matters of fact, that the principles of formal logic can give no unconditional knowledge, yet supposes that, with regard to the one unconditional reality, they are amply sufficient. Kant but renders him self-consistent on this point.
It is, however, with regard to the doctrine of pre-established harmony that Kant’s large measure of indebtedness to Leibniz is most apt to be overlooked. Kant’s claim that Leibniz himself meant the doctrine in a subjective sense (that is, of a harmony between powers in our own intelligence) rather than objective (or between things out of relation to intelligence) seems, at first sight, to go far beyond the mark. However, when we recall that to Leibniz the sense world is only the confused side of rational thought, there is more truth in Kant’s saying than appears at this first sight. The harmony is between sense and reason. But it may at least be said without qualification that Kant only translated into subjective terms, terms of intelligence, what appears in Leibniz as objective. This is not the place to go into the details of Kant’s conception of the relation of the material to the psychical, of the body and the soul. We may state, however, in his own words, that “the question is no longer as to the possibility of the association of the soul with other known and foreign substances outside it, but as to the connection of the presentations of inner sense with the modifications of our external sensibility.” It is a question, in short, of the harmony of two modes of our own presentation, not of the harmony of two independent things. And Kant not only thus deals with the fact of harmony, but he admits, as its possible source, just what Leibniz claims to be its actual source; namely, some one underlying reality, which Leibniz calls the monad, but to which Kant gives no name. “I can well suppose,” says Kant, “that the substance to which through external sense extension is attributed, is also the subject of the presentations given to us by its inner sense: thus that which in one respect is called material being would be in another respect thinking being.”
Kant treats similarly the problem of the relations of physical and final causes, of necessity and freedom. Here, as in the case just mentioned, his main problem is to discover their harmony. His solution, again, is in the union, in our intelligence, of the understanding—as the source of the notions which “make nature”—with the ideas of that reason which gives a “categorical imperative.” The cause of the possibility of this harmony between nature and freedom, between the sense world and the rational, he finds in a being, God, whose sole function in the Kantian philosophy may be said to be to “pre-establish” it. I cannot believe that Kant, in postulating the problems of philosophy as the harmony of sense and understanding, of nature and freedom, and in finding this harmony where he did, was not profoundly influenced, consciously as well as unconsciously, by Leibniz. In fact, I do not think that we can understand the nature either of Kant’s immense contributions to modern thought or of his inconsistencies, until we have traced them to their source in the Leibnizian philosophy,—admitting, on the other hand, that we cannot understand why Kant should have found necessary a new way of approach to the results of Leibniz, until we recognize to the full his indebtedness to Hume. It was, indeed, Hume that awoke him to his endeavors, but it was Leibniz who set before him the goal of these endeavors. That the goal should appear somewhat transformed, when approached from a new point of view, was to be expected. But alas! the challenge from Hume did not wholly awaken Kant. He still accepted without question the validity of the scholastic method,—the analytic principle of identity as the type of perfect knowledge,—although denying its sufficiency for human intelligence. Leibniz suggested, and suggested richly, the synthetic, the negative aspect of thought; Kant worked it out as a necessary law of our knowledge; it was left to his successors to work it out as a factor in the law of all knowledge.
It would be a grievous blunder to suppose that this final chapter annihilates the earlier ones; that the failure of Leibniz as to method, though a failure in a fundamental point, cancelled his splendid achievements. Such thoughts as that substance is activity; that its process is measured by its end, its idea; that the universe is an inter-related unit; the thoughts of organism, of continuity, of uniformity of law,—introduced and treated as Leibniz treated them,—are imperishable. They are members of the growing consciousness, on the part of intelligence, of its own nature. There are but three or four names in the history of thought which can be placed by the side of Leibniz’s in respect to the open largeness, the unexhausted fertility, of such thoughts. But it is not enough for intelligence to have great thoughts nor even true thoughts. It is testimony to the sincerity and earnestness of intelligence that it cannot take even such thoughts as those of Leibniz on trust. It must know them; it must have a method adequate to their demonstration. And in a broad sense, the work of Kant and of his successors was the discovery of a method which should justify the objective idealism of Leibniz, and which in its history has more than fulfilled this task.
Studies in Logical Theory
I. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The General Problem of Logical Theory
II. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Antecedent Conditions and Cues of the Thought-Function
III. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Datum of Thinking
IV. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Content and Object of Thought
V. A Critical Study of Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment44
VI. Typical Stages in the Development of Judgment
IX. The Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy87
X. Valuation as a Logical Process
XI. Some Logical Aspects of Purpose
Preface
This volume presents some results of the work done in the matter of logical theory in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Chicago in the first decade of its existence. The eleven Studies are the work of eight different hands, all, with the exception of the editor, having at some period held Fellowships in this University, Dr. Heidel in Greek, the others in Philosophy. Their names and present pursuits are indicated in the Table of Contents. The editor has occasionally, though rarely, added a footnote or phrase which might serve to connect one Study more closely with another. The pages in the discussion
