ABSTRACT
In speculative philosophy Kant was roused from his dogmatic slumbers by Hume. He saw that in carrying out the principles of Locke and Berkeley to their logical consequences Hume had proved too much; he had proved human experience itself to be untrustworthy and scientic law to be based on ctions. Since this reductio ad absurdum follows from supposing that knowledge comes entirely from sense, we ought now (said Kant) to ask how matters stand if we suppose all knowledge of the data of sense to depend on conceptions of the subject knowing. Hence arose his doctrine of the a priori conditions which make all experience possible; experience has no meaning, unless forms of intuition and categories of the understanding are conjoined with sensations.
