The earlier of the modern thinkers--Descartes among the rationalists, and Bacon among the empiricists--are full of hope. They have confidence in the human spirit. But increased reflection seemed only to bring distrust with it. The history of rationalism in theology showed that, in such matters, reason could prove absolutely opposing positions. Most men were ready to accept Hume’s dictum that any one who follows his reason must be a fool and take refuge in an indifferentism which accepts whatever happens to be there. The remedy for this state of affairs, Kant finds, is the critical method; for disbelief in reason is the reaction from overconfidence in it. Men had thought that reason could prove everything. Because these hopes had been frustrated, they now thought that it could prove nothing. Philosophy, he was convinced, would oscillate between overweening confidence and unwarranted distrust in itself until it had criticised human reason and discovered what it could do and what it could not. This is the task he set before himself. As the failure of eighteenth century philosophy, which had led to distrust of all philosophy, had been twofold--failure to give an intelligible explanation of the processes of scientific thought, and failure to find any standard by which to mediate between the conflicting claims of science and religion--the task of the critical philosophy is twofold. It attempts to explain and to justify the methods and assumptions of the sciences, and to find some solution of the conflict between theories of the world which seem to be based upon these methods and the assumptions and claims of morality and religion. *CHAPTER II* *KANT’S STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM. SYNTHETIC A PRIORI JUDGMENTS*