| Summary: | "In my first philosophical work, Time and Space, A Metaphysical Essay, 1865, I virtually broke with Kantianism and its method of proceeding on the footing of apparently indisputable assumptions of matters of fact, and placed myself, instead thereof, on a strictly experiential basis, when I enquired what Time and Space (which are Kant's a priori forms of intuition) were positively known as, in immediate experience, without assigning to them a psychologically subjective origin, in or from the side of the Subject of consciousness, as part of the Subject's contribution to systematic knowledge. "Take," I said, "any empirical phenomenon, from the simplest to the most complex, isolate it from others, treat it as an object of the first intention, and analyse it as such, without asking how it came to he what it is, or whence it derived its characteristics, or what other things it is like. It will be found that all its characteristics fall into two classes; some are material, or particular feelings, others are formal, or particular forms in which these feelings appear." The principle thus exemplified, of proceeding by analysis of experience, is the principle upon which all my works, including the present, have been written. At the same time I cannot but avow my belief, that, but for Kant's having singled out Time and Space, and given them special prominence as two, and the only two, necessary forms of intuition, that is, of perception, it would never have occurred to me to begin a philosophical enquiry by selecting for analysis experiences in which they could be treated as the only formal elements. It was a truly unfortunate idea of Kant's that, with a view to a future secure and complete system of Metaphysic, it was advisable "to prepare the Field beforehand by a criticism of the Organ, the pure Reason itself." It involved the assumption that there was such an organ as Pure Reason. A criticism of that assumption would have made a far better beginning. Yet, on the other hand, we can never be too thankful that so commanding a genius as Kant should have made it his chief and guiding aim, not as many persons suppose, to prove Metaphysic to be chimerical, by means of a critical Theory of Knowledge, but on the contrary to restore Metaphysic, by reforming it, to its pristine supremacy, as the sole science of foundations. It is because this primary and guiding aim of Kant's is mine also, notwithstanding my radical divergence from his method of pursuing it, that I may venture to consider myself as continuing his work. Whenever experience is taken as the basis and test of philosophy, Matter is the only ground upon which the contention of the non-Idealistic school can be determined or brought to an issue, since Matter is the only positively known object which can be held to be at once non-consciousness and real. Hence the first great question to arise in an experiential Metaphysic is that of the independent existence of Matter, which must be established, if at all, by analysis of that which we call our knowledge of it. This analysis, which is contained in Book I. of the present work, involves, by showing the necessity for, the substitution of the conception of Real Condition for the Aristotelic and Scholastic conception of Cause"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
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