edition omit some few passages from various parts of the _Critique_; but this is in the main owing to his desire to protect himself against serious misunderstanding to which, as he found, he had very unguardedly laid himself open. The alterations of the second edition are chiefly of the nature of additions. Adickes’ theory[5] that Kant in the “four to five months” composed a brief outline of his entire argument, and that it was upon the framework of this outline that the _Critique_ was elaborated out of the older manuscript, may possibly be correct. It has certainly enabled Adickes to cast much light upon many textual problems. But his own supplementary hypothesis in regard to the section on the _Antinomies_, namely, that it formed an older and separate treatise, may very profitably be further extended. Surely it is unlikely that with the expectation, continued over many years, of completion within a few months, Kant did not possess, at least for the _Aesthetic_, _Dialectic_, and _Methodology_, a general outline, that dated further back than 1780. And doubtless this outline was itself altered, patched, and recast, in proportion as insight into the problems of the _Analytic_, the problems, that is to say, which caused publication to be so long deferred, deepened and took final form. The composite character of the _Critique_ is largely concealed by the highly elaborate, and extremely artificial, arrangement of its parts. To the general plan, based upon professedly logical principles, Kant has himself given the title, architectonic; and he carries it out with a thoroughness to which all other considerations, and even at times those of sound reasoning, are made to give way. Indeed, he clings to it with the unreasoning affection which not infrequently attaches to a favourite hobby. He lovingly elaborates even its minor detail, and is rewarded by a framework so extremely complicated that the most heterogeneous contents can be tidily arranged, side by side, in its many compartments. By its uniformity and rigour it gives the appearance of systematic order even when such order is wholly absent. But we have still to consider the chief reason for the contradictory character of the contents of the _Critique_. It is inseparably bound up with what may perhaps be regarded as Kant’s supreme merit as a philosophical thinker, especially as shown in the first _Critique_,--namely, his open-minded recognition of the complexity of his problems, and of the many difficulties which lie in the way of any solution which he is himself able to propound. Kant’s method of working seems to have consisted in alternating between the various possible solutions, developing each in turn, in the hope that some midway position, which would share in the merits of all, might finally disclose itself. When, as frequently happened, such a midway solution could not be found, he developed his thought along the parallel lines of the alternative views.