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 ...

REASON. 377
Reason, when that word is used most comprehensively; and is
seldom or never applied to any of our faculties, but such as are
immediately subservient to the investigation of truth, or to the
regulation of our conduct. In this sense, it is so far from being
understood to comprehend the powers of imagination, fancy, and
wit, that it is often stated in direct opposition to them; as in
the common maxim, that a sound understanding and a warm
tain divination, presage, and parturient vaticination in our minds, of some
higher good and perfection than either power or knowledge. Knowledge
is plainly to be preferred before power, as being that which guides and
directs its blind force and impetus; but Aristotle himself declares, that
there is 2liyov 7t lipELTrTO, which is y67ov &p:X, sonething better than rcason
and knowledge, which is the principle and original of all. For (saith he)
2L6Xov apyt ob X6yoc, &AA& ri KCpErTToV; the principle of reason is not reason,
but something better." - Cudworth's InZtellectual System, Am. ed. vol. 1,
p. 277.
The Uderstacdiig, on the other hand, according to Kant, is a lower
faculty of the mind, which corresponds very nearly to what we call understanding, or intellect. It is that faculty of the mind, by which the individual representations that come to us through the senses, are formed
into general conceptions and judcqgments, so as to become food for thought.
The intuitions oJ sence, as they are termed, are thus formed into conceptiwots, by being subsumed under the categories of the Understanding. An
intuition is thus subsumed under the categories of quantity, for instance,
by being necessarily conceived of as one, many, or all; under the categories of quality, because we must think of it as real, unreal, or limited, &c.
These categories are forms of the Understanding; they are not received
from experience, but are conditions imposed upon experience, as, without
them, experience would not be possible. The Understanding is like a
colored glass, which imposes its own hues upon all external objects. We
cannot see things as they are in themaselves, but only as they appear to us,
under the forms and conditions of the intellect; we cannot know them
as nozunena, but can only recognize them as phenomena.
Kant's system is certainly obscure, but it is by no means unintelligible.
From the faint and imperfect outline of it which is here given, and which
is designed only as an explanation of some of its technical termls, it is
easy to see, that it is a system of skepticism far more comprehensive
than that of Hume. It denies the possibility of our knowing any thing
which lies beyond the limits of the senses and experience; and even
within these limits, we can know things, not as they really are, but only
as they appear to us.]
no., 2