That we, and rightly, recommend the works of the ancients as models and call their authors classical, thus forming among writers a kind of noble class who give laws to the people by their example, seems to indicate a posteriori sources of taste, and to contradict the autonomy of taste in every subject. But we might just as well say that the old mathematicians, — who are regarded up to the present day as supplying models not easily to be dispensed with for the supreme profundity and elegance of their synthetical methods, — prove that our Reason is only imitative, and that we have not the faculty of producing from it in combination with intuition rigid proofs by means of the construction of concepts. There is no use of our powers, however free, no use of Reason itself (which must create all its judgements a priori from common