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 aloof 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 show 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.