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ling be taken as the representative of the Teutonic race in speculation. There is a subtilty and over-refinement of thought, a boldness of hypothesis, an excessive display of learning, and haziness of expression, common to them all. Equally apparent in all the English school, in Hobbes, Locke, Hartley, and Reid, are plain common sense, sturdy resistance to all authority in matters of thought, and a disposition to espouse the popular belief, and to reconcile speculation with practice. France boasts of two great names, whose reputation belongs to the earlier period of her scientific history. But the life and situation of Descar. tes and Malebranche were in many respects peculiar. In. dividual influences operated upon them, to a great extent, to hide the qualities, which they had in common with their countrymen. The remarkable self-education of the former, his foreign travel and various experience of men, and the devotion of far the greater part of his life to physical science, - and the connexion of the latter with the priesthood, together with his enthusiastic religious faith, - prevented either from manifesting, in any great degree, the bias of national thought. Condillac is a far better representative of French philosophy. He has numerous points in common with those of his countrymen and successors, whose philosophical creed differs most widely from his own, and whose habits of thought even appear, at first sight, wholly unlike those of the great master of the Sensualist school.

may
be taken as an eminent instance.

He is an Eclectic by profession. He has drunk deep at all foun. tains, - Greek, Scholastic, German, English, - mingling all the different waters for a single draught. Condillac, on the other hand, acknowledges no other master than Locke, and does not appear to have studied even him

faithfully. But he is not a more thorough Frenchman than the great Eclectic. He does not bring out more strongly, more

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vividly the national character. We find in the works of each the same transparency of diction united with real confusion of thought, the same dashing and brilliant, though shallow manner, generalizations equally bold and sweeping, and the same easy and confident tone of expression.

The writings of Kant gave utterance to the philosophical tendencies of his country and age, and the speculatists who succeeded him owe much of their success to a similar adoption of the prevailing sentiments of the thinking public into their respective systems. Under the guise of a new faith, they created a philosophy of unbelief; under a dogmatical mask, they proclaimed what was, at least in reference to revelation, a theory of total skepticism. This fact, though commonly admitted, so far as it relates to the opinions of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, is denied in respect to the creator of the Transcendental philosophy. But the denial only shows how imperfectly, out of the limits of his own country, his system is understood. The speculations of Hume, as he repeatedly admits, gave the first hint for the formation of his new scheme of doctrine ; "they first interrupted my dogmatical slumber, and gave a wholly different direction to my inquiries in the field of speculative philosophy.” Though commonly understood as aiming at the refutation of his predecessor, he extended, in fact, the sphere of Hume's skeptical arguments, generalizing them so far that they covered the whole field of knowledge.

“ I first inquired, whether the objection of Hume might not be universal, and soon found, that the idea of the connexion between cause and effect is far from being the only one by which the understanding, a priori, thinks of the union of things; but rather, that metaphysics are entirely made up of such conceptions. I endeavored to ascertain their number, and when, guided by a single principle, I had succeeded in the attempt, I proceeded to inquire into the objective validity of these ideas; for I was now more than ever convinced, that they were not drawn from experience, as

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Hume had supposed, but that they came from the pure understanding." - Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik. Vorrede, p. 13.

That this expansion of Hume's principles, though conducted on a different method, leads to the same skeptical conclusions that he deduced from them, will be more clear. ly seen in the development of the theory. The impression, that it led to very different results, is founded on the arrogant pretensions of the new school, and the difficulty of analyzing the system far enough to detect its real character. The name of Transcendentalism seems to imply, that it is the scheme of a higher philosophy, rising above the objects of sense, and over-leaping the narrow limits within which the exercise of our faculties had formerly been confined ; when, in fact, its leading doctrine is, that our knowledge is necessarily restricted to objects within the domain of experience, that all super-sensual ideas are to us characterless and devoid of meaning, and in attempting to cognize them the reason is involved in endless contradictions.

We do not state this fact as in itself a reproach upon lations of Kant, but only to correct the unfounded notions, which most persons among us entertain, of their character and tendency. All innovations in the theory of science, all new views in philosophy, must stand or fall on their logical and intrinsic merits. There may be a presumption against them from the degrading conception which they offer of human nature ; but this is insufficient to justify their immediate rejection. Of two hypotheses, the more ennobling is not necessarily the true one, and too great advantage is given to the skeptic, by a hasty preference awarded to it, before the grounds on which it rests are satisfactorily determined. (Our business is with argument, and not with declamation.

We obtain a clue to the labyrinth of Kantian metaphy.

the specu

sics, as soon as we rightly perceive the point of departure selected for the system, and the new method on which he resolved to prosecute his inquiries. The three sciences, logic, mathematics, and metaphysics, distinguished from others by their purely intellectual origin and nature, have advanced with very unequal success.

The first came near. ly in a perfect form from the hands of its inventor, Aristotle, subsequent inquirers having done little but to pare off its redundancies and improve the modes of its application. The second, rising from small beginnings, has gone steadily on, every step being one of progress, till it now covers an immense domain, while we can hardly imagine any bounds to its future advancement. But the fate of the third of these sciences has been directly the reverse. Though older than the others, it has, from the earliest period of its history, presented little more than an arena for endless contests, where philosophers might exercise their powers in mock engagements, but where no one could ever gain the least ground, or found a permanent possession upon his victory. For all this ill success, Kant supposed that the method of inquiry was in fault. On the old plan, it was presumed, that sensible things, outward objects, were known to us in all their relations; that the nature of mind was unknown, and must be studied through the effects produced within it by impressions from without. Kant reversed this process, and from the centre of the mind itself observed the action of our cognitive faculties on surrounding things. He looked upon the outward world as modified by our own mental constitution, and upon the mind as projecting, so to speak, its own modes of being upon the external creation. “It sounds strange indeed, at first, but it is not the less certain, when I say, in respect to the original laws of the understanding, that it does not derive them from nature, but imposes them upon nature.”

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From effecting this change in the mode of inquiry, he compares himself to Copernicus, who, when he found that he could not explain the motions of the heavenly bodies by supposing the firmament to turn round the spectator, tried the opposite supposition, by leaving the spectator to turn, and the stars to be at rest.

The obvious consequence of this hypothesis is, that all our knowledge is subjective that we can never know things as they are, but only as they appear to us when viewed through a false and deceptive medium. There is a deep gulf between the two sciences of psychology and on. tology, and no human efforts can bridge over the chasm. Though the problem which Kant proposes should be solved,

though by a finer analysis we should separate the qualities really belonging to an object from those superadded by our manner of looking at it, - still we could never imagine how it would appear to us, if deprived of these subjective elements. Now our idea of truth is, the conformity of our representations with their archetypes ; and, as confidence in our perceptive faculties is the only way of assuring ourselves that such coincidence exists, the theory in question is certainly based on the most comprehensive skepticism. It declares, that truth is not only unattained, but unattainable. It assumes, that the world which we know, is a web spun by our own fancies on few and thin filaments of absolute being; take away the imaginary warp, and the texture cannot hold together. The world of things in themselves is incognizable and inconceivable.

We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live,

Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud.” By a full survey of the cognitive faculty of man, Kant sought to ascertain the number and character of those primitive elements of thought, which, being united with, or

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