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 CRITICISM. 321 mcnt or attenuation. Both make the mistake of recogniz- ing only a difference in degree where a difference in kind exists. In such a case only an energetic dualism can afford help. Sense and understanding are not one and the same cognitive power at different stages, but two hetero- geneous faculties. Sensation and thought are not different in degree, but in kind. As Descartes began with the meta- physical dualism of extension and thought, so Kant begins with the noetical dualism of intuition and thought. Much more serious, however, than any of the mistakes yet mentioned was a sin of omission of which the two schools were alike guilty, and the recognition and avoidance of which constituted in Kant's own eyes the distinctive char- acter of his philosophy and its principiant-advance beyond preceding systems. The pre-Kantian thinker had proceeded to the discussion of knowledge without raising the question of • the possibility of knowledge. He had approached things in the full confidence that the human mind was capable of cognizing them, and with a naive trust in the power of reason to possess itself of the truth. His trust was naive and ingenuous, because the idea that it could deceive him had never entered his mind. Now no matter whether this belief in man's capacity for knowledge and in the possibil- ity of knowing things is justifiable or not, and no matter how far it may be justifiable, it was in any case untested ; so {that when the skeptic approached with his objections the dogmatist was defenseless. All previous philosophy, so far as it had not been skeptical, had been, according to Kant's expression, dogmatic ; that is, it had held as an article of faith, and without precedent inquiry, that we possess the iDower of cognizing objects. It had not asked how this is j possible ; it had not even asked what knowledge is, what nay and must be demanded of it, and by what means our cason is in a position to satisfy such demands. It had ?ft human intelligence and its extent uninvestigated, 'he skeptic, on the other hand, had been no more thorough, le had doubted and denied man's capacity for knowledge > ist as uncritically as the dogmatist had believed and pre- ipposed it. He had directed his ingenuity against the ' leories of dogmatic philosophy, instead of toward the