Transcendental method, so abused,
produced transcendental myth. A conscientious critique of knowledge
was turned into a sham system of nature. We must therefore distinguish
sharply the transcendental grammar of the intellect, which is
significant and potentially correct, from the various transcendental
systems of the universe, which are chimeras.
In both its parts, however, transcendentalism had much to recommend it
to American philosophers, for the transcendental method appealed to
the individualistic and revolutionary temper of their youth, while
transcendental myths enabled them to find a new status for their
inherited theology, and to give what parts of it they cared to
preserve some semblance of philosophical backing. This last was the
use to which the transcendental method was put by Kant himself, who
first brought it into vogue, before the terrible weapon had got out of
hand, and become the instrument of pure romanticism. Kant came, he
himself said, to remove knowledge in order to make room for faith,
which in his case meant faith in Calvinism. In other words, he applied
the transcendental method to matters of fact, reducing them thereby
to human ideas, in order to give to the Calvinistic postulates of
conscience a metaphysical validity. For Kant had a genteel tradition
of his own, which he wished to remove to a place of safety, feeling
that the empirical world had become too hot for it; and this place of
safety was the region of transcendental myth.
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