son to believe that the laws of our cognitive
faculties impose any conditions at all?--that the mind in any way reacts
on the objects affecting it, so as to produce a result different from
that which would be produced were it merely a passive recipient? "The
mind of man," says Bacon, "is far from the nature of a clear and equal
glass, wherein the beams of things shall reflect according to their true
incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of
superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced." Can what
Bacon says of the fallacies of the mind be also said of its proper
cognitions? Does the mind, by its own action, in any way distort the
appearance of the things presented to it; and if so, how far does the
distortion extend, and in what manner is it to be rectified? To trace the
course of this inquiry, from the day when Plato compared the objects
perceived by the senses to the shadows thrown by fire on the wall of a
cave, to the day when Kant declared that we know only phenomena, not
things in themselves, would be to write the history of philosophy. We can
only at present call attention to one movement in that history, which,
was, in effect, a revolution in philosophy. The older philosophers in
general distinguished between the senses and the intellect, regarding the
former as deceptive and concerned with phenomena alone, the latter as
trustworthy and conversant with the realities of things. Hence arose the
distinction between the sensible and the intelligible world--between
things as perceived by sense and things as apprehended by
intellect--between Phenomenology and Ontology. Kant rejected this
distinction, holding that the intellect, as well as the sense, imposes
its own forms on the things presented to it, and is therefore cognisant
only of phenomena, not of things in themselves. The logical result of
this position would be the abolition of ontology as a science of things
in themselves, and, _a fortiori_, of that highest branch of ontology
which aims at a knowledge of the Absolute[AA] [Greek: kat' exochen],
of the unconditioned first principle of all things. If the mind, in every
act of thought, imposes its own forms on its objects, to think is to
condition, and the unconditioned is the unthinkable. Such was the logical
result of Kant's principles, but not the actual result. For Kant, by
distinguishing between the Understanding and the Reason, and giving to
the latter an indirect yet posit