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FIEST CLASS OF OBJECTS FOE THE SUBJECT. 61
sible, so that pure intuition a priori has to supply the
foundation for empirical perception. In this process, as
I shall soon show more clearly, the Understanding avails
itself of all the several data, even the minutest, which are
presented to it by the given sensation, in order to construct
the cause of it in Space in conformity with them. This intel
lectual operation (which is moreover explicitly denied both
by Schelling *
and by Fries 2
), does not however take place
discursively or reflectively, in abstracto, by means of concep
tions and words ; it is, on the contrary, an intuitive and
quite direct process. For by it alone, therefore exclusively
in the Understanding and for the Understanding, does
the real, objective, corporeal world, filling Space in its
three dimensions, present itself and further proceed, ac
cording to the same law of causality, to change in Time,
and to move in Space. It is therefore the Understanding
itself which has to create the objective world; for this
world cannot walk into our brain from outside all ready
cut and dried through the senses and the openings of their
organs. | In fact, the senses supply nothing but the raw
materials which the Understanding at once proceeds to
work up into the objective view of a corporeal world, sub
ject to regular laws, by means of the simple forms we have
indicated : Space, Time, and Causality. \ Accordingly our
every-day empirical perception is an intellectual one and has
a right to claim this predicate, which German pseudo-philo
sophers have given to a pretended intuition of dream-worlds,
in which their beloved Absolute is supposed to perform its
evolutions. And now I will proceed to show how wide is
the gulf which separates sensation from perception, by
pointing out how raw is the material out of which the
beautiful edifice is constructed.
and 238.
1
"
Schelling, Philosophische Schriften" (1809), vol.i. pp.237
2
"
Fries, Kritik der VernunfL" vol. i. pp. 52-56 and p. 290 of the 1st
edition.