XV 



motto prefixed to the Critique of Pure Reason is 

 taken from Bacon. In undertaking it he compares 

 himself to Copernicus as referring the world of 

 thought to a new centre. The very first problem 

 he raises in the Critique and deals with as cardinal 

 to the whole question of the origin and limits of 

 human knowledge, is that of the nature of mathe- 

 matical science and its fundamental generating 

 intuitions, Space and Time. His criticism of the 

 operations of the understanding is all directed 

 towards re-establishing the validity of the idea of 

 physical causation, and the reliability of empirical 

 knowledge and natural science in opposition to the 

 scepticism of Hume. And when he comes to deal 

 with Pure Reason itself, in its highest struggles and 

 efforts to reach super-sensible knowledge of the 

 world, of the spiritual being of man, and of God, 

 he clips the wings of all airy speculation in this 

 sphere, by uncompromising reference to the world 

 of sensible reality; and he tries to demonstrate the 

 impossibility of speculative knowledge of these 

 supreme non-sensible objects, just by showing that 

 the methods and laws which are valid for empirical 

 science cannot be scientifically applied to them. 

 He is thus scientific all through, according to the 

 conception of science worked out in the Baconian 

 school ; and the results of his earliest and latest 

 speculations, notwithstanding their apparent contra- 

 diction, are, when rightly interpreted, in entire 

 harmony with each other. Kant has been called ' a 



