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been a terra incognita, but the very antipodes of what it really is. Mr. Watson, in his instructive work, 'Kant and his English Critics,' is perfectly right when he says that, till very lately, Kant was regarded as a benighted a priori philosopher of the dogmatic type, afflicted with the hallucination that the most important part of our knowledge consists of innate ideas, lying in the depths of consciousness, and being capable of being brought to the light by pure introspection.' That Kant was the legitimate successor of Hume on one side, and of Berkeley on the other, was hardly conceived as possible. And thus it has happened that English philosophy, in spite of the large number of profound thinkers and brilliant writers who have served in its ranks during the last hundred years, has not yet risen above the level of Locke and Hume. No one can admire more than I do the dashing style in which some of the most popular writers of our time have ridden up to the very muzzles of the old philosophical problems, but if I imagine Kant looking back from his elevated position on those fierce and hopeless onslaughts, I can almost hear him say what was said by a French general at Balaclava: C'est magnifique, — mais ce n'est pas la guerre. Quite [xlv] true it is that but for Hume, and but for Berkeley, Kant would never have been, and philosophy would never have reached the heights which he occupies. But, after Kant, Hume and Berkeley have both an historical significance only. They represent a position which has been conquered and fortified, and has now been deliberately left behind.


Professor Noiré, when he had written for this work the antecedents of Kant's philosophy, sent me another most valuable contribution, containing a full analysis of that philosophy, considered not only as the continuation, but as the fulfilment of all other philosophical systems, and more particularly of the systems of Berkeley and Hume. For that work it was unfortunately impossible to find room in these volumes; but I still hope that it will not be withheld, in German at least, from those who, both in England and Germany, have learnt to appreciate Professor Noiré's accurate and luminous statements. Leaving therefore thetask of tracing minutely the intimate relation between Kantand his predecessors to the more experienced hand of my friend, I shall here be satisfied with pointing out in the broadest way the connection, and, at the same time, the diametrical


opposition between Kant and those two great heroes of speculative thought, Berkeley and Hume. Berkeley holds that all knowledge that seems to come to us from without through the senses or through experience is mere illusion, and that truth exists in the ideas of the pure understanding and of reason only.



Kant proves that all knowledge that comes to us from pure understanding and from pure reason only is mere illusion, and that truth is impossible



without experience. [xlvi] Hume holds that true causality is impossible, whether in experience or beyond experience. Kant proves that experience itself is impossible without the category of causality, and, of course, without several other categories also which Hume had overlooked, though they possess exactly the same character as the concept of causality.1 The gist of Kant's philosophy, as opposed to that of Hume, can be expressed in one line: That without which experience is


impossible, cannot be the result of experience, though it must never be applied beyond the limits of possible experience. Such broad statements and counter-statements may seem to destroy the finer .





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