be[1]; and that even one's own Self, considered as a subject, is also for one only a phenomenon, an appearance, concerning the intimate essence of which one can learn nothing.[2] Kant felt indeed the terrible contradiction into which he had fallen; but instead of retracing courageously his steps, and seeking above reason for the principles of knowledge that it did not possess, he continued his descending movement which he called transcendental, and finally discovered beneath this pure Reason, a certain practical Reason, to which he confided the destinies of the greatest subjects with which man can be occupied: God, nature, and himself. This practical reason, which is no other than common sense, ought, according to him, to bring man to believe what is not given him to know,[3] and to engage him, through the need of his own felicity, to follow the paths of virtue, and to admit the system of recompense which proceeds from the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Thus, this common sense, already invoked to aid the existence of the physical subjects which Berkeley reduced to nothingness, was called, under another name, to sustain that of the spiritual beings which Kant admitted baffling the action of his pure reason; but this faculty, vainly proposed by Shaftesbury,[4] by Hutcheson,ə by Reid,[5] by Oswald,[6] by the celebrated Pascal himself,[7] to give a support to the first truths, and to furnish the principles of our moral and physical knowledge; this faculty, I say, whose seat is in the instinct, has been easily challenged as incompetent to pronounce upon the subjects which are outside the jurisdiction of its judgments;
- ↑ Krit. der Reinen Vernunft, s. 306, 518, 527, etc.
- ↑ Ibid., s. 135, 137. 399. etc.
- ↑ Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique de la Raison pratique), s. 5, 22, 219, 233, etc.
- ↑ Characteristics, London, 1737.
- ↑ Enquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principle of Common Sense.
- ↑ An Appeal to Common Sense, etc., Edinburgh, 1765.
- ↑ Pensées, § 21.
