The Pure Reason having thus been proved to be, it is next required to show the mode of its activity. This can best be done, by first noticing the _kind_ of results which it produces. The Reason gives us, not thoughts, but ideas. These are simple, pure, primary, necessary. It is evident that any such object of mental examination can be known only in, and by, itself. It cannot be analyzed, for it is simple. It cannot be compared, for it is pure; and so possesses no element which can be ground for a comparison. It cannot be deduced, for it is primary and necessary. _It can only be seen._ Such an object must be known under the following circumstances. It must be inherent in the seeing faculty, and must be _immediately and directly seen_ by that faculty; all this in such a manner, that the abstraction of the object seen, would annihilate the faculty itself. Now, how is it with the Reason? Above we found it to be both capacity and faculty: capacity in that it possessed as integral elements, _a priori_ first principles, as objects of sight; faculty in that it saw, brought forward, and made available, those principles. The mode of activity of the Pure Reason is then a _seeing_, direct, immediate, _sure_; which holds pure truth _fast_, right in the very centre of the field of vision. This act of the Reason in thus seeing pure truth is best denominated an intuition of the Reason. And here it may be said,--If perception and perceive could be strictly confined to the Sense; concept and conceive to the Understanding; and intuition and intuit to the Reason, a great gain would be made in accuracy of expression regarding these departments of the mind. Having thus, as it is believed, established the fact of the existence of a Pure Reason, and shown the mode of its activity, it devolves to declare the function of that faculty. The function of the Pure Reason is, first:--to intuit, by an immediate perception, the _a priori_ elemental principles which condition all being; second,--to intuit, by a like immediate perception, those principles, combined in _a priori_ systematic processes, which are the conditional ideal forms for all being; and third,--again to intuit, by another immediate perception, precisely similar in kind to the others, the fact, at least, of the perfectly harmonious combination of all _a priori_ elemental principles, in all possible systematic processes, into a perfect unity,--an absolute, infinite Person,--God. To illustrate. 1. The Reason asserts that "Malice is criminal;" and that it is _necessarily_ criminal; or, in other words, that no act, of any will, can make it otherwise than it is. The assertion, then, that "Malice is criminal," is an axiom, and conditions all being, God as well as man. 2. The Reason asserts that every mathematical form must be seen in Space and Time, and it affirms the same necessity in this as in the former case.