Transcendentalism in New England: A HistoryFrothingham, Octavius Brooks
Philosophy
Transcendentalism in New England: A History
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks
Transcendentalism (New England)
Let us follow the initial steps of Kant's analysis. Mind and
Universe--Subject and Object--Ego and Non-ego, stand opposite one
another, front to front. Mind is conscious only of its own operations:
the subject alone considers. The first fact noted is, that the subject
is sensitive to impressions made by outward things, and is receptive of
them. Dwelling on this fact, we discover that while the impressions are
many in number and of great variety, they all, whatever their character,
fall within certain inflexible and unalterable conditions--those of
space and time--which must, therefore, be regarded as pre-established
forms of sensibility. "Time is no empirical conception which can be
deduced from experience. Time is a necessary representation which lies
at the foundation of all intuitions. Time is given à priori. In it alone
is any reality of phenomena possible. These disappear, but it cannot be
annihilated." So of space. "Space is an intuition, met with in us à
priori, antecedent to any perception of objects, a pure, not an
empirical intuition." These two forms of sensibility, inherent and
invariable, to which all experiences are subject, are primeval facts of
consciousness. Kant's argument on the point whether or no space and time
have an existence apart from the mind, is interesting, but need not
detain us.
The materials furnished by sensibility are taken up by the
understanding, which classifies, interprets, judges, compares, reduces
to unity, eliminates, converts, and thus fashions sensations into
conceptions, transmutes impressions into thoughts. Here fresh processes
of analysis are employed in classifying judgments, and determining their
conditions. All judgments, it is found, must conform to one of four
invariable conditions. I. Quantity, which may be subdivided into unity,
plurality, and totality: the one, the many, the whole. II. Quality,
which is divisible as reality, negation, and limitation: something,
nothing, and the more or less. III. Relation, which also comprises three
heads: substance and accident, cause and effect, reciprocity, or action
and reaction. IV. Modality, which embraces the possible and the
impossible, the existent and the non-existent, the necessary and the
contingent. These categories, as they were called, after the terminology
of Aristotle, were supposed to exhaust the forms of conception.
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