The term critique or criticism, as employed by Kant, is of English origin. It appears in seventeenth and eighteenth century English, chiefly in adjectival form, as a literary and artistic term--for instance, in the works of Pope, who was Kant’s favourite English poet. Kant was the first to employ it in German, extending it from the field of aesthetics to that of general philosophy. A reference in Kant’s _Logic_[64] to Home’s _Elements of Criticism_[65] would seem to indicate that it was Home’s use of the term which suggested to him its wider employment. “Critique of pure reason,” in its primary meaning, signifies the passing of critical judgments upon pure reason. In this sense Kant speaks of his time as “the age of criticism (_Zeitalter der Kritik_).” Frequently, however, he takes the term more specifically as meaning a critical investigation leading to positive as well as to negative results. Occasionally, especially in the _Dialectic_, it also signifies a discipline applied to pure reason, limiting it within due bounds. The first appearance of the word in Kant’s writings is in 1765 in the _Nachricht_[66] of his lectures for the winter term 1765-1766. Kant seldom employs the corresponding adjective, critical (_kritisch_). His usual substitute for it is the term transcendental. _Pure_ (_rein_) has here a very definite meaning. It is the absolutely _a priori_. Negatively it signifies that which is independent of experience. Positively it signifies that which originates from reason itself, and which is characterised by universality and necessity.[67] By “pure reason” Kant therefore means reason in so far as it supplies out of itself, independently of experience, _a priori_ elements that as such are characterised by universality and necessity.