human experience. Let a man meditate but a little on
this or other aspects of this transcendental philosophy, and he will
find the steadfast earth itself rocking as it were beneath his feet; a
world about him, which is in some sense a world of deception; and a
world before him, which seems to promise a world of confusion, or '_a
world not realised_.' All this he might deduce for himself without
further aid from Kant. However, the particular purposes to which Kant
applies his philosophy, from the difficulties which beset them, are
unfitted for anything below a regular treatise. Suffice it to say
here, that, difficult as these speculations are from one or two
embarrassing doctrines on the Transcendental Consciousness, and
depressing as they are from their general tendency, they are yet
painfully irritating to the curiosity, and especially so from a sort
of _experimentum crucis_, which they yield in the progress of their
development on behalf of the entire doctrine of Kant--a test which, up
to this hour, has offered defiance to any hostile hand. The test or
defiance which I speak of, takes the shape of certain _antinomies_ (so
they are termed), severe adamantine arguments, affirmative and
negative, on two or three celebrated problems, with no appeal to any
possible decision, but one, which involves the Kantian doctrines. A
_quaestio vexata_ is proposed--for instance, the _infinite divisibility
of matter_; each side of this question, _thesis_ and _antithesis_, is
argued; the logic is irresistible, the links are perfect, and for each
side alternately there is a verdict, thus terminating in the most
triumphant _reductio ad absurdum_--viz. that A, at one and the same
time and in the same sense, is and is not B, from which no escape is
available, but through a Kantian solution. On any other philosophy, it
is demonstrated that this opprobrium of the human understanding, this
scandal of logic, cannot be removed. This celebrated chapter of
_antinomies_ has been of great service to the mere polemics of the
transcendental philosophy: it is a glove or gage of defiance,
constantly lying on the ground, challenging the rights of victory and
supremacy so long as it is _not_ taken up by any antagonist, and
bringing matters to a short decision when it _is_.

One section, and that the introductory section, of the transcendental
philosophy, I have purposely omitted, though in strictness not to be
insulated or dislocated from the faithful ex