196 GEllMAN PHII.O^iOl'lJV. 



for granted two things which he received from his predecessors. First, 

 that in fact all knowledge commences with experience, that is to say, 

 that we do not know anything before our sensibility is affected by 

 something which appears not to come from it, so that the internal ac- 

 tivity by which we know is originally passive. The second is only an- 

 other aspect of the first, viz. that every internal modification reducible 

 to knowledge is perceived by him who experiences it; he has conscious- 

 ness. The me, or as Kant says, the / ilunk accompanies every act of 

 knowledge ; we have consciousness. 



As we penetrate furtlier into the system of Kant we cannot but won- 

 der that he at the outset adopted those two points without examining 

 them, or at least without perfectly defining them. He who piqued him- 

 self upon remaking everything, here took upon trust; 1st, the principle 

 of sensualism or of empiricism ; 2d, the principle of psychology as the 

 science of observation. This empirical concession is a singular com- 

 mencement for a transcendental system. 



The act of knowing, whatever it may be, may pass over into a judge- 

 ment ; external perception itself is a natural judgement (Reid.) Jn ev- 

 ery judgement one of these two things happens : it is affirmed either 

 that a thing is the thing tliat it is, — that this thing is such as we neces- 

 sarily know it whenever we know it; or that the thing is something 

 that we do not know anything about, tliat it is such that we are ignorant 

 what it is. In the first case the judgement does nothing but ex- 

 press, explain, unfold our knowledge, it is analytic. In the second, it 

 adds a new knowledge to the antecedent knowledge, it produces a more 

 complete notion of the subject. It makes an addition of the subject and 

 of its attribute, that is to say, it is synthetic. 



We remark again that this observation of Kant supposes the logical 

 theory of judgement, and tliat consequently logic, of which this theory 

 is the basis, may here be considered as an admitted principle, as a know- 

 ledge accepted anteriorly to all science. It is another premiss to be 

 joined to the other two, viz. sensible experience and consciousness. 



But among judgements, of whatever sort, some are contingent, oth- 

 ers necessary. The latter are judgements that express not a thing that 

 might not have been, but a thing the truth of which is wholly in the 

 reason. That which is necessary cannot but be, unless reason cease to 

 be reason. But can necessary judgements be derived from experience .'' 

 Experience is nothing but a fact, or rather a certain phenomenal modifi- 

 cation of our external or internal sensibility. Tiiis modification might 

 never have taken place, it is accidental ; but when it has once taken place, 

 our judgements area nccesyary result made. Are these judgements de- 



