3d. Moreover, the value of principles is above all demonstration. Psychological analysis seizes, takes, as it were, by surprise, in the fact of intuition, an affirmation that is absolute, that is inaccessible to doubt; it establishes it; and this is equivalent to demonstration. To demand any other demonstration than this, is to demand of reason an impossibility, since absolute principles, being necessary to all demonstration, could only be demonstrated by themselves.[43] FOOTNOTES: [37] On conceptualism, as well as on nominalism and realism, see the _Introduction to the inedited works of Abelard_, and also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 21, p. 457; 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 20, p. 215, and the work already cited on the _Metaphysics of Aristotle_, p. 49: "Nothing exists in this world which has not its law more general than itself. There is no individual that is not related to a species; there are no phenomena bound together that are not united to a plan. And it is necessary there should really be in nature species and a plan, if every thing has been made with weight and measure, _cum pondere et mensura_, without which our very ideas of species and a plan would only be chimeras, and human science a systematic illusion. If it is pretended that there are individuals and no species, things in juxtaposition and no plan; for example, human individuals more or less different, and no human type, and a thousand other things of the same sort, well and good; but in that case there is nothing general in the world, except in the human understanding, that is to say, in other terms, the world and nature are destitute of order and reason except in the head of man." [38] See preceding lecture. [39] On the just limits of the personality and the impersonality of reason, see the following lecture, near the close. [40] We have everywhere maintained, that consciousness is the condition, or rather the necessary form of intelligence. Not to go beyond this volume, see farther on, lecture 5. [41] 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 494. [42] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iii., p. 450. [43] We have not thought it best to make this lecture lengthy by an exposition and detailed refutation of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and its sad conclusion; the little that we say of it is sufficient for our purpose, which is much less historical than dogmatical. We refer the reader to a volume that we have devoted to the father of German philosophy, 1st Series, vol. v., in which we have again taken up and developed some of the arguments that are here used, in which we believe that we have irresistibly exposed the capital defect of the transcendental logic of Kant, and of the whole German school, that it leads to skepticism, inasmuch as it raises superhuman, chimerical, extravagant problems, and, when well understood, cannot solve them. See especially lectures 6 and 8. LECTURE IV. GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.