Here, then, is a short derivation, in a very few words, of those ideas transcending sense, which all philosophy, the earliest, has been unable to dispense with, and yet none could account for. Thus, for example, every act of reasoning must, in the first place, express itself in distinct propositions; that is, in such as contain a subject (or that concerning which you affirm or deny something), a predicate (that which you affirm or deny), and a copula, which connects them. These propositions must have what is technically called, in logic, a certain _quantity_, or compass (viz. must be universal, particular, or singular); and again they must have what is called _quality_ (that is, must be affirmative, or negative, or infinite): and thus arises a ground for certain corresponding ideas, which are Kant's categories of quantity and quality. But, to take an illustration more appropriately from the very idea which first aroused Kant to the sense of a vast hiatus in the received philosophies--the idea of _cause_, which had been thrown as an apple of discord amongst the schools, by Hume. How did Kant deduce this? Simply thus: it is a doctrine of universal logic, that there are three varieties of syllogism--viz. 1st, Categoric, or directly declarative [_A is B_]; 2nd, Hypothetic, or conditionally declarative [_If C is D, then A is B_]; 3rd, Disjunctive, or declarative, by means of a choice which exhausts the possible cases [_A is either B, or C, or D; but not C or D; ergo B_]. Now, the idea of _causation_, or, in Kant's language, the category of Cause and Effect, is deduced immediately, and most naturally, as the reader will acknowledge on examination, from the 2nd or hypothetic form of syllogism, when the relation of dependency is the same as in the idea of causation, and the _necessary_ connection a direct type of that which takes place between a cause and its effect. 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. 2ndly, The postulate is fulfilled without mysticism or Platonic reveries. Ideas, however indispensable to human needs, and even to the connection 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.