before him? All, at least in modern times, have been critical, as all have professed to examine the faculties of the cognitive being. Of this examination there are various degrees of accuracy, and the theory of transcendentalism may therefore be a better dogmatism than others; but still it is not distinguished by any new character, so as to deserve a peculiarity of name. In the mere belief of the subjectivity of perception, it certainly is not original; for it would be difficult to find a philosopher of the present age who retains the belief of the actual unmodified representation, by the sense, of the qualities of external matter. In one circumstance, however, we differ from the transcendentalist. We own the subjectivity of our perceptions; but we are convinced of the impossibility of analysing them into objective and subjective elements; since to us, by the laws of our nature, these elements must ever co-exist. It would not be more absurd to assert, than an eye, on which blue and yellow rays were continually poured together in one unvaried sensation, could, by the mere exertion of internal powers of thought, discover the nature of the compound beam.

As an illustration of the possibility of this analysis, M. Villers adduces the probable reflections of a camera obscura, which, by the power in him vested, he has endowed with animation.* To the sensorium of this transcendentalist, the light is supposed to pass through a coloured medium; and the subjectivity of the colour, as a part of its sensations, it is affirmed to be capable of discovering, by the exertion of its own unaided powers. To us, indeed, who know that light has been decomposed in passing, it is easy to make the inference, that all the objects in nature are not red; but we cannot suppose the machine itself, however subtile, to be capable of such an inference. It may, indeed, attain that acuteness of scepticism, which denies the existence of external objects; but it cannot separate their believed existence from their redness; since it is only as definite redness they can be known by it to exist. It certainly cannot separate the extension from the redness, so as to conceive the redness to belong wholly to itself, and, without this complete analysis, no progress is made in transcendentalism. Still less is it possible, as in another illustration adduced by M. Villers, that,. by the elliptical figure of the image it reflects, a cylindrical mirror should discover its own figure; for, the cylinder, forming no part of the image, more would be necessary than the mere separation of co-existing qualities. The supposed illustrations, however, even when admitted in all their circumstances, show nothing more than the impossibility of that which they are intended to prove; for if the camera obscura, like the human philosopher who finds all his sensations invested with space, should conceive the redness with which its sensations are invested to be a mere form of its own sensibility, it would consider, as subjective only, what was, in truth, a combination of objective and subjective elements, and would thus arrange a system

Even though the reasoning from transcendental machinery had been just, there is something so ludicrous in the conception, that an author, who designed it only for illustration, would have been very cautious of repeating it. But with M. Villers it is a favourite figure; and he introduces it sometimes in such a manner, that we are uncertain whether it be his wish that we should laugh with him at the follies of metaphysics, or content ourselves with being seriously convinced of the truth of his argument. The following passage is surely more in the manner of Voltaire, than of the grave professor of Königsberg-"If our camera obscura should think of theorising upon the redness, as belonging to objects out of itself, and existing really, it would, without doubt, find many good reasons for explaining it, by the disposition of the parts of objects, by the refraction of light, and a hundred other fine things, which other camera obscuræ of its own stamp would admire, but to which a camera obscura with a little knowledge of transcendentalism would listen only with a smile of derision." P. 242.

of very erroneous philosophy; which, if published in the shape of a "review of pure reason," might perplex, and mislead, and set at variance, with endless controversy, all the telescopes, and mirrors, and magic lanterns, of a whole optical museum.

The faculties of the mind are, by Kant, said to be three, and the division is supposed to be compatible with its fundamental unity. But the mind, he allows, is not an object of cognition; it has noumenal existence in our consciousness. The categories, therefore, cannot be applied to it; for they are applicable only to phenomena. But unity and number are subjective categories; and hence we cannot justly say that there are three faculties of one mind. We fear that this argument will be considered as a subtilty merely verbal; a charge, which the combatant of verbal subtilties must often expect. But at the same time that it shows the absurdity of asserting the unreality of number, on principles which, in the first proposition they include, have assumed it as certain, it marks strongly the dogmatism of that philosophy which considers itself as the great overthrower of dogmatism. For proof of the unity of the cognitive being, recourse seems to have been had to the common sense of the later Scotch philosophers; but to Kant it is not common sense; for, denying the reality of an external world as capable of being known by us, he cannot appeal to universal belief. If his own feeling, therefore, be considered by him as a just ground of certainty, he must believe himself incapable of error; and if he be incapable of error, it is absurd to enquire into the sources of illusion. What that is, which has three faculties, it is indeed impossible to conceive. When we say, that it is extended, or matter, and when we say that it is unextended, or spirit, we are alike accused of an amphiboly, or a paralogism; which are very fine words, expressive of mistake. It is not to mind itself that the categories. are applicable; for mind would then be a phenomenon, and not a reality. It is not a substance, it is not in time, it has no existence, nor possibility of existence without succession, it exerts three progressively succeeding faculties, and exerts them too, without having in itself any power of causation. On the strict principles of transcendentalism, it does not appear to us more reasonable to believe the actual existence of a being that knows, and judges, and wills, than to acknowledge the infinity of external space. To say, that the one is a form of thought, and the other a reality, is to say nothing; for both feelings are equally strong, and equally unsubstantial.

