s this himself, somewhere in the Introduction to his
_Critik der reinen Vernunft_; and the passage is a memorable one.
Fifteen years at the least have passed since I read it; and,
therefore, I cannot pretend to produce the words; but the substance I
shall give; and I appeal to the candour of all his readers, whether
they have been able to apprehend his meaning. I certainly did not for
years. But, now that I do, the passage places his procedure in a most
striking and edifying light. Astronomers, says Kant, had gone on for
ages, assuming that the earth was the central body of our system; and
insuperable were the difficulties which attended that assumption. At
length, it occurred to try what would result from inverting the
assumption. Let the earth, instead of offering a fixed centre for the
revolving motions of other heavenly bodies, be supposed itself to
revolve about some one of these, as the sun. That supposition was
tried, and gradually all the phenomena which, before, had been
incoherent, anomalous, or contradictory, began to express themselves
as parts of a most harmonious system. 'Something,' he goes on to say,
'analogous to this I have practised with regard to the subject of my
inquiry--the human understanding. All others had sought their central
principle of the intellectual phenomena out of the understanding, in
something external to the mind. I first turned my inquiries upon the
mind itself. I first applied my examination to the very analysis of
the understanding.' In words, not precisely these, but pretty nearly
equivalent to them, does Kant state, by contradistinction, the value
and the nature of his own procedure. He first, according to his own
representation, thought of applying his investigation to the mind
itself. Here was a passage which for years (I may say) continued to
stagger and confound me. What! he, Kant, in the latter end of the 18th
century, about the year 1787--he the first who had investigated the
mind! This was not arrogance so much as it was insanity. Had he
said--I, first, upon just principles, or with a fortunate result,
investigated the human understanding, he would have said no more than
every fresh theorist is bound to suppose, as his preliminary apology
for claiming the attention of a busy world. Indeed, if a writer, on
any part of knowledge, does _not_ hold himself superior to all his
predecessors, we are entitled to say--Then, why do you presume to
trouble us? It may _look_ like modes