begin with experience, though they arise not from it, but from the mind itself. Whenever, then, a proposition has the character of universality and necessity, it must have received this character from the mind. We have no other guarantee that it is strictly necessary and universal than because the mind imparts to it that character. From the mental faculty, therefore, not from absolute objective truth and reality, this proposition, for example, every change must have a cause, derives its universality and necessity. Its truth, therefore, as a general proposition, is only apparent, we are not warranted in assuming that it is absolute, real. It is the same with all other propositions that have the character of necessity and universality, and, of course, with the conclusions deduced from them, their truth cannot be known as objective, absolute, real truth, but only as apparent and subjective. The intellect does not create the objects which it apprehends, but it induces upon them a certain form, certain conditions of its own making; it stands towards them in a relation somewhat analogous to that in which the eye views the manycoloured rainbow, every tint of which we imagine to hang above us in the heavens, though science tells us that its glorious hues are all in the eye, and arise out of its peculiar organization.

This is, in truth, the basis on which the entire of Kant's doctrine rests. It is, in many respects, different from idealism, particularly the idealism advocated by Berkley. The philosopher of Cloyne admitted the reality of things, and our capability of knowing them. Kant insists that we can know nothing, as it is in se, that we cannot, e. g., know whether every change must have a cause, but only that it seems so to us, and if the mind were not constituted as it is, it might seem otherwise. Berkley did not hesitate to recognize the existence of noumena, on the contrary, he maintained that the mind stands face to face with them, perceives them immediately, and requires not the interposition of what are called sensations, ideas, intelligible species, or of a representative object of any kind to apprehend them. Kant retains the distinction between noumena and phenomenon, between truth in se, and truth in ordine ad nos; the latter only can we be certain of, but of the former we must for ever continue uncertain. Berkley's theory, at least in his own hands, is unquestionably dogmatic. Kant's so evidently leads to scepticism, that its

author himself was compelled to acknowledge that, in order to establish any proposition, we must abolish science and fall back upon credulity. In fact, Kant, though he professes to have set out chiefly with the intention of vindicating the principles of human knowledge from the attacks of Hume, comes to a conclusion virtually the same as that of the English philosophers; one says that our idea of cause and effect is to be traced to a habit of the mind, the other, that it arises from a law or form of the mind, but both equally deny our capability of knowing whether it be in se true that every change must have a

cause.

It will be asked if a system of philosophy based upon such a foundation as this could have ever occupied the serious attention of rational creatures-could have ever succeeded in moulding opinion or conciliating sympathy— above all, if it could have ever had a practical influence upon the religious views of thinking men. It only opens, some one may say, an arena for the subtle weaving of cobwebs-not the ground on which the lynx-eyed enemies of faith would take their stand for battle. Who, outside his own lecture-hall at Konigsberg, cares for the strange jargon, the uncouthly-worded paradoxes of Kant? Who has not common sense enough, without at all hearkening to the voice of the Church, to reject them?-nay, the man has no appreciation of the ridiculous, who can refrain from laughter at the old sophist's oracular air-his grotesque robes and cabalistic phrases. Well, it is not good to take the bread of the children and to cast it to the dogs. There is no better attested fact in history than that where divine faith has been abused, those who forfeited the precious gift have been uniformly led, sooner or later, into the most monstrous, and to a Catholic, almost inconceivable errors on matters connected with the Nature of God, with moral duty, and a future life. The principles of Kant's philosophy may seem to us an outrage upon reason itself; but if we recollect that these principles furnished the basis on which was to be constructed a system of theology and morals, we may feel less surprise at the wide popularity to which they attained outside the Church. At all events, in whatever way we may account for the phenomenonhowever intensely we may wonder at it, a system did grow up from those principles, and was permitted in the economy of Providence to lead astray a whole people-to

