THE GENERAL ACTION ABSURD.

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of Kant (the objects of which are God, Freewill, and the Soul)!—and distinguished from the-Understanding of Kant, the objects of which are just those very principles which (the roots and foundations of human knowledge) constitute, as named (they are not given), Hamilton's special quest here! What strange effect, indeed, to compare this loose shelf (with but a stray specimen on it all the same) with the one organic germ of Kant, in which lie vitally complete a whole co-articulated congeries of constitutive members! But why mention Kant?—It was Hamilton's pride to have perfected the presentationism of Reid-to have strengthened into impregnability his fortress of common sense: in reality, he has but overthrown the one, and broken up the other!

But it is just possible that any conclusion yet is premature; for it is now in place to recollect that Hamilton does not stop with common sense, but carries all up into a so-called-Law of the Conditioned. This we have now to see.

NOTE (See p. 118).

‘Kant held the intuitive cognition of outness:' this has been said in this country, and it would have been right if the sayer had meant, Kant held space to be perceptive. It is illustrative of what has been said above, however, to consider that the sayer really meant only something that was somehow mysteriously instantaneous or instinctive. We, Scotch, have made ourselves simply ridiculous by the mystic hocus-pocus we have somehow imaginatively conjured into the word intuitive, instead of merely seeing and saying that it was tantamount to perceptive. 'Kant does not give the Intuitions'-'I give the Intuitions:' it is curious to realise to oneself the strange magical functions of our own secret inner which are supposed, in such words, to be, as it were, weirdly seen into through vapour, and by means of some supersensuous, quite original insight. Pure intuitions, however, there are none, but the pure perceptions Time and Space. Apperception, Self-consciousness, the Ego, the inner One, is externalised into

the net of the categories (as functions if you will); these into the net of the intuitions, Time and Space; and these, again, into the ultimate net of actual empirical things. And what we have so is, this world, the proper name of which is Spirit-Free and Immortal Spirit-Spirit in communication with Spirit-Spirit in dependence on, and in reconciliation through Christ with, the one Absolute Spirit-God.

This, I take it, is pretty nearly the Kantianism of Hegel; and it is Kantianism, and nothing but Kantianism, that is the matter assimilated by Hegel as food and filling, into his own form.

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