Note 11 — II. HISTORICAL

To this fact Kant himself draws attention: “But the perpetual hard fate of metaphysics would not allow Hume to be understood. We cannot without a certain sense of pain consider how utterly his opponents, Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and even Priestley, missed the point of the problem. For while they were ever assuming as conceded what he doubted, and demonstrating with eagerness and often with arrogance what he never thought of disputing, they so overlooked his inclination towards a better state of things, that everything remained undisturbed in its old condition.”—Prolegomena, p. 6; Mahaffy and Bernard’s trans. p. 5.