THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 167 



vidual form of experience into a conceptual or universal 

 form, which latter is alone rational in the proper sense of 

 the term. How he steps over this succession of gaps is 

 not, and on this theory can not be explained. 



But most important issues follow from this view. 

 Amongst them are the limitation of the operations of the 

 higher faculties to the formal re-arrangement of the data 

 of sense ; and the condemnation of science and philosophy 

 to the task of restating, in a more abstract and general 

 form, the truths already obtained in perception. The 

 progress of scientific and philosophic knowledge, on this 

 view, is the self-stultifying movement from the concrete 

 to the abstract, from particulars rich in content to universals 

 that are formal and empty. And, above all, the higher is 

 made dependent upon the lower, and man's activities, in 

 the last resort, are represented as sensuously determined. 

 Many therefore and various are the devices to which 

 recourse has to be made, in order to save man's rational 

 interests threatened by this hypothesis. As man's life rests 

 upon perceptions and perceptions upon impressions, im- 

 pressions and perceptions of another kind than those which 

 lead to cognition are postulated on behalf of his higher 

 interests. Art, morality, and religion are said to have 

 their own special and peculiar sensible data, and the con- 

 ceptions proper to them are derived from these data by 

 generalisation and attenuation. There are unique aesthetic 

 perceptions for the consciousness of beauty, unique moral 

 perceptions for the consciousness of goodness, and unique 

 supersensible impressions to furnish the data for religion. 1 



1 The reader will find an interesting statement of this view in Lotze's 

 Lectures on Re/igion ; and the Ritschlians have found it useful for delivering 

 religion from the hands of philosophy. 



