himself warranted to proceed on the principles of the Critical Philosophy. The first impression, certainly, which his argument produces on the mind is, that his own opinion was favorable to the scheme of necessity. For if the reasonings of the Necessitarians be admitted to be satisfactory, and if nothing can be opposed to them but the incomprehensible proposition, that man neither exists in space nor in time, the natural inference is, that this proposition was brought forward rather to save appearances, than as a serious objection to the universality of the conclusion.

Here, however, Kant calls to his aid the principles of what he calls practical reason. Deeply impressed with a conviction that morality is the chief concern of man, and that morality and the freedom of the human will must stand or fall together, he exerts his ingenuity to show, that the metaphysical proof already brought of the possibility of free agency, joined to our own consciousness of à liberty of choice, affords evidence of the fact fully sufficient for the practical regulation of our conduct, although not amounting to what is represented as demonstration in the Critique of Pure Reason.*

The account of this part of Kant's doctrine given by M. Buhle agrees in substance with that of Mr. Nitsch: "Toute moralité des actions repose uniquement sur la disposition practique, en tant qu'elle est déterminée par la loi morale seule. Si l'on considère cette disposition comme phénomène dans la conscience; c'est un événement naturel, elle obéit à la loi de la causalité, elle repose sur ce que l'homme a éprouvé auparavant dans le tems, et elle fait partie du caractère empirique de l'homme. Mais on peut aussi la considérer comme un acte de la liberté raisonnable. Alors elle n'est plus soumise à la loi de la causalité; elle est indépendante de la condition du temps, elle se rapporte à une cause intelligible, la liberté, et elle fait partie du caractère intelligible de l'homme. On ne peut, à la vérité, point acquérir la moindre connoissance des objets intelligibles; mais la liberté n'est pas moins un fait de la conscience. Donc les actions extérieures sont indifférentes pour la moralité de l'homme. La bonté morale de l'homme consiste uniquement dans sa volonté moralement bonne, et celle-ci consiste en ce que la volonté soit déterminée par la loi morale seule." (Hist. de la Philosophie Moderne, par J. G. Buhle, Tom. VI. pp. 504, 505.

Very nearly to the same purpose is the following statement by the ingenious author of the article Leibnitz in the Biographie Universelle: " Comment accorder le fatum et la liberté, l'imputation morale et la dépendance des êtres finies? Kant croit échapper à cet écueil en ne soumettant à la loi de causalité (au déterminisme de Leibnitz) que le monde phénoménique, et en affranchissant de ce principe l'âme comme noumène, ou chose en soi, envisageant ainsi chaque action comme appartenant à un double série à la fois; à l'ordre physique où elle est enchaînée à ce qui précède et à ce qui suit par les liens communs de la nature, et à l'ordre morale, où une détermination produit un effet, sans que pour expliquer cette volition et son résultat, on soit renvoyé à un état antécédent.”

The author of the above passage is M. Staffer, to whom we are indebted for the article Kant in the same work. For Kant's own view of the subject consult his

It is impossible to combine together these two parts of the Kantian system, without being struck with the resemblance they bear to the deceitful sense of liberty to which Lord Kames had recourse (in the first edition of his Essays on Morality and Natural Religion,) in order to reconcile our consciousness of free agency with the conclusions of the Necessitarians. In both cases, the reader is left in a state of most uncomfortable scepticism, not confined to this particular question, but extending to every other subject which can give employment to the human faculties.*

In some respects, the functions ascribed by Kant to his practical reason are analogous to those ascribed to common sense in the writings of Beattie and Oswald. But his view of the subject is, on the whole, infinitely more exceptionable than theirs, inasmuch as it sanctions the supposition, that the conclusions of pure reason are, in certain instances, at variance with that modification of reason which was meant by our Maker to be our guide in life; whereas the constant language of the other writers is, that all the different parts of our intellectual frame are in the most perfect harmony with each other. The motto which Beattie has prefixed to his book,

แ

"Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit," expresses, in a few significant words, the whole substance of his philosophy.

It is to the same practical modification of reason that Kant appeals in favor of the existence of the Deity, and

Critique of Pure Reason, passim, particularly p. 99 et seq. of Born's Translation, Vol. III.

*The idea of Kant (according to his own explicit avowal) was, that every being, which conceives itself to be free, whether it be in reality so or not, is rendered by its own belief a moral and accountable agent. "Jam equidem dico: quæque natura, quæ non potest, nisi sub ideâ libertatis agere, propter id ipsum, respectu practico, reipsâ libera est; hoc est, ad eam valent cunctæ leges, cum libertate arctissime conjunctæ, perinde, ac voluntas ejus etiam per se ipsam, et in philosophiâ theoreticâ probata, libera declaretur." (Kantii Opera, Vol. II. p. 326.)

This is also the creed professed by the Abbé Galiani, a much more dangerous moralist than Kant, because he is always intelligible, and often extremely lively and amusing. "L'homme est donc libre, puisqu'il est intimément persuadé de l'être, et que cela vaut tout autant que la liberté. Voilà donc le méchanisme de l'univers expliqué clair comme de l'eau de roche." The same author farther remarks, "La persuasion de la liberté constitue l'essence de l'homme. On pourroit même définir l'homme un animal qui se croit libre, et ce seroit une définition complète." (Correspondance inédite de l'Abbé Guliani, Tome I. pp. 339, 340. A Paris, 1818.)

of a future state of retribution, both of which articles of belief he thinks derive the whole of their evidence from

the moral nature of man. His system, therefore, as far as I am able to comprehend it, tends rather to represent these as useful credenda, than as certain or even as probable truths. Indeed, the whole of his moral superstructure will be found to rest ultimately on no better basis than the metaphysical conundrum, that the human mind (considered as a noumenon, and not as a phenomenon) neither exists in space nor in time.

not aware.

