he same cognitive power at different stages,
but two heterogeneous faculties. Sensation and thought are not different in
degree, but in kind. As Descartes began with the metaphysical dualism of
extension and thought, so Kant begins with the noetical dualism of
intuition and thought.

Much more serious, however, than any of the mistakes yet mentioned was
a sin of omission of which the two schools were alike guilty, and the
recognition and avoidance of which constituted in Kant's own eyes the
distinctive character of his philosophy and its principiant-advance beyond
preceding systems. The pre-Kantian thinker had proceeded to the discussion
of knowledge without raising _the question of the possibility of
knowledge_. He had approached things in the full confidence that the human
mind was capable of cognizing them, and with a naive trust in the power of
reason to possess itself of the truth. His trust was naive and ingenuous,
because the idea that it could deceive him had never entered his mind. Now
no matter whether this belief in man's capacity for knowledge and in the
possibility of knowing things is justifiable or not, and no matter how
far it may be justifiable, it was in any case untested; so that when the
skeptic approached with his objections the dogmatist was defenseless.
All previous philosophy, so far as it had not been skeptical, had been,
according to Kant's expression, dogmatic; that is, it had held as an
article of faith, and without precedent inquiry, that we possess the power
of cognizing objects. It had not asked _how_ this is possible; it had not
even asked what knowledge is, what may and must be demanded of it, and by
what means our reason is in a position to satisfy such demands. It had left
human intelligence and its extent uninvestigated. The skeptic, on the other
hand, had been no more thorough. He had doubted and denied man's capacity
for knowledge just as uncritically as the dogmatist had believed and
presupposed it. He had directed his ingenuity against the theories of
dogmatic philosophy, instead of toward the fundamental question of the
possibility of knowledge. Human intelligence, which the dogmatist had
approached with unreasoned trust and the skeptic with just as unreasoned
distrust, is subjected, according to the plan of the critical philosopher,
to a searching examination. For this reason Kant termed his standpoint
"criticism," and his undertaking a "Critique of Reason." Instead of
asserting