be other wise, or perhaps was otherwise, to a different spectator. But now with the newly acquired power of introspection •we could see glimpses of the final and exhaustive truth. We felt it now to be in our power to make indefinite pro gress in this new inventory of ihe world. This progress consists in a descent from the universal to the particular.
PREFACE. V Hence division and analysis brought us to insights more closely related to the world of external observation.
All the forms of the mind within discovered by this power of introspection are necessary forms of existence because they are logical conditions of being. If space and time are forms of the perceiving mind, they are also logical conditions of the existence of the world that it perceives. The laws of space and time as formulated in mathematics are universal and necessary conditions in the world of matter and motion. We shall never dis cover a plane triangle with the sum of its angles greater or less than two right angles. The knowledge of the structure of mind is not a mere subjective knowledge of "forms of the mind," but also a knowledge of the condi tions of existence. It is only a superficial glance at the doctrines of Kant that leads one to believe that he supposes time and space to be forms of subjective mind and not conditions of what we call "existence." It is the illusion of his technical expressions that deceives us. When we have learned how to see his facts of con sciousness by our newly acquired power of introspection, we see that he does not deny validity to time and space in the world of experience, but on the contrary affirms their unconditional validity there, as necessary conditions of existence to all things and events. If there is a thing that is not conditioned by time and space, it is not known to us and cannot possibly enter our experience.
This sustained power of introspection, which makes Kant's expositions so difficult to the beginner, is surpassed by the acumen of Fichte. Compared with the insight of Fichte, Kant's power of introspection seems to reach internal facts without their logical relations, while Fichte sees logical relations and can deduce one fact from VI PREFACE.
another. He has in short discovered Method — and can proceed from one step to another, without beginning anew.
If it was found difficult to understand Kant and verify his inventory of facts of introspection, it is still more difficult to follow Fichte's deductions, involving as they do not only those recondite facts, but also a still more recondite reflection upon their nature. The facts of consciousness are not facts of mere being — being as opposed to activity — but they are all facts of activity as Fichte sees clearly. To think an activity distinctly involves a compound act of the mind, while the thought of mere being seems to be simple in comparison. The mental effort to perceive an activity is therefore neces sarily a process comprehending many elemental acts. But the result is a logical whole, and the elements are seen to have truth not in their isolation, but in their relation — in their reciprocal unity.
Here we see the germ of the discovery of the dialectic, that becomes so important in the system of Hegel. If an insight of introspection demands a logical procedure through general terms of thought, the movement is a dialectic one and may be regarded as an objective movement — a movement of the thing itself (Sache selbst). For the thought of it requires this movement, and it is not our arbitrary reflection on it that connects it with ethers. But this claim for the dialectic has proved the bane of the Hegelian philosophy. It has led to a sort of hypostasis of the " dialectic method " — making it a kind of developing energy in the world, something like the principle of evolution which science has formulated. It does not require any real insight to think with such a principle of dialectic. To see this PREFACE. Vll dialectic movement does not require an exercise of this wonderful new power of introspection which we have described as revealed in the writings of Kant and Fichte. The true dialectic is transformed into the far less subtle intellectual power of thinking by the aid of mental images and pictures. The dialectic as a power of tran scendental deduction is entirely wanting to it.
Having thus degenerated, the true remedy is to go "back to Kant," and thenceforward to Fichte, and re vive this new faculty of introspection that can behold the necessary sequence of ideas, which is the true dialectic.
In these considerations I have essayed to indicate the true position of Fichte. He is the greatest genius in psychology to be found in the history of philosophy. This does not of course claim for him the highest place in all science nor in all philosophy. For there is un doubtedly much else in human knowledge than psycho logy, even if psychology is as fundamental as it is supposed to be. There is ontology and the philosophy of nature; the philosophy of history, of aesthetic art and literature; of ethics, of the social organism, of laws arid constitutions; of language, and of many more depart ments of human life. All these may find or must find their principles of explanation in psychology, but they are not psychology.