| For the same reason, metaphysics forms likewise the completion of the culture of human reason. |
| In this respect, it is indispensable, setting aside altogether the influence which it exerts as a science. |
| For its subject-matter is the elements and highest maxims of reason, which form the basis of the possibility of some sciences and of the use of all. |
| That, as a purely speculative science, it is more useful in preventing error than in the extension of knowledge, does not detract from its value; on the contrary, the supreme office of censor which it occupies assures to it the highest authority and importance. |
| This office it administers for the purpose of securing order, harmony, and well-being to science, and of directing its noble and fruitful labours to the highest possible aim--the happiness of all mankind. |
| CHAPTER IV. The History of Pure Reason. |
| This title is placed here merely for the purpose of designating a division of the system of pure reason of which I do not intend to treat at present. |
| I shall content myself with casting a cursory glance, from a purely transcendental point of view--that of the nature of pure reason--on the labours of philosophers up to the present time. |
| They have aimed at erecting an edifice of philosophy; but to my eye this edifice appears to be in a very ruinous condition. |
| It is very remarkable, although naturally it could not have been otherwise, that, in the infancy of philosophy, the study of the nature of God and the constitution of a future world formed the commencement, rather than the conclusion, as we should have it, of the speculative efforts of the human mind. |
| However rude the religious conceptions generated by the remains of the old manners and customs of a less cultivated time, the intelligent classes were not thereby prevented from devoting themselves to free inquiry into the existence and nature of God; and they easily saw that there could be no surer way of pleasing the invisible ruler of the world, and of attaining to happiness in another world at least, than a good and honest course of life in this. |
| Thus theology and morals formed the two chief motives, or rather the points of attraction in all abstract inquiries. |
| But it was the former that especially occupied the attention of speculative reason, and which afterwards became so celebrated under the name of metaphysics. |
| I shall not at present indicate the periods of time at which the greatest changes in metaphysics took place, but shall merely give a hasty sketch of the different ideas which occasioned the most important revolutions in this sphere of thought. |
| There are three different ends in relation to which these revolutions have taken place. |
| 1. In relation to the object of the cognition of reason, philosophers may be divided into sensualists and intellectualists. |
| Epicurus may be regarded as the head of the former, Plato of the latter. |
| The distinction here signalized, subtle as it is, dates from the earliest times, and was long maintained. |
| The former asserted that reality resides in sensuous objects alone, and that everything else is merely imaginary; the latter, that the senses are the parents of illusion and that truth is to be found in the understanding alone. |
| The former did not deny to the conceptions of the understanding a certain kind of reality; but with them it was merely logical, with the others it was mystical. |
| The former admitted intellectual conceptions, but declared that sensuous objects alone possessed real existence. |