Herbert Spencers Synthetic Philosophy. 89 



prehending power in nature, in a special faculty called in- 

 telligence, and believed to constitute mind proper, that 

 inevitably leads to pure transcendental idealism, such as was 

 taught by the late Thomas Hill Green, and is taught at 

 present in many of the universities ; for, if our knowledge 

 is in fact out and out, and through and through, a synthe- 

 tized compound, it follows that intelligence being declared 

 the only synthetical power extant our knowledge must be 

 oat and out, and through and through, a product of intelli- 

 gence. And this means that thought and being are identi- 

 cal, that the world consists of nothing but thought. 



Kant himself abhorred pure idealism. He firmly believed 

 that sense-material is given to sensibility from outside ; that 

 there exists actually a realm of things in themselves, of the 

 true nature of which, however, he was positive that we can 

 know nothing, and this because space and time, the forms 

 in which the sense-given material appears to us, and the 

 different modes of combination, the so-called categories, 

 through which this raw material is elaborated into system- 

 atic knowledge, are faculties belonging to our own mental 

 nature. 



Moreover, though Kant believed that pure mathematics 

 is constructed a priori by force of our sensorially unaided, 

 mental endowments, he came to the final conclusion that 

 our combining faculty, in order to constitute real knowl- 

 edge, requires imperatively sense-given material to work 

 upon ; that constructions formed of any other material are 

 baseless. It is, however, important to notice that Kant be- 

 lieved the combining categories or synthetical functions of 

 the intellect to inhere in an intelligible Ego, belonging to a 

 supernatural sphere of existence. In spite of his complete 

 overthrow of the old metaphysical idols by force of his 

 theoretical speculations, Kant had in reserve a loop-hole 

 through which he was convinced he could more effectively 

 than ever establish connection with the intelligible world, 

 the real existence of which he had never doubted. God and 

 the immortal soul of man, as intelligible or supernatural 

 existences, were to him primordial verities, attested beyond 

 contention by the moral law, in obedience to which our own 

 intelligible nature has power to determine the course of 

 nature by means of free volitional causation. 



Leibnitz, having become acquainted with Locke's sensa- 

 tionalism, modified considerably his view of innate ideas. 

 He changed, however, the motto of the sensation philosophy 



