only one substance, or are there several? Either hypothesis is equally difficult to sustain. In other words, substance is nothing more than that law in virtue of which the mind connects phenomena in one and the same act of thought. Here, again, we are obliged to say that the preceding arguments against the objectivity of the notion of substance are, in our opinion, far from conclusive. In the first place, it seems to us a false philosophical method to exclude an object from the human mind because it suggests difficulties that we are incapable of solving. Every object must be presented to us as existing before we can judge of the possibility of that object. Perhaps we do not possess the means of solving all the questions which the existence of an object may suggest, but this is no reason why it should not exist. The existence of things cannot be subordinated to the limits of our understanding; it is this very principle which seems to us soundest of all in the "Kritik" of Kant. Even should we be for ever incapable of knowing whether there is one substance or whether there are many, even should we be for ever doomed to doubt as to this point, it would not follow that the existence of one or of many substances were thereby done away with. Moreover, the criticism of our author goes much further than the imperilling the objectivity of substance; it really bears against the very notion itself. If, in fact, every phenomenon being withdrawn, nothing remains any longer in my mind, it is not merely objective substance that vanishes, it is the notion itself. What, indeed, is a notion which, analyzed, comes to naught? And what is this necessary law which is a nonentity? Our author tells us that if we remove all the accidents there remains "nothing perceptible to the senses." This is mere tautology, for it is too evident that nothing sensible ought to remain in the notion, all sensible accidents having been withdrawn; but what does remain is that without which phenomena could not be connected. And this is no empty concept, for how should an empty concept have any uniting power? And, lastly, when the author, correcting himself, as we think, says that the notion of substance reduces itself to what he calls a "fundamental phenomenon," he does nothing but change the word, and in reality reverts to what we call substance. For in what sense does anything fundamental--that is to say, that to which other phenomena ultimately reduce themselves, and which cannot be reduced to any other--still preserve the name of phenomenon? All this, therefore, is but admitting under one name what has been denied under another.