jective factor to play no part in the subject's apprehension of his own existence, to form no part of what the subject apprehends as his own mode of existing.

There is obviously some ground for Kant's fluctuation of view on this important point, and we shall presently discover what that ground is. Meantime, keeping still to the generalities, we go on to ask, In what way is this material for the empirical knowledge of self received? To this the consistent Kantian answer is, By the inner sense, and subject to the condition of the inner sense, time. The notion of inner sense has an evil history, and nowhere has it been more unfortunate than in the Kantian theory. As there defined, it may fairly be regarded as a product of combined abstraction and analogy. The broad experience from which we start is vaguely expressed in the phrase that we are aware of our own temporally changing existence as contrasted with the existence of outer things. Perceptions of these outer things are themselves temporally determinable changes of our own existence. As changes in the particular of experience, they must be apprehended through a sense; they are given. As contrasted with apprehended outer things, the objects of outer sense, they must be received through an inner sense, which stands in the same relation to them that outer sense stands to the perceived outer objects.

It is perhaps not to be urged as a special difficulty in this mode of viewing the apprehended material of self-perception that it just fails to include the characteristic feature-the identification of the perceived with the percipient self-for Kant consistently declares that any explanation of this feature is impossible; but it is evident that it throws the whole burden on the peculiar nature assigned to the inner sense, towards elucidation of which there is singularly little in the Critique. It is only by following out the further

steps in analysis of the whole process of self-perception that we get additional light.

The form of inner sense is time, and time is form of the inner sense only. The percepta of outer sense are determinable as in time, only because the material element in the process of outer sense is and must be also material of inner sense. Nothing can be more explicit than Kant's repeated declarations on this perhaps the most perplexing point in his whole analysis of perceptive experience. It lies at the root of the doctrine of schematism, and it comes to the front in the discussion of the real character of the external perceived object. The first and obvious inference from it would be, not merely that, as he frequently seems to say, outer and inner sense are equally primordial, inexplicable in their characteristic features, and just side by side, but that a certain priority belongs to inner sense. Such an inference as is well known, is completely at variance with Kant's views; and it seems probable that insight into the hazardous character of the conception of inner sense came about from consideration of the third element in the process of self-perception. It is by an act of understanding that the given material of inner sense is determined as an object in experience, is cognised. Such determination concerns only the time-relations of the given matter; but for the determination of time-relations a feature of the given is required that is not furnished in the matter of inner sense. There is not possible in the field of inner experience the reference of given materials to the unity of an object as determining the order of their appearance such as we find in the case of outer experience. It is only in correlation with and dependence on outer perception that we become able to determine the empirical sequence of states of the inner life as changes in the object known. But this is to say, in other words, as has been often pointed out, that we do not cognise self or its

changes as object at all. Whatever other account we may offer of the way in which self-perception comes about, or, indeed, of the meaning of that process, we must give up the attempted parallelism of inner and outer experience, and with it the basis for that kind of psychology which Kant, or his immediate followers at least, seemed to contemplate.

A peculiar danger, indeed, attaches to any attempt, however carefully guarded, to conceive of Vorstellungen, the apprehended contents, as objects. Language, which has much to account for in popular psychology, plays its own hurtful part in reference to this fundamental point; and however fairly it may be recognised that we are dealing only with an abstract, an aspect of a concrete whole, it is almost impossible to escape from the implications of the substantival terms used. For Kant the difficulty is aggravated by the pronouncedly subjective colouring of his expressions - a colouring deepened in the posthumous work in the confused treatment of the central idea of his system. The moment we allow ourselves, as Kant does, to speak of Vorstellungen as the matter known, and to identify such Vorstellungen with the assumed objective states of the empirical self—an identification which he resists but which is inevitable on his viewwe are thrown back into the weakest form of the subjective idealism, from which the Kantian theory of perception seemed at first to save itself. Such a result, no doubt, arises from a confusion between the psychological and the transcendental points of view; and there is much in Kant which shows he was well aware of the need of holding these apart, but it can hardly be maintained that in his exposition the confusion is only one of language. It seems to go deeper than that.

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V.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM.1

Ir is not my intention, in these rather desultory remarks, to attempt any historical account of the ways in which philosophy, in the official recognised sense, has actually connected itself with the general problems of social life. Such connexion has, indeed, never been wanting, though it has had many degrees of intimacy. From Plato to Hegel and Comte and Spencer, the great speculative thinkers have always endeavoured to include within their scheme some explanation of what are the distinctive features of social life, the economic arrangements, the code of laws or body of customs, and the form of State constitution. Even more important than such an obvious surface connexion between philosophy and social inquiries is that which turns upon the influence of general conceptions, conceptions therefore on the whole philosophical, on reflexion upon any concrete problems. Such influence is very often unconscious, even in the case of the trained thinker who is proceeding methodically to his work. He has already formed a general picture or representation of things, and his mind operates constantly under its direction and within its scope. What is true of the trained thinker is still more true of the ordinary uncritical mind. And in the latter case, as a consequence mainly of inability to lay out in even partial outlines what the general picture is, there is the [Address to the Civic Society of Glasgow, 14th April 1898.]

strongest inclination to deny its influence, and to assert the simplicity and freedom from prejudice of the plain practical mind. It would be far more instructive to follow out the influence of these general ideas on sociological thought than to describe the various social philosophies which have formed part of the work of the systematic philosophers. But it is a more difficult task, and it is hardly possible yet to attempt it on the full scale it requires. Isolated branches have been taken up, as, for example, in Mr Bonar's excellent study on the relation between Philosophy and Political Economy, a work which shows how deep is the influence exercised on economic speculations by general ideas, often vague and untested, regarding the true end of human life and therefore by implication the natural, true, or best form of social structure. Any economical theory, be it Adam Smith's, or J. S. Mill's, or Karl Marx's, will be found on close scrutiny to rest on certain assumptions, postulates, or ultimate principles, which the economist, if he be a shrewd and practised disputant, will assert to be outside the scope of his science, and to be defended or attacked on other than economic grounds. In like manner, any practical discussion on some economical proposal, for example, the increase of the death duties, the relief of local rates, employers' liability, or the like, will be found to terminate in the long run in some ultimate differences of view or feeling with regard to what is deemed the right, the fairest, or the best arrangement of human life. I do not wish to be understood as objecting to the employment of such general ideas in thinking upon social questions. Far from it: the only method known to humanity by which it can hope to overcome a difficulty is to reason it out, to endeavour thoroughly to understand and explain it; and all explanation involves the application of general ideas. But it is necessary to test and examine the general ideas thus applied; for they are often picked up in a