section which treats the question of space--not only quadrates with the facts of geometry, but also, by the _subjective_ character which it attributes to space, is the very first philosophic scheme which explains and accounts for the cogency of geometrical evidence. These are the two primary merits of the transcendental theory--_1st_, Its harmony with mathematics, and the fact of having first, by its doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical evidence; _2dly_, That it has filled up, by means of its doctrine of categories, the great _hiatus_ in all schemes of the human understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest, with a reserve as to the part which concerns the _practical_ reason (or will), is of more questionable value, and leads to manifold disputes. But I contend that, had transcendentalism done no other service than that of laying a foundation, sought but not found for ages, to the human understanding--namely, by showing an intelligible genesis to certain large and indispensable ideas--it would have claimed the gratitude of all profound inquirers. To a reader still disposed to undervalue Kant's service in this respect, I put one parting question--Wherefore he values Locke? What has _he_ done, even if value is allowed in full to his pretensions? Has the reader asked himself _that_? He gave a _negative_ solution at the most. He told his reader that certain disputed ideas were _not_ deduced thus and thus. Kant, on the other hand, has given him at the least a _positive_ solution. He teaches him, in the profoundest revelation, by a discovery in the most absolute sense on record, and the most entirely a single act--without parts, or contributions, or stages, or preparations from other quarters--that these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the experience assigned by Locke, inasmuch as they are themselves _previous conditions under which any experience at all is possible_: he teaches him that these ideas are not mystically originated, but are, in fact, but another phasis of the functions or forms of his own understanding; and, finally, he gives consistency, validity, and a charter of authority, to certain modes of _nexus_ without which the sum total of human experience would be a rope of sand. In terminating this slight account of the Kantian philosophy, I may mention that, in or about the year 1818-19, Lord Grenville, when visiting the lakes of England, observed to Professor Wilson that, after five years' study of this philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of my own.