But this is only an ethnographical enumeration of the schools of the eighteenth century. It is above all necessary to consider them in their characters, analogous or opposite. The Anglo-French school particularly represents empiricism and sensualism, that is to say, an almost exclusive importance attributed in all parts of human knowledge to experience in general, and especially to sensible experience. The Scotch school and the German school represent a more or less developed spiritualism. Finally, there are philosophers, for example, Hutcheson, Smith, and others, who, mistrusting the senses and reason, give the supremacy to sentiment. Such are the philosophic schools in the presence of which the nineteenth century is placed. We are compelled to avow, that none of these, to our eyes, contains the entire truth. It has been demonstrated that a considerable part of knowledge escapes sensation, and we think that sentiment is a basis neither sufficiently firm, nor sufficiently broad, to support all human science. We are, therefore, rather the adversary than the partisan of the school of Locke and Condillac, and of that of Hutcheson and Smith. Are we on that account the disciple of Reid and Kant? Yes, certainly, we declare our preference for the direction impressed upon philosophy by these two great men. We regard Reid as common sense itself, and we believe that we thus eulogize him in a manner that would touch him most. Common sense is to us the only legitimate point of departure, and the constant and inviolable rule of science. Reid never errs; his method is true, his general principles are incontestable, but we will willingly say to this irreproachable genius,--_Sapere aude_. Kant is far from being as sure a guide as Reid. Both excel in analysis; but Reid stops there, and Kant builds upon analysis a system irreconcilable with it. He elevates reason above sensation and sentiment; he shows with great skill how reason produces by itself, and by the laws attached to its exercise, nearly all human knowledge; there is only one misfortune, which is that all this fine edifice is destitute of reality. Dogmatical in analysis, Kant is skeptical in his conclusions. His skepticism is the most learned, most moral, that ever existed; but, in fine, it is always skepticism. This is saying plainly enough that we are far from belonging to the school of the philosopher of Koenigsberg.