that external objects have in them fixed, unchanging elements of being, quite as Kant supposes that we have in us fixed, unchanging elements of thought, why should we not assume that the understanding apprehends in the objects put before it those constant elements of their being which make them subject to constant law? The assumption is not extravagant, and suffices to explain what to Locke is inexplicable. It explains how the understanding in its judgment of things can pass beyond their present condition, how at a glance it can read in them the eternal law of their existence. Assuming this, we abandon the philosophy of Locke, but we do not therefore become followers of Kant. We are in a position to give account of the method of our thought without any appeal to his philosophy, and by the fact we have rendered the proof of his philosophy impossible. Our theory he cannot ignore, or summarily put aside without comment; the voice of ages is in its favour, the mightiest of human minds have adopted it; the reformer of psychological science cannot pass it by, nor can he ask us to accept a new explanation of the process of thought till he has shown this one to be false or inadequate. This Kant has not done; this he has not even attempted to do.

Instead, he has stated a doctrine which leaves a main feature of the procedure of the mind wholly without explanation. On the objects presented to us by casual experiences we pass judgments which reach all times and all circumstances. These judgments are delivered in terms which touch only the objective condition of things, which do not even pre-suppose the existence of our faculty of thought. We state that certain objects exist, must exist, in a certain manner; not that we must think them so to exist. Nay, we assert that they so existed before we began to think, and shall so exist when our thinking is done. Why are we forced to attribute this unchangeableness to the things without us, if the elements of constancy are only within our own mind? The conscious sense of self we understand to belong wholly to ourselves; why do we transfer the notions unity, multitude, cause, effect, with their fixed relations to outer things, if these notions are as much a part of ourselves as the sense of our own existence? What is the explanation of this enforced self-deception? Kant can give no better reason for it than he gives for our knowledge of the moral law; it is an imperious necessity of our nature to which we must be content to submit.

But there is yet a more serious objection to this doctrine. It is the first step on the way to a thorough idealism, so important a step that we cannot take it without committing ourselves to the whole of this strange philosophy. If the forms of our thought are not drawn from external things, but exist pre-formed in the mind, it follows that our thought is merely a factor of our own being brought under our notice by the accident to our nature which we name experience. We do not,

then, in the process of thinking, know anything else than ourselves, our perception of our own inherent thought forms is neither more nor less than a form of consciousness. The assumption that these forms represent the forms of an outer world is wholly gratuitous. If an outer world exist, it will suffice for our purposes of thought that it set the system within us in motion-that it bring into action the latent images within us is its only use as far as we are concerned; that it is itself pictured by these images we have no means of ascertaining; this is not a necessity of its relation to us any more than it is a necessity that the photographer's flask of developing fluid should be outlined in the picture which it develops. There is absolutely no bond which connects the forms and shapes of the outer world with the pictures of our mind; the material forces of outer things may be necessary to set our mechanism of thought in motion, but their structure does not enter into the process at all. What is form and shape we have within us. Adopting the philosophy of Kant we must be content to know nothing of the figure and fashion of the external world.

To go a step further. Does not his theory allow us to dispense with the outer world altogether? Suppose the machinery of thought, such as Kant has described it-that arrangement of forms of intuition, categories of the understanding, and ideas of the reason to be put in movement from within, would not the whole thinking process go on quite as satisfactorily as if the system were set in motion from without? Now, unless Kant's whole philosophy be false, there is no proof that the system is not self-acting. We can demonstrate an actual influx from without only by an argument from the effect within us to a cause without, in which argument the notions effect and cause shall represent substantive realities, and shall not be mere inherent forms of the self-acting mind. But this which we must pre-suppose is precisely the point which in Kant's system it is impossible to concede. When our demonstration is concluded we shall have established the existence of the world as a cause. But causality, according to Kant, is merely an empty form of our own mind; we have not yet got a grasp of anything which is external to us; we have got hold of something which is a part of ourselves, but an external reality we have not proved to exist, nor even pictured in our minds. If we adopt the system of Kant, we can never reach an outer world at all. Our philosophy will be merely a study of the thought-forms of the mind; we shall confine ourselves to observing how they are called into action, and how they combine with one another. That this is the whole duty of the philosopher who follows in the footsteps of Kant, became evident to his disciples. Fichte, the ablest of them, soon perceived it, and in the name of the philosophy of his master, broke with the external world altogether. The outer world served no purpose in the system, and so he put it aside. He justified this course by reasoning some

what like that which we have used above, and his reasoning has not yet been shown to be at fault.*

We will not enter into the question disputed by Trendelenburg and Kuno Fischer as to whether Kant really held that our knowledge had any objective value. We believe, with Fischer, that Kant was an idealist in the full sense of the term. But however this may be, his doctrine was in substance idealistic, and, under cultivation, could not fail to lead to those fantastic and impious systems by which the later idealists startled and bewildered the learned of Germany and of Europe. It is not, perhaps, too soon to warn the thoughtful amongst our own countrymen against these dangerous extravagances. If our remarks have this effect, we may be excused for entering on a subject of this nature in the pages of the IRISH MONTHLY.

