stitution and nature from ourselves, we cannot even conjecture. But we know how they must appear to us, and therefore, prior to experience, we can determine some particulars in relation to them with absolute certainty. To inquire into the actual constitution of things, – their real nature, as distinct from the appearances which they assume to us or to different orders of being, — is a hopeless endeavor. It is seeking to know, without using the only means of knowledge. It is a gross error, though a natural one, to consider our own modes of knowing as the modes of being inherent in outward things ; to give objective validity to subjective laws.

The theory is certainly ingenious and plausible, though it rests on a paradox. Empirical propositions, to which we give only a limited comprehension and a qualified assent, are not controverted. Universal and absolute convictions, in the reference which we instinctively make of them, are necessarily false. The non-existence of qualities is inferred from our inability to conceive of their non-existence; they belong only to the mind, because we cannot even imagine their annihilation as attributes of things without us. Without questioning the reality of any “anticipated" knowledge, we inquire only into the sufficiency of those criteria, by which Kant seeks to distinguish it from truths empirically known. That in the information received through the action of the perceptive faculties there are some elements, which are necessary, or that cannot be got rid of, is a fact which betrays rather the limitation of our capacities, than the existence of a different and higher source of knowledge. The necessity in question may be only of a negative character, and then the truth which it characterizes may be of empirical origin. Some objects can be known only under certain relations; some qualities cannot, in our conceptions, be abstracted from the substance

a

in which they inhere. Enlarged means of experience, the possession of an additional sense, for instance, — might do away with these impossibilities. The necessary character of the cognitions in such case, results rather from the limitations of experience, than from the existence of a higher faculty of knowing.

But without insisting on the insufficiency of these tests, we remark farther a monstrous gap in the reasoning adopted by Kant. (From the necessary and universal recognition of an object or quality, he infers, that it cannot be objectively real. Thus he assumes, not merely that experience can lead us only to contingent, limited, and relative knowledge, but that it is the only trustworthy means of cognition. Whatever is known a priori, on his system, must be illusive ; it is subjective, or derived only from our own modes of being and knowing, though always falsely referred to things as they exist. In this way it is maintained, without the slightest proof, and in contradiction to an irresistible impulse of belief, that there is no harmony between our laws of thought and the real constitution of objects. The consciousness of necessity, which accompanies certain judgments, is held to prove their origin a priori; and from this last fact is inferred their entire want of foundation in the absolute nature of things. We may

admit the justice of the first inference, but wholly deny that of the second, which would be more properly styled a mere conjecture. For the whole course of Kant's arguments leads to the conclusion, that, from the constitution of a something in our conceptions, we are not entitled to form any belief respecting the constitution of that something without us. Yet, in direct opposition to this canon, from the a priori origin of our knowledge of a quality, he deduces the non-existence of that quality in the outward world. That is, he admits the rule, when it works in favor

of his system, but repudiates it, when it makes against him. It is a good principle, when it leads to skepticism; it is

1 invalid, when it tends to restore confidence in the fidelity of our representative ideas.

Few words will suffice to apply these principles of the Transcendental philosophy to an explanation of the intellectual processes in the acquisition of knowledge. It is apparent from what has already been said, that each cognitive faculty has two functions ; fthe one, receptivity, or the power of receiving impressions from without, the other spontaneity, or the power of reacting upon and modifying these impressions. The first of these faculties, that of sense (sinnlichkeit), in which spontaneity exists in the lowest degree, furnishes intuitions, the rude and unformed matter of all our knowledge. Two intuitions, those of space and time, are found to possess the marks of universality and necessity, and therefore have an a priori origin, and no objective reality, or foundation in the real nature of things. Space is no empirical conception, derived from external experience, but it is the necessary prerequisite, or condition, of our ability to imagine any thing as existing out of our own minds. If from our conception of a material substance, we abstract every thing which is known empirically, as its color, hardness, weight, impenetrability, &c., still the space remains, which the body had occupied, as something that cannot be left out. We can imagine a

space, or one in which no substance is to be found, but we can form no idea of body as existing otherwise than in space. Again, space is an endless magnitude, no limits

. to it being conceivable; and it is essentially one, for though we may speak of different spaces, we understand thereby only parts of one and the same all-comprehending extension. Similar arguments will be found to be applicable to our idea of time. On the subjective character of these two

void

" the great

intuitions depends the possibility of the whole science of mathematics; our absolute conviction of geometrical truths resting on the pure representation of space, while arithmetic derives its certainty from the " anticipated” idea of time.

We certainly have neither time nor space to consider the argument more particularly, but only to inquire, how far the theory, as thus explained, tends to the refutation of skepticism. To the first bewildered apprehensions of the student, it would seem to be difficult to frame a system, which should strike more effectually at the foundations of all belief. By denying the reality of space, globe itself, with all that it inherit,” passes away like a dream. By asserting that time does not exist out of our own fancies, memory appears a cheat, existence is contracted to a point, and the whole history of experience and events is rolled up like the morning mist.

“ Nothing is there to come, and nothing past ;

But an eternal now does ever last." To assert, that these laws of thought have a subjective reality, sufficient for our purposes, and are rightly applicable to the phenomenal world, — the only one with which we are acquainted or have any concern,- is a contemptible evasion. The most audacious skeptic never denied, that we believe in the existence of matter and in the succession of events in time, or that this belief is imperative and necessary. At the same time, he maintains that it is illusive, and has no foundation in the real nature of things. To go farther than this, would be the part, not of an infidel, but of a madman. It is true, that Kant professes to repudiate Berkleianism, and will not admit that his own system leads to any similar result. He maintains the existence of the outward world, though he denies the reality of that which, by his own principles, can alone make the conception of

a

such existence possible. The originality, at least, of a system, that couples the refutation of idealism with a denial of the objectivity of space, cannot be disputed. External nature has a being independent of our ideas, though the manner of that being transcends the limits of all thought. Kant contented himself at first with a simple protest against the ideal theory ; but, when his opponents charged him with denying in words what was an unavoidable inference from his own system, in the second edition of the

Critique" he inserted a proof of the existence of matter. Of the validity of this proof, we say nothing, for we do not profess to understand it, and have great doubts whether the author understood it himself. It is an excrescence on the system, violating its unity, and contradicting what must be inferred from his doctrines as a whole.

The intuitions of sense form the groundwork of our cog. nitions, but in themselves are unformed and incomplete. Before they constitute knowledge, they must become objects of thought to the understanding, a faculty distinguished from that of sense, as its operations are independent of space and time. The latter represents the matter of things, as it is affected by them; the former, exercising spontaneity in a higher degree, collects the variety of these materials into a whole. What the intuitions of space and time are to the functions of sense, the categories are to the understanding. They are forms of thought, under which intuitions are necessarily taken in, or subsumed, and thereby become conceptions, the legitimate products of the understanding. They are twelve in number, divided into four equal classes ; those of quantity, quality, relation, and modality.) The nomenclature is obviously borrowed from that of the logician, and thus indicates the source of the theory, and the grounds on which it rests Kant was early

, struck with the similarity between the first principles of