that compels us to infer a CAUSE of its occurrence; every thing
which exists implies the ideas of SUBSTANCE, MODE, RELATION,
NUMBER, &C.; in a word, we form no idea which is not related to
some one of the general principles of reason, independent of
which nothing exists.

These axioms of the understanding, add the psychologists, these
fundamental types, by which all our judgments and ideas are
inevitably shaped, and which our sensations serve only to
illuminate, are known in the schools as CATEGORIES. Their
primordial existence in the mind is to-day demonstrated; they
need only to be systematized and catalogued. Aristotle
recognized ten; Kant increased the number to fifteen; M. Cousin
has reduced it to three, to two, to one; and the indisputable
glory of this professor will be due to the fact that, if he has
not discovered the true theory of categories, he has, at least,
seen more clearly than any one else the vast importance of this
question,--the greatest and perhaps the only one with which
metaphysics has to deal.

I confess that I disbelieve in the innateness, not only of
IDEAS, but also of FORMS or LAWS of our understanding; and
I hold the metaphysics of Reid and Kant to be still farther
removed from the truth than that of Aristotle. However, as I do
not wish to enter here into a discussion of the mind, a task
which would demand much labor and be of no interest to the
public, I shall admit the hypothesis that our most general and
most necessary ideas--such as time, space, substance, and cause--
exist originally in the mind; or, at least, are derived
immediately from its constitution.