Kant's mode of dealing with the doctrine of necessity is very singular.
That the phenomena of the mind follow fixed relations of cause and
effect is, to him, as unquestionable as it is to Hume. But then there is
the _Ding an sich_, the _Noumenon_, or Kantian equivalent for the
substance of the soul. This, being out of the phenomenal world, is
subject to none of the laws of phenomena, and is consequently as
absolutely free, and as completely powerless, as a mathematical point,
_in vacua_, would be. Hence volition is uncaused, so far as it belongs
to the noumenon; but, necessary, so far as it takes effect in the
phenomenal world.
Since Kant is never weary of telling us that we know nothing whatever,
and can know nothing, about the noumenon, except as the hypothetical
subject of any number of negative predicates; the information that it is
free, in the sense of being out of reach of the law of causation, is
about as valuable as the assertion that it is neither grey, nor blue,
nor square. For practical purposes, it must be admitted that the inward
possession of such a noumenal libertine does not amount to much for
people whose actual existence is made up of nothing but definitely
regulated phenomena. When the good and evil angels fought for the dead
body of Moses, its presence must have been of about the same value to
either of the contending parties, as that of Kant's noumenon, in the
battle of impulses which rages in the breast of man. Metaphysicians, as
a rule, are sadly deficient in the sense of humour; or they would surely
abstain from advancing propositions which, when stripped of the verbiage
in which they are disguised, appear to the profane eye to be bare shams,
naked but not ashamed.
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