But we will admit to the transcendentalist his solitary noumenon, and its separate functions. The affections of the mind are awkwardly arranged, as knowledge, judgment, and will. Of the peculiar nature of judgment, indeed, which, in the common acceptation of the term, appears to be included in the second and third offices of the cognitive faculty, M. Villers has left us wholly uncertain; but from the subjects which he enumerates, as forming a part of his promised review of it, it seems to be nearly synonymous with taste, or perhaps to include the more active office of imagination. But the division is not merely awkward, as involving in one term affections of little similarity; there are also many affections which it seems impossible to reduce to it. The joy which we feel on a fortunate occurrence, our sorrow on a disagreeable one, our complete despair when every exertion has been vain, may rise indeed from knowledge, but are not themselves knowledge, nor judgment, nor will.

A similar objection may be made to the subdivisions of the cognitive faculty. If the mere addition of one form of thought, as of the absolute

in pure reason, authorise a change of term in the function, cognition, instead of three distinct titles, should have as many as its subjective forms.

On considering the theory of sensibility, the first observation that occurs to us is the singular mixture of opinions which it presents. The truth of space and time is denied by the usual sceptical arguments. No new enquiries of transcendentalism are made; because, with that opinion, enquiry would be useless: yet, as if some new foundation had been given for the belief, the transcendental sceptic asserts the existence of noumena, which, though perceived only subjectively, yet influence our sensibility, and entitle it to the name of external. The idea of any thing external to ourselves is confessed to involve space; yet, with the denial of space, the reality of objects external to ourselves is affirmed; and the affirmation is peculiarly frivolous, since real objects not having causation, which is phenomenal only, cannot affect our sensibility. It is not enough to say against that solitude of self, which the consistent disciple of Berkeley must adopt, that our mind revolts, and is indignant at the very idea," p. 81; or that "he professes a belief which is not human, and which, therefore, among human beings, can never be the doctrine of a numerous sect," p. 32: for the argument is of equal force against transcendentalism, which, if consistent, is precisely the same doctrine, with a new name. The professors of both, if they really disbelieve the existence of space, may indeed be assured, that their sect never can be a large one; because to them there is no other being to whom they can make known their creed. The theory of Kant, therefore, appears to us to be nothing more than the common assertion of every sceptic, together with that practical belief which every sceptic feels, but which, for the credit of his theory, he usually keeps within the silence of his own mind. We are convinced that there is no human being who does not, by his actions at least, evince his reliance on an external world, and the succession of time; though we are convinced, also, that there is no one who can give a reason for the faith that is in him. We therefore do not deny the justice of Kant's conclusion; for its unaswerable force, in mere argument, was felt long before the philosopher of Königsberg was known. But, the truth of space and of the world being to our reasoning scepticism the same, we cannot deny space, and admit the reality of sensible objects. The theory which combines these may be celebrated as original; but its originality consists only in the combination of opinions which before were considered as incompatible.

Against Condillac it is urged, that, in ascribing our idea of space to touch, he has already supposed a surface and a hand; but Kant, in ascribing it to external sensibility, has already supposed an object. His argument for the subjectivity of space, from the permanence of the subject, and the fleeting nature of the object, still more strikingly presupposes space and time; for, if there be no real succession, all things are equally permanent; and unless we have previously known that, of the great multitude of our feelings, a certain number only have proceeded from external objects, during all which the form of space was permanent, that very form must be allowed to be fleeting; for all the affections of our mind are not referable to three dimensions. We may remark, also, that, on the principles of Kant, our dreams and reveries are, in truth, as little illusive as our waking perceptions, the reference to space being all which constitutes external sensation; and the man who dreams that he has murdered an adversary, has therefore murdered a human being as truly as if, in the intercourse of the day, he

had stabbed his friend. Smell, taste and hearing, as they do not involve length, breadth, and thickness, should be referred by Kant to internal, rather than external sensibility. From the observations of those who have been couched, the same appears certain of vision; and Kant must, therefore, with Condillac, whose opinion he attacks, ascribe our knowledge of three dimensions, not objectively indeed, but subjectively to the single organ of touch.

