is not in a position to do.  The objects of the latter must be given to it, and to the human mind they are given in no other way than through sensuous intuition.  Metaphysics seeks to be a science of the real, but it is impossible to conjure being out of thought; reality cannot be proved from concepts, it can only be felt.  In making the unperceivable and suprasensible (the real nature of things, the totality of the world, the Deity, and immortality) the special object of philosophy, rationalism looked on the understanding as a faculty of knowledge by which objects are given.  In reality objects can never be given through concepts; these only render it possible to think objects given in some other way (by intuition).  It is true that concepts of the suprasensible exist, but nothing can be known through them, there is nothing intuitively given to be subsumed under them.

With this failure to perceive the intuitive element in mathematics was joined the mistake of overlooking its synthetic character.  The syllogistic method of presentation employed in the Euclidean geometry led to the belief that the more special theorems had been derived from the simpler ones, and these from the axioms, by a process of conceptual analysis; while the fact is that in mathematics all progress is by intuition alone, the syllogism serving merely to formulate and explain truths already attained, but not to supply new ones.  Following the example of mathematics thus misunderstood, the mission of philosophy was made to consist in the development of the truths slumbering in pregnant first principles by means of logical analysis.  If only there were metaphysical axioms!  If we only did not demand, and were not compelled to demand, of true science that it increase our knowledge, and not merely give an analytical explanation of knowledge.  When once the clearness and distinctness of conceptions had been taken in so purely formal a sense, it was inevitable that in the end, as productivity became less, the principle should be weakened down to a mere demand for the explanation and elucidation of the metaphysical ideas present in popular consciousness.  Thus the rationalistic current lost itself in the shallow waters of the Illumination, which soon gave as ready a welcome to the empirical theories—­since these also were able to legitimate themselves by clear and distinct conceptions—­as it had given to the results of the rationalistic systems.

It was thus easy to see that each of the contending parties had been guilty of one-sidedness, and that in order to escape this a certain mean must be assumed between the two extremes; but it was a much more difficult matter to discover the due middle ground.  Neither of the opposing standpoints is so correct as its defenders believe, and neither so false as its opponents maintain.  Where, then, on either side, does the mistaken narrowness begin, and how far does the justification of each extend?