ed by Kant as far as any strictly empirical
element was concerned) the implicit particularism was made explicit. But
the doctrine that sensations and ideas are so many separate existences
was not derived from observation nor from experiment. It was a logical
deduction from a prior unexamined concept of the nature of experience.
From the same concept it followed that the appearance of stable objects
and of general principles of connexion was but an appearance.[2]

Kantianism, then, naturally invoked universal bonds to restore
objectivity. But, in so doing, it accepted the particularism of
experience and proceeded to supplement it from non-empirical sources. A
sensory manifold being all which is really empirical in experience, a
reason which transcends experience must provide synthesis. The net
outcome might have suggested a correct account of experience. For we
have only to forget the apparatus by which the net outcome is arrived
at, to have before us the experience of the plain man--a diversity of
ceaseless changes connected in all kinds of ways, static and dynamic.
This conclusion would deal a deathblow to both empiricism and
rationalism. For, making clear the non-empirical character of the
alleged manifold of unconnected particulars, it would render unnecessary
the appeal to functions of the understanding in order to connect them.
With the downfall of the traditional notion of experience, the appeal to
reason to supplement its defects becomes superfluous.

The tradition was, however, too strongly entrenched; especially as it
furnished the subject-matter of an alleged science of states of mind
which were directly known in their very presence. The historic outcome
was a new crop of artificial puzzles about relations; it fastened upon
philosophy for a long time the quarrel about the _a priori_ and the _a
posteriori_ as its chief issue. The controversy is to-day quiescent. Yet
it is not at all uncommon to find thinkers modern in tone and intent
who regard any philosophy of experience as necessarily committed to
denial of the existence of genuinely general propositions, and who take
empiricism to be inherently averse to the recognition of the importance
of an organizing and constructive intelligence.

The quiescence alluded to is in part due, I think, to sheer weariness.
But it is also due to a change of standpoint introduced by biological
conceptions; and particularly the discovery of biological continuity
from the lowe