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penetrate beyond the country which gave it birth, and win adherents among men of the acutest intellect,-to have everywhere in Europe its lecturers, its poets, its essayists, its fictionists-and to become the only religion admitted by thousands of cultivated minds. Some of our well disposed, enlightened Catholic countrymen, who imagine that the Church may at times be rather sensitive about the faith of her children, and inclined to exaggerate the dangers that beset it-would probably think that a philosophical theory like Kant's, might, without let or hindrance, be submitted for study or discussion to the judgment of any young man at the university,-and, in fact, in the absence of every theological corrective, be safely left to refute itself. We will take the liberty of briefly citing for them the criticism pronounced on Kant's psychological speculations, by one or two illustrious writers, who would scarce be less impatient of a glaring absurdity than these same Catholics, and who would certainly not be less slow in detecting it. Cousin, observing on the general character of Kant's philosophy, the great fundamental tenet of which we have fairly placed before the reader, introduces the subject in this way. It was reserved for Germany-that country distinguished for deep thought and meditation,-the country which had produced Leibnitz and Wolf, to give to Idealism its true representative and exponent in the eighteenth century; this representative is the illustrious Kant. Kant, as well as Locke, is a disciple of Descartes; his speculations are stamped with the same general character, and proceed on the same method as Locke's,this character and this method being, in fact, the distinctive mark of modern philosophy. With a firm hand he separated philosophy from theology, he made consciousness the starting point of his analysis,-and in this only did he differ from Locke, that the one takes the origin of our knowledge to be sense,-the other à priori ideas or forms of the mind.

Kant is indisputably the founder of a rational psychology.. Madame de Staël tells us that "at the period when Kant's Critic of Reason' was published, there had been two current systems of philosophy-the sensational and the ideal. Between these reason went on habitually straying till Kant undertook to define the boundaries of the two empires- of the senses and of

The

the mind-of the external and internal worlds. intellectual power which he manifested in tracing these limits, had perhaps been unequalled among his predecessors. It would be easy to collect a volume of panegyrics pronounced upon Kant by the savans of different countries, but the most unequivocal evidence of the value set upon the principles of his philosophy, is to be found in the enthusiasm with which they were taken up, and made to give a colour to every department of German science and literature. Kant himself, though he did not publish the "Critic" until after his life had been far advanced, lived to see a disciple, or proselyte to his views, in almost every university chair in his native country.

If a Catholic is unable to appreciate the fundamental principles of German philosophy, he will probably be still less tolerant of their development and application in the hands of Kant's followers. The theories propounded by Fichte, Jacobi, Schelling, Hegel, each of whose names stands at the head of a separate and independent school, are scarce of a character to compensate, in a religious point of view, for the sceptical philosophy of Kant. The creed of them all consists of but one dogma, however differently they may word it, or attempt to establish it, and that is Pantheism. In a future number we propose, if the subject should be worth resuming, to place before our readers a more detailed account of their respective systems, as well as of that propounded in France by M. Cousin. For the present we must be content with observing that all the great modern Schools of Philosophy set up on the principle that individual reason is independent of authority, are, in spirit, and the tendency of their doctrines, one and the same as the ancient schools of Alexandria. The best of them do, in fact, glory in reproducing the very theories which Julian the Apostate delighted to ponder over, and which he opposed so vehemently to the simplicity of the Gospel. They cannot succeed now any more than they did then, for the truth of God remains for ever. Nay, in the character of these schools, and in the manner in which they have come to supersede almost every other form of religious error, Pantheism being, according even to such a writer as Mr. Rogers, the chief error of our time, it is not impossible to detect a good augury, the dawn of brighter days for the Church. For would it not seem that all the strength of the gates of hell has been tried

against her, that heresy has assailed her on every point that might appear vulnerable, and with every kind of weapon, that the enemy is now at last compelled to fall back upon precisely the same mode of attack which he adopted in the first age of her history, and she still rises before us amid opposition ever varying, like a cliff of granite amid clouds and winds?

In the preceding remarks we have been trying to establish the necessity of admitting the influence of authority in philosophical matters, but we have been compelled to confine the argument to a merely negative view of the subject; we have rather been pointing out the incompetence of reason, when depending on its own resources alone, to arrive at a safe conclusion on all those questions concerning the nature of God which are discussed in Metaphysics, than setting forth the positive claims which authority has to direct reason in the solution of them. However, even from the imperfect way in which we have been compelled to deal with the subject, we trust that we have made it sufficiently clear that it is extremely dangerous to faith to overlook or ignore revealed truth in the study of Philosophy.

ART. VIII.—A Bill to Promote Education in England, (prepared and brought in by LORD JOHN RUSSELL and MR. HASTINGS.) Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 8 February, 1855.

LITTLE; we fear, is known about the provisions of

this Bill. It was ushered into existence at a time when other questions involving the fate of ministries, and therefore more interesting, if not more important, absorbed the public attention. We consequently may perhaps be usefully employed if we convey to our readers some brief explanation of the purport of this proposed measure. It is a peculiar Bill, peculiar in reference to the subject of Education which it proposes to place on a totally new