Such is the outline of this author’s account of the intellect, which, after all, appears to be rather dogmatical than demonstrative. He is much more intent on raising an extensive and magnificent fabric, than on laying the foundations. Each part does not rest upon its own separate basis, but, like the workmanship of some lofty arch, is supported and rivetted to its place by the weight and regular balance of the whole. Kant does not appear to trouble himself about the evidence of any particular proposition, but to rely on the conformity and mutual correspondence of the different parts of his general system, and its sufficiency, if admitted, to explain all the phenomena of the human intellect with consistency and accuracy;—in the same manner as the decypherer infers that he has found the true key of the hieroglyphic hand-writing, when he is able to solve every difficulty by it. However profound and comprehensive we may allow the views of human nature unfolded by this philosopher to be, his method is necessarily defective in simplicity, clearness, and force. His reasoning is seldom any thing more than a detailed, paraphrased explanation of his original statement, instead of being (what it ought to be) an appeal to known facts, or a deduction from acknowledged principles, or a detection of the inconsistencies of other writers. The extreme involution and technicality of his style proceed from the same source; that is, from the necessity of adapting a conventional language to the artificial and arbitrary arrangement of his ideas. The whole of Kant’s system is evidently an elaborate antithesis or contradiction to the modern philosophy, and yet it is by no means a real approximation to popular opinion. Its chief object is to oppose certain fundamental principles to the _empirical_ or mechanical philosophy, and it either rejects or explains away the more common and established notions, except so far as they coincide with the rigid theory of the author. He sets out with a preconceived hypothesis; and all other facts and opinions are made to bend to a predominant purpose.