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for another eclipse, especially if the experiment should be tried at some elevated station where the atmospheric glare would be reduced to a minimum. A patient watch of the sun's surface will be sure to catch them some time or other, though it may be years first. And the watcher must have a good telescope and a keen eye, for if we can judge of their size from their brightness, these bodies cannot well measure three or four hundred miles across, and when projected on the sun would appear as spots not more than 1" in diameter-so minute that a practised eye and high telescopic power would be needed to see them.

From the preceding summary of observations, imperfect as it necessarily is from the fact that it rests mainly upon mere newspaper reports, which are almost always more or less inaccurate, it is evident that the recent eclipse has materially advanced our knowledge of the sun and his surroundings. It is an important point gained to have ascertained that the gaseous elements of the corona are greatly variable in their amount and condition, and still more important to know that this variation follows the cycle of the sun-spots. At the same time it has become highly probable that the coronal streamers and many of its most remarkable structural forms are composed of matter foreign to the sun, coming from sources of supply which are independent of the sun's condition. So also the discovery of Vulcan, or possibly of several Vulcans, is of great scientific value.

At the same time it is also evident that abundant opportunity remains for work and discovery at coming eclipses. It is altogether probable that the next time the ultra-violet portion of the corona spectrum will prove more interesting, and yield a less disappointing harvest to the spectroscopists. Knowing also that intra-Mercurial planets exist, it is quite likely that the planet hunters will succeed in making observations which, combined with Professor Watson's, will determine for us their approximate orbits, and make it easy to catch them as they cross the sun.

In conclusion, we append the following list of total eclipses to occur during the remainder of the present century.

upon the authority of Mr. Hind. It does not include all, but only such as are favorably situated for observation.

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A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY:

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A REPLY TO PROFESSOR MAHAFFY.

OCKE was the most influential metaphysician of last century; Kant is the most influential metaphysician of this. Locke's great work, “An Essay on Human Understanding,' published in 1690, came into notice immediately. The age was ripe for it. Younger men, rejoicing in the advance of physical science, were becoming wearied of the logical forms of the schoolmen which had kept their hold till the close of the sixteenth century, and of the abstract discussions which still prevailed in the seventeenth century. Locke met the want of his age. His fresh observational spirit, his shrewdness and sagacity, his independence, and his very phraseology, which carefully avoided all hack and technical phrases, recommended him to the rising generation. He called attention to internal facts, even as Bacon and Newton had to external; and if he did not himself notice and unfold all the delicate operations of our wondrous nature, he showed men where to find them. But philosophy— like faith, as the great Teacher said, like physical science, as Bacon showed-is to be tried by (not valued for) its fruits. The influence exerted by him has been and is of a healthy character. But there were serious oversights and even fatal errors in his principles; and these came out to view in the systems which claimed to proceed from him—in the idealism of Berkeley, the sensationalism of Condillac, and the scepticism of Hume.

By the second half of the eighteenth century thoughtful minds began to see the need of a reaction against the extreme experientialism which had culminated in the Scottish sceptic,

and there appeared two great defenders of fundamental truthReid in Scotland (1764) reaching in his influence over his own country, over France, and over the United States; and Kant in Germany (1781) laying firm hold of his own land, and then passing over into France, Britain, and America, and latterly penetrating into Scandinavia, Greece, Italy, and Spain. Kant's influence, like Locke's, has been on the whole for good. He has established fundamental mental and moral principles, which are seen to be fixed forever. He has taken us up into a region of grand ideals, where poetry, led by Goethe and Schiller, has revelled ever since. But there were mistakes in the philosophy of Kant as well as in that of Locke. These have come out like the dark shadow of an eclipse in the idealism of Fichte, the speculative web woven by Hegel, and in the relativity and nescience elaborated by Hamilton and applied by Herbert Spencer. There is need of a rebellion against his despotic authority, or rather a candid and careful examination of his peculiar tenets, with the view of retaining what is true and expelling what is false. This is the more needed, as all the agnostics and the physiological psychologists when pushed fall back on Kant. Professor Mahaffy acknowledges, "Of late the Darwinists, the great apostles of positivism, and the deadly enemies of metaphysics, have declared that he alone of the philosophers is worthy of study, and to him alone was vouchsafed a fore-glimpse of true science." I believe that we cannot meet the prevailing doctrine of agnostics till we expel Kant's nescient theory of knowledge, and that it is as necessary in this century to be rid of the Forms of Kant as it was in the last of the Ideas of Locke, both being officious intermeddlers, coming between us and things.

In a late number of this REVIEW (January, 1878) I ventured on a short criticism of Kant. The article was meant to be a challenge. I am glad it has called forth so able a champion as Professor Mahaffy (July, 1878). He is a distinguished member of Dublin University, which, having for nearly a century and a half followed Locke, with a leaning towards its own Berkeley, seems of late to have gone over to the camp of Locke's great rival, Immanuel Kant. Professor Mahaffy has studied Kant profoundly, and has written valuable fragmentary volumes, which

I hope he may complete, and thus give us his full view of the Critical Philosophy. I feel that I have an able opponent, and that I need to brace myself for the contest.

In criticising the great German metaphysician, it is not to be understood that I wish to disparage him. I place him on the same high level as Plato and Aristotle in ancient times, as Bacon and Descartes, Locke and Leibnitz, Reid and Hamilton, in modern times. For the last quarter of a century I have expounded his philosophy, with that of the others referred to, in my advanced classes in Queen's College, Belfast, and Princeton College, America. The professor is so kind as to apologize for me by alleging that I have not turned my mind very seriously to the subject. He mentions, to the credit of his college, that Dr. Toleken, in 1862, set a paper for a competition for fellowships in Dublin requiring a knowledge of Kant, "which came like thunder out of a clear sky." I am almost tempted to repeat the vulgar joke as to Trinity College being behind the age, as its clock is a quarter of an hour behind the sun and the rest of the world! So early as 1852, on my becoming a teacher of philosophy in Queen's College, Belfast, I set questions on Kant, and ever since, in that college, in the Queen's University, the great Indian competition and that of Ferguson scholarships, open to all the universities of Scotland, I have from year to year put queries implying that those who answer them know somewhat of the Critical Philosophy. In my work on the Intuitions of the Mind, if he will condescend to look into it, he will find that in no fewer than forty-eight places I have criticised favorably or unfavorably the system of the German metaphysician.

There is much in Kant that I commend. I like the very end aimed at in his philosophy. It is to give us an inventory of what he calls the à priori, but I would rather designate as the intuitive or fundamental, principles of the mind. "For this science is nothing more than an inventory of all that is given by pure reason systematically arranged" (Pref. to K. R. V.). These had constantly been appealed to, but there had been no careful inquiry into their nature and the law of their operation. Kant did great service to philosophy in attempting a systematic arrangement of them, but unfortunately he did so in an exclusively Critical,

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