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This is no trifling matter, and therefore no trifling advantage on the side of Kant and his philosophy, to all who are acquainted with the disagreeable controversies of late years among French geometricians of the first rank, and sometimes among British ones, on the question of mathematical evidence. Legendre and Professor Leslie took part in one such a dispute; and the temper in which it was managed was worthy of admiration, as contrasted with the angry controversies of elder days, if, indeed, it did not err in an opposite spirit, by too elaborate and too calculating a tone of reciprocal flattery. But think as we may of the discussion in this respect, most assuredly it was painful to witness so infirm a philosophy applied to an interest so mighty. The whole aerial superstructure–the heaven-aspiring pyramid of geometrical synthesis–all tottered under the palsying logic of evidence, to which these celebrated mathematicians appealed. And wherefore?–From the want of any philosophic account of space, to which they might have made a common appeal, and which might have so far discharged its debt to truth, as at least to reconcile its theory with the great outstanding phenomena in the most absolute of sciences. Geometry is the science of space: therefore, in any philosophy of space, geometry is entitled to be peculiarly considered, and used as a court of appeal. Geometry has these two further claims to distinction–that, 1st, It is the most perfect of the sciences, so far as it has gone; and, 2ndly, That it has gone the farthest. A philosophy of space, which does not consider and does not reconcile to its own doctrines the facts of geometry, which, in the two points of beauty and of vast extent, is more like a work of nature than of man, is, prima facie, of no value. A philosophy of space might be false, which should harmonise with the facts of geometry–it must be false, if it contradict them. Of Kant’s philosophy it is a capital praise, that its very opening section–that section which treats the question of space, not only quadrates with the facts of geometry, but also, by the subjective character which it attributes to space, is the very first philosophic scheme which explains and accounts for the cogency of geometrical evidence.

These are the two primary merits of the transcendental theory–1st, Its harmony with mathematics, and the fact of having first, by its doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical evidence; 2ndly, That it has filled up, by means of its doctrine of categories, the great hiatus in all schemes of the human understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest, with a reserve as to the part which concerns the practical reason (or will), is of more questionable value, and leads to manifold disputes. But I contend, that, had transcendentalism done no other service than that of laying a foundation, sought but not found for ages, to the human understanding–namely, by showing an intelligible genesis to certain large and indispensable ideas–it would have claimed the gratitude of all profound inquiries. To a reader still disposed to undervalue Kant’s service in this respect, I put one parting question–Wherefore he values Locke? What has he done, even if value is allowed in full to his pretensions? Has the reader asked himself that? He gave a negative solution at the most. He told his reader that certain disputed ideas were not deduced thus and thus. Kant, on the other hand, has given him at the least a positive solution. He teaches him, in the profoundest revelation, by a discovery in the most absolute sense on record, and the most entirely a single act–without parts, or contributions, or stages, or preparations from other quarters–that these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the experience assigned by Locke, inasmuch as they are themselves previous conditions under which any experience at all is possible: he teaches him that these ideas are not mystically originated, but are, in fact, but another phasis of the functions, or, forms of his own understanding; and, finally, he gives consistency, validity, and a charter of authority, to certain modes of nexus, without which the sum total of human experience would be a rope of sand.