GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

OBJECTIVE INTUITIONISM 2O3
introduction of a mental element into the raw material
of experience) an element which is contributed by the mind
and is present from the first Thus, sensuous experience and
intellectual knowledge both give information about a
world which we have partly constructed. But, when we
will something, we obtain, Kant held, a kind of knowledge
which is neither sensuous nor intellectual. We are not in
willing making contact with a world ofthings as they appear
to us, upon which we have imposed the properties of our
own minds, nor do our moral experiences reach us through
the forms of space and time. The exercise of the will is a
free activity in virtue of which we can use our sensuous
and intellectual knowledge as we please. It brings also a
sense of emancipation from the law of cause and effect
which dominates the world of things as they appear to us,
no less than from the laws of logical necessity which con-
strain the operations of the reason.
The Self from the Standpoint of the Sciences. In
so far as we act in accordance with desire, Kant held that
we are not free* He pointed out that, if we consider our
actions from the points of view of biology, of anthropology,
or of psychology, it is very difficult to resist the conclusion
that they are determined. The biologist sees a man as a
member of a particular species which happens to have
evolved, endowed with a general inheritance of impulse,
faculty, and desire, which is characteristic of his species.
The anthropologist sees him as a member of a particular
race which has reached a certain stage of development,
presetting the intellectual and emotional equipment
appropriate to that race at that stage of development.
The psychologist applies to the individual a mode of treatment
similar to that which the biologist applies to the
species wad the anthropologist to the race. He treats him
as a being endowed initially with a certain psychological
and physiological make-up. He is scheduled a? having
tuch and such congenital tendencies which develop in
such and such an environment, and he is pictured, as a