TWO THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 57 



appears to stand in a direct and even unique 

 relation to the real. It fails to let us under- 

 stand how that relation arises, how the sensible 

 is generated, or how it enters Jnto our con- 

 sciousness. 



(b) We are unable under this theory to discover 

 how we ever reach a Knowledge of the real World, 

 how we can get beyond ourselves, how if the Mind 

 in its search for truth is perpetually intercepted 

 by its own forms it can ever furnish us with any 

 genuine cognitions of the external. 



(2) We have the theory that the essential forms 

 of Reality are to be found in the Object and are 

 thence supplied to the Understanding, which plays 

 the part merely of a receptive surface or tabula rasa. 



In the hands of Aristotle this doctrine took the 

 form of an affirmation that Nature must be regarded 

 as an energetic process containing within itself 

 the potency by which it perpetually generated the 

 actual. 



Promising as it was in Aristotle's hands, this 

 speculation was not carried forward or assimilated 

 by his immediate successors. Indeed, it was practi- 

 cally forgotten until the intellectual revival of the 

 sixteenth century, which inaugurated the founda- 

 tions of modern Science. However little the 

 fact may have been consciously recognised even 



