ophy. Even to these two or three out of each hundred, I shall
not venture to ascribe a larger curiosity than with respect to the
most general 'whereabouts' of its position--from what point it
starts--whence and from what aspect it surveys the ground--and by what
links from this starting-point it contrives to connect itself with the
main objects of philosophic inquiry.

[Footnote 22: I might have mastered the philosophy of Kant, without
waiting for the German language, in which all his capital works are
written; for there is a Latin version of the whole, by Born, and a
most admirable digest of the cardinal work (admirable for its fidelity
and the skill by which that fidelity is attained), in the same
language, by Rhiseldek, a Danish professor. But this fact, such was
the slight knowledge of all things connected with Kant in England, I
did not learn for some years.]

Immanuel Kant was originally a dogmatist in the school of Leibnitz and
Wolf; that is, according to his trisection of all philosophy into
dogmatic, sceptical, and critical, he was, upon all questions,
disposed to a strong _affirmative_ creed, without courting any
particular examination into the grounds of this creed, or into its
assailable points. From this slumber, as it is called by himself, he
was suddenly aroused by the Humian doctrine of cause and effect. This
celebrated essay on the nature of necessary connection--so thoroughly
misapprehended at the date of its first publication to the world by
its _soi-disant_ opponents, Oswald, Beattie, &c., and so imperfectly
comprehended since then by various _soi-disant_ defenders--became in
effect the 'occasional cause' (in the phrase of the logicians) of the
entire subsequent philosophic scheme of Kant--every section of which
arose upon the accidental opening made to analogical trains of
thought, by this memorable effort of scepticism, applied by Hume to
one capital phenomenon among the necessities of the human
understanding. What is the nature of Hume's scepticism as applied to
this phenomenon? What is the main thesis of his celebrated essay on
cause and effect? For few, indeed, are they who really know anything
about it. If a man really understands it, a very few words will avail
to explain the _nodus_. Let us try. It is a necessity of the _human_
understanding (very probably not a necessity of a higher order of
intelligences) to connect its experiences by means of the idea of
_cause_ and its correlate, _effec