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However far Spencer may seem to be from Kant, however ignorant, indeed, he may have been of Kantianism, he felt, nevertheless, at his first contact with the biological sciences, the direction in which philosophy could continue to advance without laying itself open to the Kantian criticism. But he had no sooner started to follow the path than he turned off short.
Thus the interpreters of Kant, using their own prejudices as a criterion, have read into him exactly that which he sought to refute, and have made the destroyer of all dogmatism himself a dogmatist; thus in the Kantianism of the Kantians there has sprung up a marvelous combination of crude dogmatism and uncompromising idealism.
These defects of Kantianism were early recognised by Schopenhauer, who also appears to have realised that what was wanted was another and a new key to unlock the gateway of Knowledge. Knowledge was in essence an affirmation or series of affirmations about a real World distinct from the Knower.
Jena became the home and principal stronghold of Kantianism; while by the beginning of the nineteenth century almost all German chairs belonged to it, and the non-philosophical sciences as well received from it stimulation and guiding ideas. In the camp of the enemy there was no less of activity.
Like Kantianism and the humanistic movement generally, the evolutionary hypothesis springs from reasoned observation of man and nature, not from any a priori or speculative process. With this theory, long a regulative idea of our world, preaching was forced to come to some sort of an understanding.
If I were a great millionaire I would establish in our greater universities a score or so of self-governing colleges, each with comfortable lodging-rooms and studies and with its own library and dining-hall. In the common room, after dinner, I sat next Professor Wallace, whose book on Kant I had read. He thinks the system of ethics really predominant in England is modified Kantianism.
Kantianism like Platonism failed because it still left the sensible unaccounted for. Not only did it fail to tell us whence came these sensations which, however transitory and unreal, constantly saluted our consciousness and largely constituted our Experience; it failed also to show us how they could be brought into relation with the faculty of Knowledge.
Objections were raised against Kantianism, as thus dogmatically modified in the direction of realism, by Schulze, Maimon, and Beck by the first for purposes of attack, by the second in order to further development, and by the third with an exegetical purpose. Hume's skepticism remains unrefuted by Kant and Reinhold.
Moreover, as, in the course of this operation, we should see intellect spring up of itself, cut itself out in the whole of mind, intellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited, but not relative. Such was the direction that Kantianism might have pointed out to a revivified Cartesianism. But in this direction Kant himself did not go.
In recent years various forms of opportunist philosophies under the names of Pragmatism, Pluralism, etc., have endeavoured to elude the pressure of the dilemma and to solace mankind for the failure of Kantianism by advising them to accept Experience as it is.
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