But we can only get to know ourselves, as well as others empirically; we have no a priori knowledge of our character. Certainly our natural tendency is to cherish a very high opinion of it, because the maxim: Quisque praesumitur bonus, donec probetur contrarium (every one is presumed to be good, until the contrary is proved), is perhaps even more true of the inner court of justice than of the world's tribunals.

NOTE: He who is capable of recognising the essential part of a thought, though clothed in a dress very different from what he is familiar with, will see, as I do, that this Kantian doctrine of the intelligible and empirical character is a piece of insight already possessed by Plato. The difference is, that with Kant it is sublimated to an abstract clearness; with Plato it is treated