THE LEGEND OF THE PAINTED WINDOWS.†

A

BY KATHLEEN TYNAN.

LL day, broad shining bands of sunlight fall,
Driving swift shades across the convent wall;

Seems the gray slumberous air all musical
With tuneful drowsy hum of pleasant bee,
And sweet low bird-song trilled from every tree.
Fair peaceful lives the brethren had full sure-
Each day a gold bead of a rosary

Of blessed deeds, impulses high and pure.
From worldly sin and worldly trouble free,
Each gentle life its course ran tranquilly;

"Nur einige Fragen mögen jene Ausleger Kants mir erlauben an sie zu thun: Wie weit erstreckt sich denn nach Kant die Anwendbarkeit aller Kategorien und insbesondere die der Causalität? Nur über das Gebiet der Erscheinungen; sonach nur über das, was schon für uns, und in uns selbst ist. Auf welche weise könnte man denn zur Annahme eines von Ich verschiedenen Etwas, als Grundes des empirischen Inhalts der Erkenntniss kommen? Ich denke, nur durch einem Schluss vom begründeten auf den Grund; also durch Anwendung des Begriffes der Causalität: so findet Kant selbst die sache (S. 211 der Jacobischen schrift); und verwirft schon darum die Annahme an sich ausser uns befindlicher Dinge.”—2te Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre. Werke, B. 1, p. 482.

This story is told of the holy Dominican, Blessed James of Ulm, whose work adorns the cathedral of San Petronio in Bologna.

And, when death called, each humbly left his place,
Trusting in His dear gracious love who came
To bear our burdens: calling on His name,
Passed all with joy to see the Saviour's face.

Within the convent garden's gray old walls
On smooth, worn pathways soft the footstep falls,
While in the centre, upright and forlorn,

There stands a marble fountain spectre-white,
And, ever gleaming on the topmost height,
A carven hunter blows a silent horn.

Two Brothers linger when the sun's bright rays
Fall goldenly through summer's pleasant haze
O'er scentful flower and garden : one in years

A boy, but o'er the other's patient head
Long time had passed of trouble and of tears,
Till in the careworn face has come at last

Infinite peace, all worldly sorrows fled,
And in this Present merged the stormy Past.
This is the Painter-monk, Bologna's pride,
The holy Master, Frate Giacomo ;

And he who ever lingers by his side,
His friend and pupil, young Ambrogio.

They speak, as slow they move with loitering feet,
Of the great work that to its end draws near—
The painted windows, fruit of many a year
Of labour, to the Master passing sweet,

For San Petronio's temple long designed.
The work has reached its last most anxious stage:
The noontide in the furnace heat will find

The masterpiece, and then with loving care

And anxious eyes these two will watch and wait,
Lest by a minute's carelessness the rage

Of the strong heat should mar the windows fair
And all their dainty hues obliterate.

For nigh five hours within the oven's heart
Must lie the glory of the Master's art.

Four hours since noon. The slow strokes of the bell

Sonorous chime within the narrow cell,

Whitewashed and bare save where rude niches quaint
Hold each the carven image of a saint.

The furnace doors are closed, and all apart
Lie the belongings of the painter's art,—

VOL. VIII., No. 84.

27

Brushes, oils, colours. As the bell tolls clear
And sweet on many a passing traveller's ear,
The Master and his pupil, bending low,
Murmur the Ave solemnly and slow

With deep devotion. Then the Master moves,
And, drawing back along its narrow grooves
The furnace door, looks on his work within,
Sees the fair colours richer beauties win,
In the heat glowing, deepening, waxing bright;
And, raptured with the pleasure of the sight,
He turns-the cell door on its hinges creaks,
Enters a white-robed Brother. Hush! he speaks:
"My Brothers, 'tis our holy Prior's behest
That you, forthwith, shall go upon the quest,
With humble bearing and obeisance meek,
From house to house through all the town to seek
The wonted offerings for the Brotherhood."

Ambrogio turns with quick, impatient mood;
But, ere his angry words find utterance,
The Master checks him with reproachful glance
From saddest eyes fixed on
his pupil's face;

And, when the messenger has left the place,
Murmurs with broken voice and sighings low:

"It is our duty-only this I know."

Then, with hands clasped and gentle head down bent,
He prays a little: "Lord, since Thou hast sent
This cross to me, I kiss thy wounded feet-
Thou knowest how to make my offering meet
For glory of thy temple. These weak hands
Have striven hard, but since thy will demands
My labour for thyself-with deepest love,
Content I give it. Lord of heaven above!
Praised be thy holy name for now and ever!"
Then, turning with such look as those who sever
From their dear dead, stretches in mute farewell
His wan hands towards his work, and leaves the cell.

Evening. Around the convent all is still.

The Sun-King's feet are on the distant hill;
With shining robes he hastens to his rest.
Ere yet his paling fires fade down the West,
The evening skies glow all with crimson light;
With jewelled gleam of rose and saffron bright,
Come his last rays. Unto the convent door,
Whence they had issued full four hours before,