most general "whereabouts" of its position--from what point it starts, whence and from what aspect it surveys the ground, and by what links from this starting point it contrives to connect itself with the main objects of philosophic inquiry. Immanuel Kant was originally a dogmatist in the school of Leibnitz and Wolf; that is, according to his trisection of all philosophy into dogmatic, sceptical, and critical, he was, upon all questions disposed to a strong affirmative creed, without courting any particular examination into the grounds of this creed, or into its assailable points. From this slumber, as it is called by himself, he was suddenly aroused by the Humian doctrine of cause and effect. This celebrated essay on the nature of necessary connexion-so thoroughly misapprehended at the date of its first publication to the world by its soi-disant opponents, Oswald, Beattie, &c., and so imperfectly comprehended since then by various soi-disant defenders-became in effect the "occasional cause (in the phrase of the logicians) of the entire subsequent philosophic scheme of Kant; every section of which arose upon the accidental opening made to analogical trains of thought by this memorable effort of scepticism applied by Hume to one capital phenomenon among the necessities of the human. understanding. What is the nature of Hume's scepticism as applied to this phenomenon? What is the main thesis of his celebrated Essay on Cause and Effect? For few, indeed, are they who really know anything about it. If a man really understands it, a very few words will avail to explain the nodus. Let us try. It is a necessity of the human understanding (very probably not a necessity of a higher order of intelligences) to connect its experiences by means of the idea of cause and its correlate, effect: and, when Beattie, Oswald, Reid, &c., were exhausting themselves in proofs of the indispensableness of this idea, they were fighting with shadows; for no man had ever questioned the practical necessity for such an idea to the coherency of human thinking. Not the practical necessity, but the internal consistency of this notion, and the original right to such a notion, was the point of inquisition. For, attend, courteous reader, and three separate propositions will set before your eyes the difficulty. First Prop., which, for the sake of greater precision, permit me to throw into Latin :-Non datur aliquid [A] quo posito ponitur aliud [B] a priori; that is, in other words, You cannot lay your hands upon that one object or phenomenon [A] in the whole circle of natural existences, which, being assumed, will entitle you to assume a priori, any other object whatsoever [B] as succeeding it. You could not, I say, of any object or phenomenon whatever, assume this succession a priori-that is, previously to experience. Second Prop. But, if the succession of B to A be made known to you, not a priori (by the involution of B in the idea of A), but by experience, then you cannot ascribe necessity to the succession the connection between them is not necessary but contingent. For the very widest experience—an experience which should stretch over all ages, from the beginning to the end of time—can never establish a nexus having the least approximation to necessity; no more than a rope of sand could gain the cohesion of adamant by repeating its links through a billion of successions. Prop. Third. Hence (i.e. from the two preceding propositions), it appears that no instance or case of nexus that ever can have been offered to the notice of any human understanding has in it, or by possibility could have had, anything of necessity. Had the nexus been necessary, you would have seen it beforehand; whereas, by Prop. 1, Non datur aliquid, quo posito ponitur aliud a priori. This being so, now comes the startling fact, that the notion of a cause includes the notion of necessity. For, if A (the cause) be connected with B (the effect) only in a casual or accidental way, you do not feel warranted in calling it a cause. If heat, applied to ice (A) were sometimes followed by a tendency to liquefaction (B) and sometimes not, you would not consider A connected with B as a cause, but only as some variable accompaniment of the true and unknown cause, which might allowably be present or be absent. This, then, is the startling and mysterious phenomenon of the human understanding-that, in a certain notion, which is indispensable to the coherency of our whole experience, indispensable to the establishing any nexus between the different parts and successions of our whole train of notions, we include an accessary notion of necessity, which yet has no justification or warrant, no assignable derivation from any known or possible case of human experience. We have one idea at least-viz. the idea of causation which transcends our possible experience by one important element, the element of necessity, that never can have been derived from the only source of ideas recognised by the philosophy of this day. A Lockian never can find his way out of this dilemma. The experience (whether it be the experience of sensation or the experience of reflection) which he adopts for his master-key never will unlock this case; for the sum total of human experience, collected from all ages, can avail only to tell us what is, but never what must be. The idea of necessity is absolutely transcendent to experience, per se, and must be derived from some other source. From what source? Could Hume tell us? No: he, who had started the game so acutely (for, with every allowance for the detection made in Thomas Aquinas of the original suggestion, as recorded in the Biographia Literaria of Coleridge, we must still allow great merit of a secondary kind to Hume for his modern revival and restatement of the doctrine), this same acute philosopher broke down confessedly in his attempt to hunt the game down. His solution is worthless. Kant, however, having caught the original scent from Hume, was more fortunate. He saw, at a glance, that here was a test applied to the Lockian philosophy, which showed, at the very least, its insufficiency. If it were good even for so much as it explained-which Burke is disposed to receive as a sufficient warrant for the favourable reception of a new hypothesis-at any rate, it now appeared that there was something which it could not explain. But, next, Kant took a large step in advance proprio marte. Reflecting upon the one idea adduced by Hume as transcending the ordinary source of ideas, he began to ask himself whether it were likely that this idea should stand alone? Were there not other ideas in the same predicament; other ideas including the same element of necessity, and, therefore, equally disowning the parentage assigned by Locke? Upon investigation, he found that there were: he found that there were eleven others in exactly the same circumstances. The entire twelve he denominated categories; and the mode by which he ascertained their number—that there were so many and no more-is of itself so remarkable as to merit notice in the most superficial sketch. But, in fact, this one explanation will put the reader in possession of Kant's system, so far as he could understand it without an express and toilsome study. With this explanation, therefore, of the famous categories, I shall close my slight sketch of the system. Has the reader ever considered the meaning of the term Category -a term so ancient and so venerable from its connexion with the most domineering philosophy that has yet appeared amongst men ? The doctrine of the Categories (or, in its Roman appellation, of the Predicaments) is one of the few wrecks from the Peripatetic philosophy which still survives as a doctrine taught by public authority in the most ancient academic institutions of Europe.1 It continues to form a section in the code of public instruction; and perhaps under favour of a pure accident. For, though, strictly speaking, a metaphysical speculation, it has always been prefixed as a sort of preface to the Organon (or logical treatises) of Aristotle, and has thus accidentally shared in the immortality conceded to that most perfect of human works. Far enough were the Categories from meriting such distinction. Kant was well aware of this: he was aware that the Aristotelian Categories were a useless piece of scholastic lumber : unsound in their first conception; and, though illustrated through long centuries by the schoolmen, and by still earlier Grecian philosophers, never in any one known instance turned to a profitable account. Why, then, being aware that even in idea they were false, besides being practically unsuitable, did Kant adopt or borrow a name laden with this superfetation of reproach-all that is false in theory superadded to all that is useless in practice? He did so for a remarkable reason: he felt, according to his own explanation, that Aristotle had been groping (the German word expressive of his blind procedure is herumtappen)—groping in the dark, but under a semi-conscious instinct of truth. Here is a most remarkable case or situation of the human intellect, 1 De Quincey was so fastidious in the matter of grammatical correct. ness that he would have been shocked to find that he had let this sentence go forth in print.-M. happening alike to individuals and to entire generations—in |