our knowledge to phenomena, to experiences, and he is himself, in so
far, an empiricist. But in that he finds in experience an order, an
arrangement of things, not derived from experience in the usual sense
of the word, he is not an empiricist. He has paid his own doctrine the
compliment of calling it "criticism," as I have said.

Now, I beg the reader to be here, as elsewhere, on his guard against
the associations which attach to words. In calling Kant's doctrine
"the critical philosophy," we are in some danger of uncritically
assuming and leading others to believe uncritically that it is free
from such defects as may be expected to attach to "dogmatism" and to
empiricism. Such a position should not be taken until one has made a
most careful examination of each of the three types of doctrine, of the
assumptions which it makes, and of the rigor with which it draws
inferences upon the basis of such assumptions. That we may be the
better able to withstand "undue influence," I call attention to the
following points:--

(1) We must bear in mind that the attempt to make a critical
examination into the foundations of our knowledge, and to determine its
scope, is by no means a new thing. Among the Greeks, Plato, Aristotle,
the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics, all attacked the problem.
It did not, of course, present itself to these men in the precise form
in which it presented itself to Kant, but each and all were concerned
to find an answer to the question: Can we know anything with certainty;
and, if so, what? They may have failed to be thoroughly critical, but
they certainly made the attempt.

I shall omit mention of the long series of others, who, since that
time, have carried on the tradition, and shall speak only of Descartes
and Locke, whom I have above brought forward as representatives of the
two types of doctrine that Kant contrasts with his own.

To see how strenuously Descartes endeavored to subject his knowledge to
a critical scrutiny and to avoid unjustifiable assumptions of any sort,
one has only to read that charming little work of genius, the
"Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason."

In his youth Descartes was, as he informs us, an eager student; but,
when he had finished the whole course of education usually prescribed,
he found himself so full of doubts and errors that he did not feel that
he had advanced in learning at all. Yet he had been well tutored, and
was consid