hesis of that scheme? Simply
this--that all necessity for supposing immediate impressions made upon
our understandings by God, or other supernatural, or antenatal, or
connatal, agencies, is idle and romantic; for that, upon examining the
furniture of our minds, nothing will be found there which cannot
adequately be explained out of our daily experience; and, until we
find something that cannot be solved by this explanation, it is
childish to go in quest of higher causes. Thus says Locke: and his
whole work, upon its first plan, is no more than a continual pleading
of this single thesis, pursuing it through all the plausible
objections. Being, therefore, as large in its extent as Locke, the
reader must not complain of the transcendental scheme as too narrow,
even in that limited section of it here brought under his notice.

For the purpose of repelling it, he must do one of two things: either
he must show that these categories or transcendent notions are not
susceptible of the derivation and genesis here assigned to them--that
is, from the forms of the _logos_ or formal understanding; or, if
content to abide by that derivation, he must allege that there are
other categories besides those enumerated, and unprovided with any
similar parentage.

Thus much in reply to him who complains of the doctrine here stated;
as, 1st, Too narrow; or, 2nd, As insufficiently established. But, 3rd,
in reply to him who wishes to see it further pursued or applied, I
say that the possible applications are perhaps infinite. With respect
to those made by Kant himself, they are chiefly contained in his main
and elementary work, the _Critik der reinen Vernunft_; and they are of
a nature to make any man melancholy. Indeed, let a man consider merely
this one notion of _causation_; let him reflect on its origin; let him
remember that, agreeably to this origin, it follows that we have no
right to view anything _in rerum natura_ as objectively, or in itself
a cause; that when, upon the fullest philosophic proof, we call A the
cause of B, we do in fact only subsume A under the notion of a cause;
we invest it with that function under that relation, that the whole
proceeding is merely with respect to a _human_ understanding, and by
way of indispensable _nexus_ to the several parts of our experience;
finally, that there is the greatest reason to doubt, whether the idea
of _causation_ is at all applicable to any other world than this, or
any other than a