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SECOND CLASS OF OBJECTS FOR THE SUBJECT. 135
their contents, I have shown above ( 29) that Truth is a
quality belonging exclusively to judgments : that is, a logical
quality and as to the other two ;
dbstracta, I refer my readers
partly to 65 of the first volume, partly to the entire Third
Book of my chief work. If, nevertheless, a very solemn and
mysterious air is assumed and the eyebrows are raised up
to the wig whenever these three meagre dbstracta are
mentioned, young people may easily be induced to believe
that something peculiar and inexpressible lies behind them,
which entitles them to be called ideas, and harnessed to
the triumphal car of this would-be metaphysical Eeason.
When therefore we are told, that we possess a faculty
for direct, material (i.e., not only formal, but substantial),
supersensuous knowledge, (that is, a knowledge which
transcends all possible experience), a faculty specially de
signed for metaphysical insight, and inherent in us for
this purpose I must take the liberty to call this a down
right lie. For the slightest
candid self-examination will
suffice to convince us that absolutely no such faculty re
sides within us. The result at which all honest, competent,
authoritative thinkers have arrived in the course of ages,
moreover, tallies exactly with my assertion. It is as fol
lows: All that is innate in the whole of our cognitive
faculty, all that is therefore a priori and independent of
experience, is strictly limited to the formal part of know
ledge : that is, to the consciousness of the peculiar functions
of the intellect and of the only way in which they can
possibly act; but in order to give material knowledge,
these functions one and all require material from out
side. Within us therefore lie the forms of external, ob
and then the law of
jective perception : Time and Space,
Causality as a mere form of the Understanding which
enables it to construct the objective, corporeal world
finally, the formal part of abstract : knowledge this last is
deposited and treated of in Logic, which our forefathers