That it was Kant's original aim to establish a system of scepticism, I am far from being disposed to think.* The probability is, that he began with a serious wish to refute the doctrines of Hume; and that, in the progress of his inquiries, he met with obstacles of which he was It was to remove these obstacles that he had recourse to practical reason; an idea which has every appearance of being an afterthought, very remote from his views when he first undertook his work. This, too, would seem, from the following passage (which I translate from Dégérando,) to have been the opinion of one of Kant's ablest German commentators, M. Reinhold: "Practical Reason," as Reinhold ingeniously observes, "is a wing which Kant has prudently added to his edifice, from a sense of the inadequacy of the original design to answer the intended purpose. It bears a manifest resemblance to what some philosophers call an appeal to sentiment, founding belief on the necessity of acting. Whatever contempt Kant may affect for popular systems of philosophy, this manner of considering the subject is not unlike the disposition of those who, feeling their inability to obtain, by the exercise of their reason, a direct conviction of their religious creed, cling to it nevertheless with a blind eagerness, as a support essential to their

*On the contrary, he declares explicitly (and I give him full credit for the sincerity of his words,) that he considered his Critique of Pure Reason as the only effectual antidote against the opposite extremes of scepticism and of superstition, as well as against various heretical doctrines, which at present infect the schools of philosophy. "Hac igitur solâ (Philosophia Critica) et materialismi, et fatalismi, et Atheismi, et diffidentia profanæ, et fanatismi, et superstitionis, quorum virus ad universos potest penetrare, tandemque etiam et idealismi, et scepticismi, qui magis scholis sunt pestiferi, radices ipsa possunt præcidi." (Kant. Præf. Posterior, p. xxxv.)

morals and their happiness." (Hist. Comparée, Vol. II. pp. 243, 244.)

The extraordinary impression produced for a considerable time in Germany, by the Critique of Pure Reason, is very shrewdly, and I suspect justly, accounted for by the writer last quoted: "The system of Kant was well adapted to flatter the weakness of the human mind. Curiosity was excited, by seeing paths opened which had never been trodden before. The love of mystery found a secret charm in the obscurity which enveloped the doctrine. The long and troublesome period of initiation was calculated to rouse the ambition of bold and adventurous spirits. Their love of singularity was gratified by the new nomenclature; while their vanity exulted in the idea of being admitted into a privileged sect, exercising, and entitled to exercise, the supreme censorship in philosophy. Even men of the most ordinary parts, on finding themselves called to so high functions, lost sight of their real mediocrity, and conceived themselves transformed into geniuses destined to form a new era in the history of reason.

"Another inevitable effect resulted from the universal change operated by Kant in his terms, in his classifications, in his methods, and in the enunciation of his problems. The intellectual powers of the greater part of the initiated were too much exhausted in the course of their long noviciate, to be qualified to judge soundly of the doctrine itself. They felt themselves, after so many windings, lost in a labyrinth, and were unable to dispense with the assistance of the guide who had conducted them so far. Others, after so great a sacrifice, wanted the courage to confess to the world, or to themselves, the disappointment they had met with. They attached themselves to the doctrine in proportion to the sacrifice they had made, and estimated its value by the labor it had cost them. As for more superficial thinkers, they drew an inference from the novelty of the form in favor of the novelty of the matter, and from the novelty of the matter, in favor of its importance.

"It is a great advantage for a sect to possess a distinguishing garb and livery. It was thus that the Peripatetics extended their empire so widely, and united their subjects in one common obedience. Kant had, over and above all this, the art of insisting, that his disciples should belong exclusively to himself. He explicitly announced, that he was not going to found a school of Eclectics, but a school of his own; a school not only independent, but in some measure hostile to every other; that he could admit of no compromise with any sect whatever; that he was come to overturn every thing which existed in philosophy, and to erect a new edifice on these immense ruins. The more decided and arrogant the terms were in which he announced his design, the more likely was it to succeed; for the human mind submits more easily to an unlimited than to a partial faith, and yields itself up without reserve, rather than consent to cavil about restrictions and conditions, even in favor of its own independence."

With these causes of Kant's success another seems to have powerfully conspired; the indissoluble coherence and concatenation of all the different parts of his philosophy. "It is on this concatenation," says M. Prévost, "that the admiration of Kant's followers is chiefly founded." Grant only (they boast) the first principles of the Critical Philosophy, and you must grant the whole system. The passage quoted on this occasion by M. Prévost is so forcibly expressed, that I cannot do it justice in an English version: "Ab hinc enim capitibus fluere necesse est omnem philosophiæ criticæ rationis puræ vim atque virtutem; namque in eâ contextus rerum prorsus mirabilis est, ita ut extrema primis, media utrisque, omnia omnibus respondeant; si prima dederis danda sunt omnia.”* No worse account could well have been given of a philosophical work on such a subject; nor could any of its characteristical features have been pointed out, more symp

* See some very valuable strictures on Kant, in the learned and elegant sketch of the present state of philosophy, subjoined to M. Prévost's French translation of Mr. Smith's posthumous works. The Latin panegyric on the Critical Philosophy is quoted from a work with which I am unacquainted, Fred. Gottlob Bornii de Scientià et Conjectura.