principle may be regarded as giving an ethical basis for democracy. In this interpretation, it is not
open to the above objection.
Kant's vigour and freshness of mind in old age are shown by his treatise on Perpetual Peace
( 1795). In this work he advocates a federation of free States, bound together by a covenant
forbidding war. Reason, he says, utterly condemns war, which only an international government
can prevent. The civil constitution of the component States should, he says, be "republican," but
he defines this word as meaning that the executive and the legislative are separated. He does not
mean that there should be no king; in fact, he says that it is easiest to get a perfect government
under a monarchy. Writing under the impact of the Reign of Terror, he is suspicious of
democracy; he says that it is of necessity despotism, since it establishes an executive power. "The
'whole people,' so-called, who carry their measures are really not all, but only a majority: so that
here the universal will is in contradiction with itself and with the principle of freedom." The
phrasing shows the influence of Rousseau, but the important idea of a world federation as the way
to secure peace is not derived from Rousseau.
Since 1933, this treatise has caused Kant to fall into disfavour in his own country.
C. KANT'S THEORY OF SPACE AND TIMEThe most important part of The Critique of Pure Reason is the doctrine of space and time. In this
section I propose to make a critical examination of this doctrine.
To explain Kant's theory of space and time clearly is not easy, because the theory itself is not
clear. It is set forth both in The Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena; the latter
exposition is the easier, but is less full than that in the Critique. I will try first to expound the
theory, making it as plausible as I can; only after exposition will I attempt criticism.
Kant holds that the immediate objects of perception are due partly to external things and partly to
our own perceptive apparatus. Locke had accustomed the world to the idea that the secondary
qualities-colours, sounds, smells, etc.--are subjective, and do not belong to the
-712-object as it is in itself. Kant, like Berkeley and Hume, though in not quite the same way, goes
further, and makes the primary qualities also subjective. Kant does not at most times question
that our sensations have causes, which he calls "things-in-themselves" or "noumena." What
appears to us in perception, which he calls a "phenomenon," consists of two parts: that due to
the object, which he calls the "sensation," and that due to our subjective apparatus, which, he
says, causes the manifold to be ordered in certain relations. This latter part he calls the form of
the phenomenon. This part is not itself sensation, and therefore not dependent upon the accident
of environment; it is always the same, since we carry it about with us, and it is a priori in the
sense that it is not dependent upon experience. A pure form of sensibility is called a "pure
intuition" (Anschauung); there are two such forms, namely space and time, one for the outer
sense, one for the inner.To prove that space and time are a priori forms, Kant has two classes of
arguments, one metaphysical, the other epistemological, or, as he calls it, transcendental. The
former class of arguments are taken directly from the nature of space and time, the latter
indirectly from the possibility of pure mathematics. The arguments about space are given more
fully than those about time, because it is thought that the latter are essentially the same as the
former.As regards space, the metaphysical arguments are four in number.- Space is not an empirical concept, abstracted from outer experiences, for space is
presupposed in referring sensations to something external, and external experience is
only possible through the presentation of space.