Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/130

or even allow ourselves the most distant hope in this direction.

We have been long accustomed to see old and worn-out branches of knowledge receive a new support, by being taken out of their former coverings, and suited with a systematic garment according to our own approved style, but under new titles; and the great majority of readers will expect nothing different from our Critique. But these Prolegomena will convince him that it is quite a new science, of which no one previously had had the smallest conception, of which even the idea was unknown, and with reference to which all hitherto received knowledge was unavailable, with the exception of the hint afforded by Hume's doubt. But Hume never dreamt of a possible formal science of this nature, and in order to land his ship in safety, ran it aground on the shore of scepticism, where it might lie and rot; instead of which, it is my purpose to furnish a pilot, who, according to certain principles of seamanship, derived from a know- ledge of the globe, and supplied with a complete map and compass, may steer the ship with safety wherever it seems good to him.

In a new science, which is wholly isolated and single of its kind, we should achieve nothing were we to start with the prejudice that we could judge of things by means of our previously acquired knowledge, which is precisely what has first to be called in question. For were we to do this, we should only fancy we saw everywhere what we had already known, the expressions, having a similar sound, only that all would appear utterly metamorphosed, senseless and unintelligible, because we should have as a foundation our own notions, made by long habit a second nature, instead of the author's. But the diffuseness of the work, founded as it is on science (of which an unavoidable dryness and scholastic precision are characteristics) rather than on style, however advantageous it may be to the subject, is undoubtedly disadvantageous to the book.

It is indeed not given to every one to write as subtly and at the same time as fascinatingly as David Hume, or as profoundly and as elegantly as Moses Mendelssohn;