ividual to act on a maxim which he can "will to be law universal." No
state of desire or situation calling for action means anything morally
except in the light of this obligation. Thus certain principles of
thought and action are said to be implicit in all experience. They are
universal and necessary in the sense that they are discovered as the
conditions not of any particular experience, but of experience in
general. This implicit or virtual presence in experience in general,
Kant calls their transcendental character, and the process of
explicating them is his famous _Transcendental Deduction_.

[Sidenote: Kant's Principles Restricted to the Experiences which they
Set in Order.]

Sect. 175. The restriction which Kant puts upon his method is quite
essential to its meaning. I deduce the categories, for example, just in
so far as I find them to be necessary to perception. Without them my
perception is blind, I make nothing of it; with them my experience
becomes systematic and rational. But categories which I so deduce must
be forever limited to the role for which they are defined. Categories
without perceptions are "empty"; they have validity solely with
reference to the experience which they set in order. Indeed, I cannot
even complete that order. The orderly arrangement of parts of experience
suggests, and suggests irresistibly, a perfect system. I can even define
the ideas and ideals through which such a perfect system might be
realized. But I cannot in the Kantian sense attach reality to it because
it is not indispensable to experience. It must remain an ideal which
regulates my thinking of such parts of it as fall within the range of my
perception; or it may through my moral nature become the realm of my
living and an object of faith. In short, Kant's is essentially a
"critical philosophy," a logical and analytical study of the special
terms and relations of human knowledge. He denies the validity of these
terms and relations beyond this realm. His critiques are an inventory
of the conditions, principles, and prospects of that cognition which,
although not alone ideally conceivable, is alone possible.

[Sidenote: The Post-Kantian Metaphysics is a Generalization of the
Cognitive and Moral Consciousness as Analyzed by Kant. The Absolute
Spirit.]

Sect. 176. With the successors of Kant, as with the successors of
Socrates, a criticism becomes a system of metaphysics. This
transformation is effected in the post-Kanti