an ineradicable belief in the existence of objects apart from per- 

 ception. Here, in Hume, is a doctrine of knowledge by which, 

 evidently, Kant was greatly influenced. The great English thinker 

 and the great German thinker, generally supposed to be so much at 

 variance, are, at this important point and in many others as well, 

 quite in agreement. But the wonderful significance of Hume's posi- 

 tion for philosophy and science and religion was not appreciated by 

 the English and Scotch thinkers who succeeded him. His influence 

 upon empirical psychology in England was, however, enduring and 

 lasting, but to men like Reid and Stewart the great task and duty of 

 philosophy were to refute in the supposed interest of common- 

 sense and morals the "sceptical" arguments of David Hume. 

 That they failed is due to two reasons; first, they did not under- 

 stand Hume's so-called scepticism, and secondly, they failed criti- 

 cally to consider their own presuppositions. 



This final conclusion of the English empirical standpoint of 

 Hobbes and Locke, a standpoint taken from the tremendous move- 

 ment of natural science just preceding and contemporaneous with 

 them, became now in the hands of Hume reduced to its ultimate 

 logical result. And, no doubt, the import of such an examination 

 of the empirical Theory of Knowledge was far-reaching enough to 

 be revolutionary in the current conceptions of morals and religion. 

 The implication of such an issue, especially for religion, whether 

 natural or revealed, did not escape the keen eye of Hume, as his 

 analysis of the data of morals and religion shows. But the very 

 thing which Empiricism had shown to be unknown was claimed by 

 the rationalists not only to be known but to be most surely known, 

 for the operations of Reason were supposed to have a far greater 

 certainty than the operations of mere sense. Thus the world of 

 science and philosophy, represented by Empiricism and Rational- 

 ism, became divided into two utterly hostile camps. Thus arose 

 the necessity for a critical examination of the claims of both. Such 

 examination has been styled the Critical philosophy, of which 

 Immanuel Kant is supposed to have been the first great modern 

 representative. But whether Kant has really answered the position 

 of Hume we must now endeavour to investigate. In order to do 

 that, however, it will be necessary first to trace, briefly, the devel- 

 opment of Rationalism, prior to Kant, through its main advocates 

 Des Cartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wolff. 



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