145. But it is far from being necessary for us to hunt after deductions; the philosopher himself, in the midst of his obscurity and enigmatical language, does not cease to lay down in the most precise manner this monstrous doctrine. Let us hear how he speaks in his transcendental Logic, where he proposes to explain the relation of the understanding to objects in general, and the possibility of knowing them _a priori_. "The order and regularity in phenomena, that which we call nature, _is consequently our own work_; we should not find it there if we had not placed it there by the nature of our mind; for this natural unity must be a necessary unity, that is to say, a certain unity _a priori_ of the connection of the phenomena. But how could we produce a synthetic unity _a priori_, if there were not in the primitive sources of our mind subjective reasons of this unity _a priori_, and if these subjective conditions were not at the same time _objectively valid_, since they are the grounds of the possibility of knowing in general an object in experience?"[65] Who does not see in these words the germ of Fichte's system, which deduces from the _me_ the _not-me_, that is to say, the world, and gives to nature no other validity than that which it has received from the _me_? [65] Kant, _Critik der reinen Vernunft, Trause. Log._ 146. But Kant is still more explicit, where he is explaining the nature and attributes of the understanding. He says: "We have before defined the understanding in different ways; we have called it a spontaneity of knowledge, (in opposition to the receptivity of sensibility,) a faculty of thought, or rather, a faculty of conceptions or judgments; these definitions, rightly explained, are but one. We may now characterize it as a _faculty of rules_. This character is more fruitful, and comes nearer to the essence of the thing: sensibility gives us forms (of intuition) and the understanding rules. The latter is always applied to the observation of phenomena in order to find in them some rule. The rules, if objective, (if, consequently, necessarily united to the knowledge of the object,) are called laws. Although we know many laws by experience, still these laws are only particular determinations of other higher laws, the highest of which (to which all the others are subjected) _proceed_ a priori _from the understanding itself_, and are not taken from experience, but, on the contrary, they give to the phenomena their validity, and therefore make experience possible. The understanding, then, is not simply a faculty of making rules for itself, and comparing phenomena; _it is also the legislation for nature; that is to say, that without the understanding there would be no nature_, or synthetic unity of the multiplicity of phenomena according to certain rules. For the phenomena, as such, cannot exist out of us; on the contrary, they only exist in our sensibility; but this, as the object of the knowledge in an experience, with all that