Thus, then, without going one step further, the reader will find grounds enough for reflection, and for reverence towards Kant, in these two great results: 1st, That an order of ideas has been established which all deep philosophy has demanded, even when it could not make good its claim. This postulate is fulfilled. 2dly, The postulate is fulfilled without mysticism or Platonic reveries. Ideas, however indispensable to human needs, and even to the connexion of our thoughts, which came to us from nobody knew whence must for ever have been suspicious; and, as in the memorable instance cited from Hume, must have been liable for ever to a question of validity. But, deduced as they now are from a matrix within our own minds, they cannot reasonably fear any assaults of scepticism. Here I shall stop. A reader new to these inquiries may think all this a trifle. But he who reflects a little will see that, even thus far, and going no step beyond this point, the Kantian doctrine of the Categories answers a standing question hanging aloft as a challenge to human philosophy, fills up a _lacuna_ pointed out from the era of Plato. It solves a problem which has startled and perplexed every age: viz. this--that man is in possession, nay, in the hourly exercise, of ideas larger than he can show any title to. And, in another way, the reader may measure the extent of this doctrine, by reflecting that, even so far as now stated, it is precisely coextensive with the famous scheme of Locke. For what is the capital thesis of that scheme? Simply this--that all necessity for supposing immediate impressions made upon our understandings by God, or other supernatural, or antenatal, or connatal, agencies, is idle and romantic; for that, upon examining the furniture of our minds, nothing will be found there which cannot adequately be explained out of our daily experience; and, until we find something that cannot be solved by this explanation, it is childish to go in quest of higher causes. Thus says Locke: and his whole work, upon its first plan, is no more than a continual pleading of this single thesis, pursuing it through all the plausible objections. Being, therefore, as large in its extent as Locke, the reader must not complain of the transcendental scheme as too narrow, even in that limited section of it here brought under his notice. For the purpose of repelling it, he must do one of two things: either he must shew that these categories or transcendent notions are not susceptible of the derivation and genesis here assigned to them--that is, from the forms of the _logos_ or formal understanding; or, if content to abide by that derivation, he must allege that there are other categories besides those enumerated, and unprovided with any similar parentage.