it is otherwise with the Kantian distinction between the matter of
knowledge and its form. By regarding intelligence as pre-eminently a
faculty of establishing relations, Kant attributed an extra-intellectual
origin to the terms between which the relations are established. He
affirmed, against his immediate predecessors, that knowledge is not
entirely resolvable into terms of intelligence. He brought back into
philosophy--while modifying it and carrying it on to another plane--that
essential element of the philosophy of Descartes which had been abandoned
by the Cartesians.

Thereby he prepared the way for a new philosophy, which might have
established itself in the extra-intellectual matter of knowledge by a
higher effort of intuition. Coinciding with this matter, adopting the
same rhythm and the same movement, might not consciousness, by two
efforts of opposite direction, raising itself and lowering itself by
turns, become able to grasp from within, and no longer perceive only
from without, the two forms of reality, body and mind? Would not this
twofold effort make us, as far as that is possible, re-live the
absolute? Moreover, as, in the course of this operation, we should see
intellect spring up of itself, cut itself out in the whole of mind,
intellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited, but not
relative.

Such was the direction that Kantianism might have pointed out to a
revivified Cartesianism. But in this direction Kant himself did not go.

He _would_ not, because, while assigning to knowledge an
extra-intellectual matter, he believed this matter to be either
coextensive with intellect or less extensive than intellect. Therefore
he could not dream of cutting out intellect in it, nor, consequently, of
tracing the genesis of the understanding and its categories. The molds
of the understanding and the understanding itself had to be accepted as
they are, already made. Between the matter presented to our intellect
and this intellect itself there was no relationship. The agreement
between the two was due to the fact that intellect imposed its form on
matter. So that not only was it necessary to posit the intellectual form
of knowledge as a kind of absolute and give up the quest of its genesis,
but the very matter of this knowledge seemed too ground down by the
intellect for us to be able to hope to get it back in its original
purity. It was not the "thing-in-itself," it was only the refraction of
it th