=The Copernican hypothesis.=[131]--Kant’s comparison of his new hypothesis to that of Copernicus has generally been misunderstood. The reader very naturally conceives the Copernican revolution in terms of its main ultimate consequence, the reduction of the earth from its proud position of central pre-eminence. But that does not bear the least analogy to the intended consequences of the Critical philosophy. The direct opposite is indeed true. Kant’s hypothesis is inspired by the avowed purpose of neutralising the naturalistic implications of the Copernican astronomy. His aim is nothing less than the firm establishment of what may perhaps be described as a Ptolemaic, anthropocentric metaphysics. Such naturalistic philosophy as that of Hume may perhaps be described as Copernican, but the Critical philosophy, as humanistic, has genuine kinship with the Greek standpoint. Even some of Kant’s best commentators have interpreted the analogy in the above manner.[132] It is so interpreted by T. H. Green[133] and by J. Hutchison Stirling.[134] Caird in his _Critical Philosophy of Kant_ makes not the least mention of the analogy, probably for the reason that while reading it in the same fashion as Green, he recognised the inappropriateness of the comparison as thus taken. The analogy is stated in typically ambiguous fashion by Lange[135] and by Höffding.[136] S. Alexander, while very forcibly insisting upon the Ptolemaic character of the Kantian philosophy, also endorses this interpretation in the following terms: “It is very ironical that Kant himself signalised the revolution which he believed himself to be effecting as a Copernican revolution. But there is nothing Copernican in it except that he believed it to be a revolution. If every change is Copernican which reverses the order of the terms with which it deals, which declares A to depend on B when B had before been declared to depend on A, then Kant--who believed that he had reversed the order of dependence of mind and things--was right in saying that he effected a Copernican revolution. But he was not right in any other sense. For his revolution, so far as it was one, was accurately anti-Copernican.”[137] As the second edition preface is not covered by the published volumes of Vaihinger’s _Commentary_, the point has not been taken up by him.