Hinton - The Fourth Dimension.pdf

APPLICATION TO KANT’S THEORY OF EXPERIENCE 117
the modern evolution theories. And, as is so often the
case, the first effort was the most stupendous in its scope.
Kant does not investigate the origin of any special part
of the world, such as its organisms, its chemical elements,
its social communities of men. He simply investigates
the origin of the whole—of all that is included in consciousness,
the origin of that “thought thing” whose
progressive realisation is the knowable universe.
This point of view is very different from the ordinary
one, in which a man is supposed to be placed in a world
like that which he has come to think of it, and then to
learn what he has found out from this model which he
himself has placed on the scene.
We all know that there are a number of questions in
attempting an answer to which such an assumption is not
allowable.
Mill, for instance, explains our notion of “law” by an
invariable sequence in nature. But what we call nature
is something given in thought. So he explains a thought
of law and order by a thought of an invariable sequence.
He leaves the problem where he found it.
Kant’s theory is not unique and alone. It is one of
a number of evolution theories. A notion of its import
and significance can be obtained by a comparison of it
with other theories.
Thus in Darwin’s theoretical world of natural selection
a certain assumption is made, the assumption of indefinite
variability—slight variability it is true, over any appreciable
lapse of time, but indefinite in the postulated
epochs of transformation—and a whole chain of results
is shown to follow.
This element of chance variation is not, however, an
ultimate resting place. It is a preliminary stage. This
supposing the all is a preliminary step towards finding
out what is. If every kind of organism can come into