246 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



term, however, was coined with the definite object of 

 distinguishing the whole investigation, on the one side, 

 from the purely empirical and psychological, and, on the 

 other, from the older metaphysical or purely rational 

 treatment which started, as in the philosophies of 

 Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, with certain abstract 

 definitions of the nature or essence of the human mind 

 or soul, trying to deduce from these definitions its 

 properties, its behaviour, and its destinies. Kant never 

 adopted the conception of Locke that the human mind 

 was a tabula rasa or an unwritten sheet of paper ; he 

 believed in the significance of Leibniz' criticism that the 

 human intellect was a something with a specific endow- 

 ment, and he proposed to find out what this endowment 

 was by analysing the product of human intelligence, viz., 

 experience, knowledge, scientific thought, and further on 

 its activity as shown in the precepts of morality and 

 the judgments regarding the beautiful, the good, and the 

 purpose of things. This way of putting the problem was 

 perfectly legitimate. Given on the one side the percep- 

 tions of our senses, our impressions and feelings, and on 

 the other side unified knowledge, definite precepts of 

 morality and judgments of taste as they are elaborated 

 through the activity of the human mind, it was a 

 legitimate question to ask how the former are converted 

 into the latter. But to many students of Kant's works 

 it must at the time have appeared a mistake to think 

 that this problem could once for all be solved by a 

 critical analysis of the very meagre descriptions which 

 the processes of knowledge, thought, or the precepts of 

 morality and the canons of taste had received at that time 



