THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 205
is certain that we shall never find a straight line that is not the shortest
distance between two points. Mathematics, at least, is saved from the
dissolvent scepticism of David Hume.
Can all the sciences be similarly saved? Yes, if their basic principle,
the law of causality that a given cause must always be followed by a
given effect can be shown, like space and time, to be so inherent in all
the processes of understanding that no future experience can be conceived
that would violate or escape it. Is causality, too, a priori, an
indispensable prerequisite and condition of all thought?
2. TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC
So we pass from the wide field of sensation and perception to the dark
and narrow chamber of thought; from "transcendental esthetic" to
"transcendental logic." And first to the naming and analysis of those
elements in our thought which are not so much given to the mind by
perception as given to perception by the mind; those levers which raise
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the "perceptual knowledge of objects into the "conceptual" knowledge
of relationships, sequences, and laws; those tools of the mind which re-
fine experience into science. Just as perceptions arranged sensations
around objects in space and time, so conception arranges perceptions
(objects and events) about the ideas of cause, unity, reciprocal relation>
necessity, contingency, etc.; these and other "categories" are the structure
into which perceptions are received, and by which they are classified
and moulded into the ordered concepts of thought. These are the very
essence and character of the mind ; mind is the coordination of experience.
And here again observe the activity of this mind that was, to Locke and
Hume, mere "passive wax" under the blows of sense-experience. Consider
a system of thought like Aristotle's; is it conceivable that this almost cosmic
ordering of data should have come by the automatic, anarchistic
spontaneity of the data themselves? See this magnificent card-catalogue
in the library, intelligently ordered into sequence by human purpose.
Then picture all these card-cases thrown upon the floor, all these cards
scattered pell-mell into riotous disorder. Can you now conceive these
scattered cards pulling themselves up, Miinchausen-like, from their dis-
array, passing quietly into their alphabetical and topical places in their
proper boxes, and each box into its fit place in the rack,
until all should
be order and sense and purpose again? What a miracle-story these sceptics
have given us after all I
Sensation is unorganized stimulus, perception is organized sensation,
conception is organized perception, science is organized knowledge, wisdom
is organized life: each is a greater degree of order, and sequence,
and unity. Whence this order, this sequence, this unity? Not from the
things themselves; for they are known to us only by sensations that come