If, by the present treatise, I have succeeded in deducing the result just expressed, it seems to me that every speculative philosopher who founds a conclusion upon the Principle of Sufficient Reason or indeed talks of a reason at all, is bound to specify which kind of reason he means. One might suppose that wherever there was any question of a reason, this would be done as a matter of course, and that all confusion would thus be impossible. Only too often, however, do we still find either the terms reason and cause confounded in indiscriminate use; or do we hear basis and what is based, condition and what is conditioned, _principia_ and _principiata_ talked about in quite a _general_ way without any nearer determination, perhaps because there is a secret consciousness that these conceptions are being used in an unauthorized way. Thus even Kant speaks of the thing in itself as the _reason_[161] of the phenomenon, and also of a _ground_ of the _possibility_ of all phenomena,[162] of an _intelligible cause_ of phenomena, of an _unknown ground_ of the possibility of the sensuous series in general, of a _transcendental object_[163] as the _ground_ of all phenomena and of the _reason_ why our sensibility should have this rather than all other supreme conditions, and so on in several places. Now all this does not seem to me to tally with those weighty, profound, nay immortal words of his,[164] "the contingency[165] of things is itself mere phenomenon, and can lead to no other than the empirical regressus which determines phenomena." [161] Or _ground_. [162] Kant, "Krit. d. r. Vern.," 1st edition, pp. 561, 562, 564; p. 590 of the 5th edition. (Pp. 483 to 486 of the English translation by M. Müller.) [163] _Ibid._ p. 540 of 1st edition, and 641 of 5th edition. (P. 466 of English translation.) [164] _Ibid._ p. 563 of the 1st and 591 of the 5th edition. (P. 485 of English translation.) [165] Empirical contingency is meant, which, with Kant, signifies as much as dependence upon other things. As to this, I refer my readers to my censure in my "Critique of Kantian Philosophy," p. 524 of the 2nd, and p. 552 of the 3rd edition. That since Kant the conceptions reason and consequence, _principium_ and _principiatum_, &c. &c., have been and still are used in a yet more indefinite and even quite transcendent sense, everyone must know who is acquainted with the more recent works on philosophy.