[42] Œuvres de Reid, vol. iii., p. 450.
[43] We have not thought it best to make this lecture lengthy by an exposition and detailed refutation of the Critique of Pure Reason and its sad conclusion; the little that we say of it is sufficient for our purpose, which is much less historical than dogmatical. We refer the reader to a volume that we have devoted to the father of German philosophy, 1st Series, vol. v., in which we have again taken up and developed some of the arguments that are here used, in which we believe that we have irresistibly exposed the capital defect of the transcendental logic of Kant, and of the whole German school, that it leads to skepticism, inasmuch as it raises superhuman, chimerical, extravagant problems, and, when well understood, cannot solve them. See especially lectures 6 and 8.
[44] See our work entitled, Metaphysics of Aristotle, 2d edition, passim. In Aristotle himself, see especially Metaphysics, book vii., chap. xii., and book xiii., chap. ix.
[45] There are doubtless many other ways of arriving at God, as we shall successively see; but this is the way of metaphysics. We do not exclude any of the known and accredited proofs of the existence of God; but we begin with that which gives all the others. See further on, [part ii.], God, the Principle of Beauty, and [part iii.], God, the Principle of the Good, and the last [lecture], which sums up the whole course.
[46] We have said a word on the Platonic theory of ideas, 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 461 and 522. See also, vol. ii. of the 2d Series, lecture 7, on Plato and Aristotle, especially 3d Series, vol. i., a few words on the Language of the Theory of Ideas, p. 121; our work on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, p. 48 and 149, and our translation of Plato, passim.
[47] Aristotle first stated this; modern peripatetics have repeated it; and after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient philosophy, and philosophy in general, by giving the appearance of absurdity to its most illustrious representative.
[48] See particularly p. 121 of the Timaeus, vol. xii. of our translation.
[49] Republic, book vi., vol. x. of our translation, p. 57.
[50] Republic, book vii., p. 20.
[51] Phædrus, vol. vi., p. 51.