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space, is neither the result of reasoning nor of experience, but is inseparable from the very conception of it; and must therefore be considered as an ultimate and essential law of human thought.

The very same conclusion, it is manifest, applies to the notion of time; a notion which, like that of space, presupposes the exercise of our external senses; but which, when it is once acquired, presents irresistibly its object to our thoughts as an existence equally independent of the human mind, and of the material universe. Both these existences, too, swell in the human understanding to infinity; the one to immensity, the other to eternity; nor is it possible for imagination itself to conceive a limit to either. How are these facts to be reconciled with that philosophy which teaches, that all our knowledge is derived from experience?

The foregoing reasonings have led us, by a very short, and, I hope, satisfactory process, to the general conclusion which forms the fundamental principle of the Kantian system; a system plainly suggested to the author, by the impossibility he found of tracing any resemblance between extension and the sensations of which we are conscious. "The notion (or intuition) of space," he tells us, "as well as that of time, is not empirical; that is, it has not its origin in experience. On the contrary, both these notions are supposed, or implied, as conditions in all our empirical perceptions; inasmuch as we cannot perceive nor conceive an external object, without representing it to our thoughts as in space; nor can we conceive any thing, either without us or within us, without representing it to ourselves, as in time. Space and time, therefore, are called by Kant, the two forms of our sensibility. The first is the general form of our external senses: the second, the general form of all our senses, external and internal.

"These notions of space and of time, however, although they exist in us a priori, are not," according to Kant, "innate ideas. If they are anterior to the perceptions of our senses, it is only in the order of reason, and not in the order of time. They have indeed their origin in ourselves; but they present themselves to the

understanding only in consequence of occasions furnished by our sensations; or (in Kant's language) by our sensible modifications. Separated from these modifications, they could not exist; and without them, they would have remained for ever latent and sterile." *

The only important proposition which I am able to extract from this jargon is, that, as extension and duration cannot be supposed to bear the most distant resemblance to any sensations of which the mind is conscious, the origin of these notions forms a manifest exception to the account given by Locke of the primary sources of our knowledge. This is precisely the ground on which Reid has made his stand against the scheme of Idealism; and I leave it to my readers to judge, whether it was not more philosophical to state, as he has done, the fact, in simple and perspicuous terms, as a demonstration of the imperfection of Locke's theory, than to have reared upon it a superstructure of technical mystery, similar to what is exhibited in the system of the German metaphysician.

De Gerando. Hist. des Systêmes, Tom. II. p. 208, 209. It is proper for me to observe here, that for the little I know of Kant's philosophy, I am chiefly indebted to his critics and commentators; more particularly, to M. De Gerando, who is allowed, even by Kant's countrymen, to have given a faithful exposition of his doctrines; and to the author of a book published at Copenhagen, in 1796, entitled, Philosophia Critica secundum Kantium Expositio Systematica. Some very valuable strictures on the general spirit of his system may be collected from the Appendix subjoined by Mr. Prevost to his French translation of Mr. Smith's posthumous Essays; from different passages of the Essais Philosophiques of the same author; and from the first article in the second number of the Edinburgh Review.

As to Kant's own works, I must fairly acknowledge, that, although I have frequently attempted to read them in the Latin edition printed at Leipsic, I have always been forced to abandon the undertaking in despair; partly from the scholastic barbarism of the style, and partly from my utter inability to unriddle the author's meaning. Wherever I have happened to obtain a momentary glimpse of light, I have derived it, not from Kant himself, but from my previous acquaintance with those opinions of Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and others, which he has endeavoured to appropriate to himself under the deep disguise of his new phraseology. No writer certainly ever exemplified more systematically, or more successfully, the precept which Quinctilian (upon the authority of Livy) ascribes to an ancient" rhetorician; and which, if the object of the teacher was merely to instruct his pupils how to command the admiration of the multitude, must be allowed to reflect no small honor on his knowledge of human nature. Neque id novum vitium est, cum jam apud Titum Livium inveniam fuisse præceptorem aliquem, qui discipulos obscurare quæ dicerunt, juberet, Græco verbo utens exório. Unde illa scilicet egregia laudatio: Tanto melior, ne ego quidem intellexi." (Quinct. Instit.)

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En écrivant, j'ai toujours taché de m'entendre, is an expression which Fontenelle somewhere uses, in speaking of his own literary habits. It conveys a hint not unworthy of the attention of authors;-but which I would not venture to recommend to that class who may aspire to the glory of founding new schools of philosophy.

