with the skeptics as to their result. On the other hand, he maintained that the real success and the genuine validity of human science depend upon the very fact that we are not able to know, in theoretical realms, any absolute or transcendent truth whatsoever. For, as Kant asserts, in dealing with nature as science knows nature, we are really dealing with the laws of human experience as such, and not with any absolute or transcendent truth whatever. It is however the nature of the human understanding, the constitution of human experience, that is expressed in all natural laws that we are able to discover; in all the truth that science maintains or that the future can disclose. Thus, as Kant states the case, it is the understanding that gives laws to nature. And the limitation of knowledge to the realm of experience, and our failure to be able to know in theoretical terms any transcendent truth, are not signs of the failure of human knowledge in its essential human purposes, but are conditions upon which depends the very validity of our knowledge within its own realm. In trying to know more than the world of experience, we try an experiment which, if successful, could only end in making all knowledge impossible. Space, time, such fundamental ideas as the idea of causality,—all these are facts which represent no fundamental truth beyond experience whatever. They are facts determined solely by the facts of human nature. They hold within our range, and not beyond it. Of things in themselves we know nothing. But on this very ignorance, Kant maintains, is founded not only the validity of our natural sciences, but the possibility of retaining, against the assaults of materialism and of a purely negative skepticism, the validity of our moral consciousness and the essential spirit of religious faith. In this unique combination of critical skepticism, of moral idealism, and of a rationalistic assurance of the validity for all men of the a priori principles upon which natural science rests, lies the essential significance of the philosophy of Kant, a significance. which only a much fuller exposition, and a study of the history of thought, could make explicit.

Josial Royce.

A COMPARISON OF THE BEAUTIFUL WITH THE PLEASANT AND THE GOOD

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From The Critique of Judgment'

S REGARDS the Pleasant every one is content that his judg ment, which he bases upon private feeling, and by which he says of an object that it pleases him, should be limited merely to his own person. Thus he is quite contented that if he says, "Canary wine is pleasant," another man may correct his expression and remind him that he ought to say, "It is pleasant to me." And this is the case not only as regards the taste of the tongue, the palate, and the throat, but for whatever is pleasant to any one's eyes and ears. To one, violet color is soft and lovely; to another, it is washed out and dead. One man likes the tone of wind instruments, another that of strings. To strive here with the design of reproving as incorrect another man's judgment which is different from our own, as if the judgments were logically opposed, would be folly. As regards the Pleasant, therefore, the fundamental proposition is valid: Every one has his own taste,—the taste of Sense.

The case is quite different with the Beautiful. It would on the contrary be laughable if a man who imagined anything to his own taste, thought to justify himself by saying, “This object [the house we see, the coat that person wears, the concert we hear, the poem submitted to our judgment] is beautiful for me. For he must not call it beautiful if it merely pleases him. Many things may have for him charm and pleasantness; no one troubles himself at that: but if he gives out anything as beautiful, he supposes in others the same satisfaction; he judges not merely for himself, but for every one, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things. Hence he says, "The thing is beautiful;" and he does not count on the agreement of others with this his judgment of satisfaction, because he has found this agreement several times before, but he demands it of them. He blames them if they judge otherwise; and he denies them taste, which he nevertheless requires from them. Here then we cannot say that each man has his own particular taste. For this would be as much as to say that there is no taste whatever; i. e., no æsthetical judgment which can make a rightful claim upon every

one's assent.

At the same time we find as regards the Pleasant that there is an agreement among men in their judgments upon it, in regard to which we deny taste to some and attribute it to others; by this not meaning one of our organic senses, but a faculty of judg ing in respect of the Pleasant generally. Thus we say of a man who knows how to entertain his guests with pleasures of enjoyment for all the senses, so that they are all pleased, "He has taste. But here the universality is only taken comparatively: and there emerge rules which are only general, like all empirical ones, and not universal; which latter the judgment of Taste upon the Beautiful undertakes or lays claim to. It is a judgment in reference to sociability, so far as this rests on empirical rules. In respect to the Good it is true that judgments make rightful claim to validity for every one; but the Good is represented only by means of a concept as the object of a universal satisfaction, which is the case neither with the Pleasant nor with the Beautiful.

This particular determination of the universality of an æsthetical judgment, which is to be met with in a judgment of taste, is noteworthy, not indeed for the logician, but for the transcendental philosopher. It requires no small trouble to discover its origin; but we thus detect a property of our cognitive faculty which without this analysis would remain unknown.

