and denying, he investigates how knowledge arises, of what
factors it is composed, and how far it extends. He inquires into the origin
and extent of knowledge, into its sources and its limits, into the grounds
of its existence and of its legitimacy. The Critique of Reason finds itself
confronted by two problems, the second of which cannot be solved until
after the solution of the first. The investigation of the sources of
knowledge must precede the inquiry into the extent of knowledge. Only after
the conditions of knowledge have been established can it be ascertained
what objects are attainable by it. Its sphere cannot be determined except
from its origin.

Whether the critical philosopher stands nearer to the skeptic or to the
dogmatist is rather an idle question. He is specifically distinct from
both, in that he summons and guides the reason to self-contemplation, to
a methodical examination of its capacity for knowledge. Where the one had
blindly trusted and the other suspected and denied, he investigates; they
overlook, he raises the question of the possibility of knowledge. The
critical problem does not mean, Does a faculty of knowledge exist? but, Of
what powers is it composed? are all objects knowable which have been so
regarded? Kant does not ask whether, but how and by what means, knowledge
is possible. Everyone who gives himself to scientific reflection must
postulate that knowledge is possible, and the demand of the noetical
theorists of the day for a philosophy absolutely without assumptions is
quite incapable of fulfillment. Nay, in order to be able to begin his
inquiry at all, it was necessary for Kant to assume still more special
postulates; for that a cognition of cognition is possible, that there is a
critical, self-investigating reason could, at first, be only a matter of
belief. This would not have excluded a supplementary detailed statement
concerning the _how_ of this self-knowledge, concerning the organ of the
critical philosophy. But Kant never gave one, and the omission subsequently
led to a sharp debate concerning the character and method of the Critique
of Reason. On this point, if we may so express it, Kant remained a
dogmatist.

Kant felt himself to be the finisher of skepticism; but this was chiefly
because he had received the strongest impulse to the development of his
critique of knowledge from Hume's inquiries concerning causation. Brought
up in the dogmatic rationalism of the Wolffian sc