In justice, at the same time, to Kant's merits, I must repeat, that Dr. Reid would have improved greatly the statement of his argument against Berkeley, if he had kept as constantly in the view of his readers, as Kant has done, the essential distinction which I have endeavoured to point out between the mathematical affections of matter, and its primary qualities. Of this distinction he appears to have been fully aware himself, from a passage which I formerly quoted; but he has, in general, slurred it over in a manner which seemed to imply, that he considered them both as precisely of the same kind.

I shall only add farther, that the idea or conception of motion involves the ideas both of extension and of time. That the idea of time might have been formed, without any ideas either of extension or of motion, is sufficiently obvious; but it is by no means equally clear, whether the idea of motion presupposes that of extension, or that of extension the idea of motion. The question relates to a fact of some curiosity in the natural history of the mind; having, for its object, to ascertain, with logical precision, the occasion on which the idea of extension is, in the first instance, acquired. But it is a question altogether foreign to the subject of the foregoing discussion. Whichever of the two conclusions we may adopt, the force of Reid's argument against Locke's principle will be found to remain undiminished.*

*See Note (L).

ESSAY THIRD.

ON THE INFLuence of loCKE'S AUTHORITY UPON THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS WHICH PREVAILED IN FRANCE DURING THE LATTER PART OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THE account given by Locke of the origin of our ideas, which furnished the chief subject of one of the foregoing Essays, has, for many years past, been adopted implicitly, and almost universally, as a fundamental and unquestionable truth, by the philosophers of France. It was early sanctioned in that country, by the authority of Fontenelle, whose mind was probably prepared for its reception, by some similar discussions in the works of Gassendi; at a later period, it acquired much additional celebrity, from the vague and exaggerated encomiums of Voltaire; and it has since been assumed, as the common basis of their respective conclusions concerning the history of the human understanding, by Condillac, Turgot, Helvetius, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Destutt-Tracy, De Gerando, and many other writers of the highest reputation, at complete variance with each other, in the general spirit of their philosophical systems.

*

But although all these ingenious men have laid hold eagerly of this common principle of reasoning, and have vied with each other in extolling Locke for the sagacity which he has displayed in unfolding it, hardly two of them can be named who have understood it exactly in the same sense; and perhaps not one who has understood it precisely in the sense annexed to it by the author. What is still more remarkable, the praise of Locke has been loudest from those who seem to have taken the least pains to ascertain the import of his conclusions.

"Tous les philosophes François de ce siècle ont fait gloire de se ranger au nombre des disciples de Locke, et d'admettre ses principes."-(De Gerando, de la Génération des Connoissances Humaines, p. 81.)

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*

The mistakes so prevalent among the French philosophers on this fundamental question, may be accounted for, in a great measure, by the implicit confidence which they have reposed in Condillac, (whom a late author has distinguished by the title of the Father of Ideology), as a faithful expounder of Locke's doctrines; and by the weight which Locke's authority has thus lent to the glosses and inferences of his ingenious disciple. In the introduction to Condillac's Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, after remarking, that "a philosopher often announces the truth, without being aware of it himself;" he adds, that it seems to have been, by some accident of this sort, that the Peripatetics were led to assume, as a principle, that all our knowledge comes by the senses:-a principle which they were so far from comprehending, that none of them was able to unfold it in detail; and which it was reserved for the moderns to bring to light, after a long succession of ages."

"Bacon," the same author continues, "was perhaps the first who perceived it; having made it the groundwork of a treatise, in which he gives excellent precepts for the advancement of the sciences. The Cartesians rejected it with contempt, because they formed their judgment of it only upon the statement given by the Peripatetics. At last, Locke laid hold of it, and has the merit of being the first by whom its truth was demonstrated."

Of the meaning which Condillac annexed to this discovery of Locke, a sufficient estimate may be formed from the following sentence: "According to the system which derives all our knowledge from' the senses, nothing is more easy than to form a precise notion of what is meant by the word idea. Our ideas are only sensations, or portions abstracted from some sensation, in order to be considered apart. Hence two sorts of ideas, the sensible and the abstract." On other occasions, he tells us, that "all the operations of the understanding are only transformed sensations; and that the

• Destutt-Tracy. Traité des Systèmes, p. 68. "Le jugement, la réflexion, les désirs, les passions, &c. ne sont que la sensation même qui se transforme différemment."-Traité des Sensations, p. 4.)

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