ts we are not
confronted with reality but are confined to our own ideas. Hence we
ought to ask why Kant is led to adopt an attitude in the latter case
which he does not adopt in the former. The answer appears to be
twofold. In the first place, there is an inveterate tendency to think
of universals, and therefore of the connexions between them, as being
not objective realities[18] but mere ideas. In other words, we tend to
adopt the conceptualist attitude, which regards individuals as the
only reality, and universals as mental fictions. In consequence, we
are apt to think that while in perception, which is of the individual,
we are confronted by reality, in universal judgements, in which we
apprehend connexions between universals, we have before us mere ideas.
Kant may fairly be supposed to have been unconsciously under the
influence of this tendency. In the second place, we apprehend a
universal connexion by the operation of thinking. Thinking is
essentially an activity; and since activity in the ordinary sense in
which we oppose action to knowledge originates something, we tend to
think of the activity of thinking as also originating something, viz.
that which is our object when we think. Hence, since we think of what
is real as independent of us and therefore as something which we may
discover but can in no sense make, we tend to think of the object of
thought as only an idea. On the other hand, what is ordinarily called
perception, though it involves the activity of thinking, also involves
an element in respect of which we are passive. This is the fact
pointed to by Kant's phrase 'objects are _given_ in perception'. In
virtue of this passive element we are inclined to think that in
perception we simply stand before the reality in a passive attitude.
The reality perceived is thought to be, so to say, there, existing
independently of us; relation to the subject is unnoticed because of
our apparently wholly passive attitude. At times, and especially when
he is thinking of the understanding as a faculty of spontaneity, Kant
seems to have been under the influence of this second tendency.

[18] i. e. as not having a place in the reality which, as we
think, exists independently of the mind.

The preceding summary of the problem of the _Critique_ represents the
account given in the two Prefaces and the Introduction. According to
this account, the problem arises from the unquestioned existence of _a
priori_ knowledg