tantly to common mendicants, but it was discovered after his death, that besides other private charities, he gave annually, 1123 florins, to his poor relations, and to indigent families an enormous sum if compared with the amount of his income.

Such was the extraordinary man, who has agitated the human mind to a greater depth, than any of the Philosophers of the same rank before him. The opinions on the permanent result of his analysis of the human faculties, are naturally exceedingly diverse. His faithful disciples, of whom the mumber, it is true, is much diminished, regard him as the Newton, or at least, the Keppler of the intellectual world:-beyond his own school, many ascribe to his principles, that revival of patriotic and generous sentiments, that return of vigor of mind, and that disinterested zeal, which have, of late years, manifested themselves in Germany, so much to the honor of the nation, to the success of her independance, and advantage of the moral sciences. A numerous party accuse him of having created a barbarous terminology, making unnecessary innovations for the purpose of enveloping himself in an obscurity almost impenetrable, of having produced systems absurd and dangerous, and encreased the uncertainty, respecting the most important interests of man; of having, by the illusion of talent, turned the attention of youth, from positive studies, to consume their time in vain speculations; of having, by his transcendental idealism, conducted his rigidly consequent disciples, some to absolute idealism, others to scepticism, others again to a new species of Spinosism, and all to systems equally absurd and dangerous. They further accuse his doctrine, of being in itself, a tissue of extravagant hypothesis and contradictory theories, of which the result is to make us regard man, as a creature discordant and fantastic. They accuse him, finally, of having, by his demanding more than stoical efforts, produced in the mind, discouragement and

uncertainty, much more than the germs of active virtue, confidence, and security. There is, undoubtedly, exaggeration in both of these extreme opinions.-The disciples of Socrates, departed still further from his doctrines, than those of Kant have from the principles of criticism. Yet who will deny the merit of Socrates, or his salutary influence? As far as the style of Kant is concerned, it must be confessed, that it is exceedingly defective. In his Critic of Pure Reason, his frequent repetitions constantly break the thread of the argument, and this great work was never appreciated by the public, until the publication of the summaries of Messrs. Schultz and Reinhold, in 1785, and 1789. Reinhold, especially, contributed to redeem it from the oblivion into which it had fallen, and rendered in various ways to the philosophy of Kant, much the same service, which Wolf rendered to that of Leibnitz. The reproach of not having reduced to a single principle, the subject and object; the faculties of man, and the solution of the grand problems of philosophy, is hardly justified by the result of such attempts, anterior to Kant, or by those of the idealist Fichte, or the materialist Schelling, who in proposing to satisfy this desire of theoretic reason, have endeavoured to attain, by the force of speculation, to the absolute unity of the personal soul, (du moi,) and of nature. This investigation appears to the true disciples of Kant, as vain, as the search for the quadrature of the circle, and as the very rock from which the Critic of Pure Reason, wished to preserve future metaphysicians. It is a reproach better founded, which may be made against Kant's system, that it resolves only one part of the doubts of Hume: a reproach the more serious, as it was to guard us from these doubts, that Kant had recourse to a hypothesis, which reduces the touching and magnificent spectacle of the creation, to an existence more than problematical, to an unknown power, which it is impossible to determine, the of an intellec

tual equation. It is not to be inferred from these remarks, that the theories of Kant have been definitively rejected in Germany: many of their principles and results have passed into the academical course of instruction; their impress is to be every where seen, and they are to be easily recognized in the writings of the moralists and theologians. By comparing the course of arrangement of Mr. Ancillon, in tracing his Tableau analytique des développements du moi humain, (p. 99—360, vol. 2, of his Nouveaux Mélanges, 1807,) with the principles of Bonnet and Mr. D. Stewart, and with the method of the most distinguished philosophers of the school of Condillac, (such as Messrs. de Tracy, Laromiguière, &c.;) the French reader will have an idea, sufficiently correct, of the influence which the doctrine of Kant has exercised over the enlightened classes in Germany.