to lend any countenance to that loquacious shallowness which arrogates
to itself the name of popularity, nor yet to scepticism, which makes
short work with the whole science of metaphysics. On the contrary,
our criticism is the necessary preparation for a thoroughly scientific
system of metaphysics which must perform its task entirely a priori,
to the complete satisfaction of speculative reason, and must,
therefore, be treated, not popularly, but scholastically. In
carrying out the plan which the Critique prescribes, that is, in the
future system of metaphysics, we must have recourse to the strict
method of the celebrated Wolf, the greatest of all dogmatic
philosophers. He was the first to point out the necessity of
establishing fixed principles, of clearly defining our conceptions,
and of subjecting our demonstrations to the most severe scrutiny,
instead of rashly jumping at conclusions. The example which he set
served to awaken that spirit of profound and thorough investigation
which is not yet extinct in Germany. He would have been peculiarly
well fitted to give a truly scientific character to metaphysical
studies, had it occurred to him to prepare the field by a criticism
of the organum, that is, of pure reason itself. That he failed to
perceive the necessity of such a procedure must be ascribed to the
dogmatic mode of thought which characterized his age, and on this
point the philosophers of his time, as well as of all previous
times, have nothing to reproach each other with. Those who reject at
once the method of Wolf, and of the Critique of Pure Reason, can
have no other aim but to shake off the fetters of science, to change
labour into sport, certainty into opinion, and philosophy into
philodoxy.

In this second edition, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to
remove the difficulties and obscurity which, without fault of mine