6 



intermediate speculations, and with reference to them, was 

 very different from maintaining it before ; and this is the 

 merit which Kant's admirers claim for him. Nor can it be 

 denied that his writings produced an immense effect upon 

 the mode of treating such questions in Germany ; and have 

 had, even in this country, an influence far beyond what 

 Mr Stewart would have deemed their due. 



But as injustice has thus been done to Kant by con- 

 founding his case with that of his predecessors of like opi- 

 nions, so on the other hand, injustice has also been done, 

 both to him and those who have followed him in the assertion 

 of ideas, by confounding their case with his. This injustice 

 seems to me to be committed by a writer on the History of 

 Philosophy, who has given an account of the successive schools 

 of philosophy up to our own time ; has assigned to Kant 

 an important and prominent place in the recent history of me- 

 taphysics ; but has still maintained that Kant's philosophy, 

 and indeed every philosophy, is and must be a failure. In 

 order to prove this thesis, the author naturally has to ex- 

 amine Kant's doctrines and the reasons assigned for them, 

 aiid to point out what he conceives to be the fallacy of 

 these arguments. This accordingly he professes to do ; but 

 as soon as he has entered upon the argument, he substi- 

 tutes, as his opponent, for the philosopher of Konigsberg, a 

 writer of our own time and country, who does not profess 

 himself a Kantian, who has been repeatedly accused, with 

 whatever justice, of misrepresenting what he has borrowed 

 from Kant, and whose main views are, in the opinion of the 

 writer himself, very different from Kant's. Mr Lewes *, in the 

 chapter entitled " Examination of Kant's Fundamental Prin- 

 ciples," after a preliminary statement of the points he intends 

 to consider, says " Now to the question. As Kant confessedly 

 was led to his own system by the speculations of Hume," and 

 so on ; and forthwith he introduces the name of Dr 

 * Biographical History of Philosophy, 1846. 