First we must be fully convinced of the fact that in a judgment of taste about the Beautiful, the satisfaction in the object is imputed to every one,-without being based on a concept, for then it would be the Good. Further, this claim to universal validity so essentially belongs to a judgment by which we describe anything as beautiful, that if this were not thought in it, it would never come into our thoughts to use the expression at all, but everything which pleases without a concept would be counted as pleasant. In respect of the latter, every one has his own opinion; and no one assumes in another, agreement with his judgment of taste, which is always the case in a judgment of taste about beauty.

He who fears can form no judgment about the Sublime in nature; just as he who is seduced by inclination and appetite can form no judgment about the Beautiful. The former flies from the sight of an object which inspires him with awe; and it is impossible to find satisfaction in a terror that is seriously. felt. Hence the pleasurableness arising from the cessation of an

uneasiness is a state of joy. But this, on account of the deliverance from danger which is involved, is a state of joy when conjoined with the resolve that we shall no more be exposed to the danger; we cannot willingly look back upon our sensations of danger, much less seek the occasion for them again.

Bold, overhanging, and as it were threatening, rocks; clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightning flashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; hurricanes with their track of devastation; the boundless ocean in a state of tumult; the lofty waterfall of a mighty river; and such like,these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison with their might. But the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that we are in security; and we willingly call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height, and discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature.

Now, in the immensity of nature, and in the insufficiency of our faculties to take in a standard proportionate to the æsthetical estimation of the magnitude of its realm, we find our own limitation; although at the same time in our rational faculty we find a different, non-sensuous standard, which has that infinity itself under it as a unity, in comparison with which everything in nature is small, and thus in our mind we find a superiority to nature even in its immensity. And so also the irresistibility of its might, while making us recognize our own physical impotence, considered as beings of nature, discloses to us a faculty of judging independently of, and a superiority over, nature; on which is based a kind of self-preservation, entirely different from that which can be attacked and brought into danger by external nature. Thus humanity in our person remains unhumiliated, though the individual might have to submit to this dominion. In this way nature is not judged to be sublime in our æsthetical judgments in so far as it excites fear; but because it calls up that power in us, which is not nature, of regarding as small the things about which we are solicitous (goods, health, and life), and of regarding its might, to which we are no doubt. subjected in respect of these things, as nevertheless without any dominion over us and our personality, to which we must bow where our highest fundamental propositions, and their assertion

or abandonment, are concerned. Therefore nature is here called sublime merely because it elevates the imagination to a presentation of those cases in which the mind can make felt the proper sublimity of its destination, in comparison with nature. itself.

This estimation of ourselves loses nothing through the fact that we must regard ourselves as safe in order to feel this inspiriting satisfaction; and that hence, as there is no seriousness. in the danger, there might be also (as might seem to be the case) just as little seriousness in the sublimity of our spiritual faculty. For the satisfaction here concerns only the destination of our faculty which discloses itself in such a case, so far as the tendency to this destination lies in our nature, whilst its development and exercise remain incumbent and obligatory. And in this there is truth and reality, however conscious the man may be of his present actual powerlessness when he turns his reflection. to it.

No doubt this principle seems to be too far-fetched and too subtly reasoned, and consequently seems to go beyond the scope of an æsthetical judgment; but observation of men proves the opposite, and shows that it may lie at the root of the most ordinary judgments, although we are not always conscious of it. For what is that which is, even to the savage, an object of the greatest admiration? It is a man who shrinks from nothing, who fears nothing, and therefore does not yield to danger, but rather goes to face it vigorously with the most complete deliberation. Even in the most highly civilized state this peculiar veneration for the soldier remains, though only under the condition that he exhibit all the virtues of peace, gentleness, compassion, and even a becoming care for his own person; because even by these it is recognized that his mind is unsubdued by danger. Hence whatever disputes there may be about the superiority of the respect which is to be accorded them, in the comparison of a statesman and a general, the æsthetical judgment decides for the latter. War itself, if it is carried on with order and with a sacred respect for the rights of citizens, has something sublime in it, and makes the disposition of the people who carry it on thus, only the more sublime, the more numerous are the dangers to which they are exposed, and in respect of which they behave with courage. On the other hand, a long peace generally brings about a predominant commercial spirit, and along with it, low