HIS PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION 



He places in the same group even general physical 

 conceptions, such as the indestructibility of matter. 

 Such statements, according to Kant, are true apart 

 from all experience. In like manner the law of 

 causality, our conceptions of time and space, our con- 

 ceptions of space in three dimensions, are of tran- 

 scendental origin, we possess them a priori^ they are 

 born in us, or, to use the technical word, they are 

 nativistic. 



Helmholtz was early brought into collision with 

 this aspect of Kant's philosophy. It seemed to him to 

 imply that some conceptions came from without, or, 

 rather, that they were placed in the mind by an 

 external or supernatural power, an implication that 

 conflicted with the scientific view of the universe. 

 In the tract on the conservation of energy, Helmholtz 

 asserts * that Science, whose object is to understand 

 nature, must start from the assumption of its intelligi- 

 bility.' In other words, nature must explain herself, 

 and she must hold all the contents necessary for an 

 explanation of everything. His subsequent physio- 

 logical studies, more especially those on the senses, led 

 him to different notions as to the way, for example, 

 in which an animal becomes cognisant of the outer 

 world. It does so by the use of its sense organs and 

 by the movements of its limbs. The latter are at first 

 apparently purposeless, but, by a kind of education, 

 they are brought into relation with sensory impressions. 



He appears, however, to have felt the force of the 

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