90 Herbert Spencer^s Synthetic Pliilosophy. 



by adding a clause to it, wbicli made it read : Nihil est in in- 

 tellectu quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus. 

 Thus changed, it became the motto of Kant's transcend- 

 ental idealism, and this view of innate faculties^ instead of 

 innate ideas, distinguishes the Kantian view, on the one 

 hand, from the old Leibnitz- Wolffian philosophy that rested 

 entirely on innate ideas, and on the other hand from Hume's 

 sensorial experientialism, which denies the existence of any 

 sort of innate possession, whether in the form of ready-made 

 ideas or of mere potential faculties. Kant undertakes to 

 show that the mind brings with it certain elements of a 

 priori knowledge in which no empirical influence, personal 

 or ancestral, is traceable. " Experience," he says, " consists 

 of intuitions which are entirely the work of the understand- 

 ing." " Experience consists in the synthetical connections 

 of phenomena (perceptions) in consciousness, so far as 

 the connection is necessary " (Prolegomena 1, sec. 23, 23). 

 " The reader had probably been long accustomed to consider 

 experience a mere empirical synthesis of perception, and 

 hence not to reflect that it goes much further than these ex- 

 tend, as it gives empirical judgments universal validity, and 

 for that presupposes pure unity of the understanding which 

 precedes a pyHori^^ (ibid., sec. 26, MahafEy's translation). 

 " It is the matter of all phenomena that is given to us a 

 posteriori; the form must be ready a priori for them in the 

 mind." 



" Before objects are given to me, that is a priori, I must 

 presuppose in myself laws of the undcrstai^ding which are 

 expressed in conceptions a priori. To these conceptions all 

 objects of experience must necessarily conform" (Preface 

 to second edition of Kritik). We are affected by objects, 

 he argued, only by intuition, which is always sensuous. 

 The faculty of thinking the object of sensuous intuition is 

 the understanding. " Understanding can not intuit, the 

 sensibility can not think. In no other way than from tlio 

 united operation of both can knowledge arise." 



Thus Kant maintains that before sensuous impressions 

 can be changed into experience tliey must be molded by 

 the mutual forms of sensible intuition and logical concep- 

 tion. It is universally admitted amoTig tliinkers tliat Kant 

 tried to hold positions that are contradictory ; but on this 

 point I can not dwell liere. 



The post-Kantiun pliildsophcrs aimed to overcome the 

 new dualism implied by Kant's contention that not only 



