addition disclose to us the theory of
knowledge.

VII. The Problem of Knowledge: Analysis and Intuition.

We know what importance has been attached since Kant to the problem of
reason: it would seem sometimes that all future philosophy is a return
to it; that it is no longer called to speak of anything else. Besides,
what we understand by reason, in the broad sense, is, in the human mind,
the power of light, the essential operation of which is defined as an
act of directing synthesis, unifying the experience and rendering it by
that very fact intelligible. Every movement of thought shows this power
in exercise. To bring it everywhere to the front would be the proper
task of philosophy; at least it is in this manner that we understand it
today. But from what point of view and by what method do we ordinarily
construct this theory of knowledge?

The spontaneous works of mind, perception, science, art, and morality
are the departure-point of the inquiry and its initial matter. We do not
ask ourselves whether but how they are possible, what they imply, and
what they suppose; a regressive analysis attempts by critical reflection
to discern in them their principles and requisites. The task, in short,
is to reascend from production to producing activity, which we regard as
sufficiently revealed by its natural products.

Philosophy, in consequence, is no longer anything but the science of
problems already solved, the science which is confined to saying why
knowledge is knowledge and action action, of such and such a kind, and
such and such a quality. And in consequence also reason can no longer
appear anything but an original datum postulated as a simple fact, as
a complete system come down ready-made from heaven, at bottom a kind of
non-temporal essence, definable without respect to duration, evolution,
or history, of which all genesis and all progress are absurd. In vain do
we persist in maintaining that it is originally an act; we always come
round to the fact that the method followed compels us to consider this
act only when once accomplished, and when once expressed in results. The
inevitable consequence is that we imprison ourselves hopelessly in the
affirmation of Kantian relativism.

Such a system can only be true as a partial and temporary truth: at the
most, it is a moment of truth. "If we read the "Critique of Pure Reason"
closely, we become aware that Kant has made the critique, not of reason
in general, b