4. On a subject so abstruse, it is not easy to make our distinctions very clear. Some of Brown's illustrations appear to approach very near to the doctrine of Kant. Thus he says[7\3], 'The _form_ of bodies is the relation of their elements to each other in space,--the _power_ of bodies is their relation to each other in time.' Yet notwithstanding such approximations in expression, the Kantian doctrine appears to be different from {181} the views of Stewart and Brown, as commonly understood. According to the Scotch philosophers, the cause and the effect are two things, connected in our minds by a law of our nature. But this view requires us to suppose that we can conceive the law to be absent, and the course of events to be unconnected. If we can understand what is the special force of this law, we must be able to imagine what the case would be if the law were non-existing. We must be able to conceive a mind which does not connect effects with causes. The Kantian doctrine, on the other hand, teaches that we cannot imagine events liberated from the connexion of cause and effect: this connexion is a condition of our conceiving any real occurrences: we cannot think of a real sequence of things, except as involving the operation of causes. In the Scotch system, the past and the future are in their nature independent, but bound together by a rule; in the German system, they share in a common nature and mutual relation, by the act of thought which makes them past and future. In the former doctrine cause is a tie which binds; in the latter it is a character which pervades and shapes events. The Scotch metaphysicians only assert the _universality_ of the relation; the German attempts further to explain its _necessity_. [Note 7\3: _Lectures_, vol. i. p. 127.]