, Kant acknowledges the external world, and names it
the _thing-in-itself_; but insists that because it is outside of mind it
is outside of knowledge. Thus is the certainty of science saved at the
cost of its metaphysical validity. It is necessarily true, but only of a
conditioned or dependent world. And in saving science Kant has at the
same time prejudiced metaphysics in general. For the human or
naturalistic way of knowing is left in sole possession of the field,
with the higher interest of reasons in the ultimate nature of being,
degraded to the rank of practical faith.

[Sidenote: The Post-Kantians Transform Kant's Mind-in-general into an
Absolute Mind.]

Sect. 188. The transformation of this critical and agnostic doctrine
into absolute idealism is inevitable. The metaphysical interest was
bound to avail itself of the speculative suggestiveness with which the
Kantian philosophy abounds. The transformation turns upon Kant's
assumption that whatever is constructed by the mind is on that account
phenomenon or appearance. Kant has carried along the presumption that
whatever is act or content of mind is on that account not _real_ object
or _thing-in-itself_. We have seen that this is generally accepted as
true of the relativities of sense-perception. But is it true of thought?
The post-Kantian idealist maintains that _that depends upon the
thought_. The content of private individual thinking is in so far not
real object; but it does not follow that this is true of such thinking
as is universally valid. Now Kant has deduced his categories for thought
in general. There are no empirical cases of thinking except the human
thinkers; but the categories are not the property of any one human
individual or any group of such individuals. They are the conditions of
_experience in general_, and of every possibility of experience. The
transition to absolute idealism is now readily made. _Thought in
general_ becomes the _absolute mind_, and experience in general its
content. The thing-in-itself drops out as having no meaning. The
objectivity to which it testified is provided for in the completeness
and self-sufficiency which is attributed to the absolute experience.
Indeed, an altogether new definition of subjective and objective
replaces the old. The subjective is that which is only insufficiently
thought, as in the case of relativity and error; the objective is that
which is completely thought. Thus the natural order is indeed
ph