Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

376 REASONX
process, from those more comprehensive powers which Reason
is understood to imply.*
Various meanings of the word Understanding. - Anothei
instance of the vagueness and indistinctness of the common
language of logicians, in treating of this part of the Philosophy
of the Human Mind, occurs in the word Understanding. In its
popular sense, it seems -to be very nearly synonymous with
[ IKant, and the later German metaphysicians, together with some of
the French school, assign very different functions to the Reason and the
Understanding. Indeed, the distinction between these two faculties is the
key-note of German transcendental philosophy. According to Kant,
Reason is the faculty which evolves our ideas of all that transcends the
sphere of the senses and the limitations of experience, - of all which is
not subject to the conditions of space and time, but is infinite and absolute.
In one word, Reason is the faculty of the Unconditioned; it is the soul
itself, in the highest exercise of its activity, forming for itself ideas, to
which there are no corresponding realities in the world of sense or in
the cognitions of the understanding. " Reason," says Krug, one of the ablest
expounders of the Kanltian philosophy, " is the noblest jewel of humanity,
the true image of God, whereby alone man can raise himself from one
stage of perfection to another. It rests, therefore, upon the perfectibility
of our race, so that we are always striving after the Ideal, without ever
obtaining it in all its fulness. Consequently, Reason is the only cllaracteristic which distinguishes man from the other beasts of the earth; these
resemble him more or less in all other respects, they even surpass him in
some, but show no trace of Reason, because they neither strive after the
Ideal, nor are they able to perfect themselves by their own power." But
it must be remembered, that no knowledge, properly sq called, can be constructed out of these Ideas which are evolved by Reason, since there is no
object corresponding to them in the whole circle of experience. The
Reason ceaselessly strives after a knowledge of God, of the Universe, of
the Immortality and Freedom of the Soul; and from these vain efforts,
constantly renewed and constantly defeated, have arisen all the doctrines
and systems of metaphysics. We cannot either prove or disprove the
reality of the supersensual objects corresponding to these ideas of the
Reason. The arguments for and against any conclusion respecting them
are equally valid, and thus confute each other. Thus Kant is led to
affirm, that no metaphysical science is possible, and that the doctrines of
ontology and speculative theology are self-contradictory and absurd.
This account of the Reason coincides very nearly with a doctrine attributed by Cudworth to the iancient philosophers, when he says, " We have
all of us, by na ture, [avreve6 7it (as both Plato and Aristotle call it), a cer