230 ON THOUGHT IN MEDICINE. 



books, and to destroy his* readers' patience by a multitude 

 of useless quotations. 



Our generation has had to suffer under the tyranny 

 of spiritualistic metaphysics ; the newer generation will 

 probably have to guard against that of the materialistic 

 hypotheses. Kant's rejection of the claims of pure 

 thought has gradually made some impression, but Kant 

 allowed one way of escape. It was as clear to him as 

 to Socrates that all metaphysical systems which up to 

 that time had been propounded were tissues of false 

 conclusions. His Kritik der reinen Vemunft is a 

 continual sermon against the use of the category of 

 thought beyond the limits of possible experience. But 

 geometry seemed to him to do something which meta- 

 physics was striving after; and hence geometrical 

 axioms, which he looked upon as a priori principles 

 antecedent to all experience, he held to be given by 

 transcendental intuition, or as the inherent form of 

 all external intuition. Since that time, pure a priori 

 intuition has been the anchoring-ground of metaphy- 

 sicians. It is even more convenient than pure thought, 

 because everything can be heaped on it without going 

 into chains of reasoning, which might be capable of 

 proof or of refutation. The nativistic theory of per- 

 ception of the senses is the expression of this theory 

 in physiology. All mathematicians united to fight 

 against any attempt to resolve the intuitions into their 



