y of inference). Of these the first gives laws to the faculty
of cognition or to nature, the second laws to taste, and the third laws to
the will.

The most important of the fundamental assumptions concerns the relation,
the nature, and the mission of the two faculties of cognition. These do
not differ in degree, through the possession of greater or less
distinctness--for there are sensuous representations which are distinct and
intellectual ones which are not so--but specifically: Sensibility is the
faculty of intuitions, understanding the faculty of concepts. Intuitions
are particular, concepts general representations. The former relate to
objects directly, the latter only indirectly (through the mediation of
other representations). In intuition the mind is receptive, in conception
it acts spontaneously. "Through intuitions objects are _given_ to us;
through concepts they are _thought_." It results from this that neither of
the two faculties is of itself sufficient for the attainment of knowledge,
for cognition is objective thinking, the determination of objects, the
unifying combination or elaboration of a given manifold, the forming of a
material content. Rationalists and empiricists alike have been deceived
in regard to the necessity for co-operation between the senses and the
understanding. Sensibility furnishes the material manifold, which of itself
it is not able to form, while the understanding gives the unifying form, to
which of itself it cannot furnish a content. "Intuitions without concepts
are _blind_" (formless, unintelligible), "concepts without intuitions are
_empty_" (without content). In the one case, form and order are wanting; in
the other, the material to be formed. The two faculties are thrown back on
each other, and knowledge can arise only from their union.

A certain degree of form is attained in sense, it is true, since the chaos
of sensations is ordered under the "forms of intuition," space and time,
which are an original possession of the intuiting subject, but this is
not sufficient, without the aid of the understanding, for the genesis of
knowledge. In view of the _a priori_ nature of space and time, though
without detraction from their intuitive character (they are immediate
particular representations), we may assign pure sensibility to the higher
faculty of cognition and speak of an intuiting reason.

The forms of intuition and of thought come from within, they lie ready in
the mind _a