OF KNOWLEDGE. 337 



answering the question, how is knowledge possible which 

 refers to those things that transcend our senses ? This 

 kind of knowledge Kant termed metaphysical. It was 

 not the " plain historical method " which Locke had 

 adopted that seemed to Kant to lead to a useful solution 

 of the problem. The investigations of Locke, pushed to 

 their seemingly inevitable consequences, had led to the 

 scepticism of Hume, which was followed either by abandon- 

 ment of the whole problem or by, what seemed to Kant, 

 an uncritical appeal to common-sense. A better way for 

 dealing with the questions started by Locke seemed to 

 be indicated by the position taken up by Leibniz in his 

 ' Nouveaux Essais.' These had been posthumously pub- 

 lished just about the time (1765) when Kant had 

 been strongly influenced by Locke's and Hume's writings. 

 This suggestion was contained in the formula which 

 Leibniz succinctly opposed to Locke's formula. The 

 latter maintained that our intellect contains nothing 

 which was not given by our senses. To this Leibniz 

 agreed, with the addition, " except the intellect it- 

 self." This formula suggested an examination of the 

 intellect as such, or, as Kant termed it, the criticism 

 of pure reason. In deliberately placing this problem 

 before philosophers as an introduction or preliminary 

 investigation which should precede any attempt to decide 

 whether the human mind was capable of arriving at 

 knowledge or certainty regarding things spiritual and 

 transcendent, Kant founded that philosophical discipline 

 termed later on Erkcnntnisstheorie, Epistemology, or 

 Theory of Knowledge. The result which Kant arrived 

 at, and which appeared to him to contain a reply to all 



VOL. III. Y 



