24 Philosophy of the Human Mind. 



Professor Kant teaches that all men have a 

 certain innate faculty, consisting in the capacity 

 of the soul to receive immediate representations of 

 objects; that the representations which this sensi- 

 tive faculty affords us are perceptions; that all our 

 perceptions have a two-fold form, space and time; 

 that this faculty ought to be called theoretical rea+ 

 son, or speculative understanding ; and that it is of 

 so limited a nature that it cannot perceive any thing 

 beyond the two forms already mentioned, one of 

 which belongs to the perception of our internal, 

 and the other to that of our external senses. He 

 maintains, that the objects which we perceive in 

 space exist not externally, but only internally; 

 they are mere phenomena, but cannot be said to 

 be only ideal, nor to have no objective reality; 

 because they depend on established laws, and real 

 principles. When, therefore, they are said to exists 

 no more is meant than that they are perceived in 

 space, or in the form of external organization. He 

 believes, that as the nature and form of our per- 

 ceptions are determined by the nature of our sensi- 

 ble faculty, so the form of our thoughts, or the 

 manner in which we judge concerning phenomena^ 

 or arrange our perceptions, is determined by the 

 nature of our theoretical reason; and as that w r hich, 

 wmen knowledge is obtained by means of the 

 senses, gives a form to the matter perceived, is 

 called a pure perception ; so that by which we de- 

 termine the connection of our observations, and 

 form a judgment concerning them, is called a pure 

 notion, or category. Those pure notions which are 

 discoverable by an analysis of the judgment, may 

 be reduced to notions of quantity, quality, rela- 

 tion and modification. These categories, consi- 

 dered abstractedly, are not deduced from our per- 

 ceptions and experience, but exist in the mind 

 prior to these latter, and experience is the result of 