To say that space must be subjective, because we cannot conceive a possible body without length, breadth, and thickness, is but a verbal sophism; for we give the name of body only to that which has those dimensions. It might be inferred with equal justice, that there are no objective elements in our perception of the human figure, because, without experience, we believe that every future man must have all those parts which are comprehended in a just definition of man. To the transcendentalist, who supposes totality and plurality to be conceptions posterior to sensation, there is, besides, a peculiar and insurmountable difficulty, of which he seems not to have been aware, in that immediate investiture with space which he affirms to be necessary to sensation. Space having several dimensions, necessarily involves parts; and a body must therefore be considered as a whole previously to all conception of totality, or sensation cannot be invested with space. This objection appears to us completely decisive against the whole theory of cognition: for, if an exertion of intelligence be not necessary to connect in one body the separate dimensions, it is as little necessary in reducing to one great assemblage the boundless phenomena of nature.

We do not see for what reason time is considered as peculiarly a form of internal sense; for we invest with succession the changes without, as much as those within, and believe that ages had revolved before ourselves had being, in the same manner as we believe that there is an infinity of space to which we have never penetrated.

The explanation of the apodictic certainty of geometry and arithmetic is surely not transcendental. The propositions of these sciences cannot have relation to the forms of thought of every thinking being; because man is to himself the only object known as he is. Other beings are noumenal to him, and their real forms of thought beyond the possibility of his knowledge. Besides, though the three dimensions of space were known to him as universal, little could be inferred from them alone; and a figure of 1000 sides, the properties of which are equally apodictic as those of a triangle, is certainly an idea as little present to the general mind as any in physical science. But though all the possibilities of figure and of numeral combination were universal forms, the feeling of duty, and of God, is allowed to be equally universal yet it is almost by their controversies alone, that ethics and theology are known to us as sciences. Their universality, therefore, does not render relations of the universals apodictic; nor ought the transcendentalist to ascribe the exactness of mathematical ideas to their capability of sensible delineation; for their incapability of this is very justly urged by him as one of the most powerful reasons for believing that there are ideas not acquired from experience. The two great conceptions on which geometry depends are, as M. Villers himself has said, an indivisible point and infinity, which no corporeal organ can originally afford us, and which it is in like manner impossible for us to delineate in any sensible representation; and he triumphantly asks, whether it be possible for the eye to distinguish a polygon of 999 sides from one of 1000, though the different relations of their angles be

exactly understood? A sensible delineation would be applicable only to a few cases, and not to every possible case. We have complete certainty, without any diagram, that the shortest line between any two points is a right line; and, without this previous certainty, a thousand trials could not convince us, as there might still be an untried curve to which our stubborn proposition would be obliged to yield.

Of the table of forms of intelligence, little more is necessary to be said, than that, like the more ancient arrangement by Aristotle, it is altogether useless. The only valuable arrangement of relations is that by which objects are combined in the common order of the sciences; and we receive as much real knowledge, in being told that we have spoken prose all our lives, or that in every proposition something must be affirmed or denied, as in being told, that we must always predicate quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Instead of saying, that the intelligence has twelve categories, which existed a priori and independently, it would have been at least equally just, and certainly much more simple, to say, that in every case of felt relation, the mental affection which constitutes that feeling was not a part of the separate perceptions. It did not, indeed, exist à priori, for the perceptions were prior; nor independently of experience, for, without the perceptions it never would have arisen: but it existed from a law of the mind itself, which was so constituted, that, on the perception of certain objects, the new feeling of relation should arise. This feeling is to us completely different from either perception considered separately; and we have always been astonished, that the total want of resemblance did not occur with immediate confutation to the authors of those systems of sensualism, which endeavour to reduce all our knowledge, as parts, to our original external perceptions.

Whatever be the value of the table of categories, the reflective conceptions appear to us in no respect different. The conformity of two sensations is felt, at least, as immediately as their reaction; and both conceptions equally fix the appropriate place of our sensations in the system of our knowledge.

It is a singular confusion of cause and effect, to say, that the reflective forms are distinguished from the categories, as being applied only to the comparison of our conceptions, when it is owned that it is from previous reflection the conceptions themselves arise. If it be only after the observed conformity of successive sensations, that we say there are before us two objects of the species, the category of number is certainly not the prior feeling. The conformity is more truly a conception, since it is the immediate application of intelligence to the products of sensibility.

If pure reason be merely the mode by which our conceptions become to us absolute, it will be difficult to bring under it that regular series of propositions to which we commonly give the name of reasoning. When we say, all bodies gravitate; this proposition, which is, in truth, nothing more than a common instance of generalisation, may be allowed to be a product of reason. But when we add, the air is a body; the air must have weight; these propositions are acts of intelligence, and have nothing absolute in them, more than any common application of the categories. Nor is totality al

• Elles ne s'emploient qu'à comparer entre elles les conceptions des objets. P. 299. C'est aussi par réflexion transcendentale que l'entendement examine et décide auxquelles de nos catégories il convient de rapporter des objets donnés à la sensibilité. P. 298.