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PREFACE.

If modern philosophy goes "back to Kant" at the present time, it is certain to go forward to Fichte again after a due interval.

Kant made a new epoch in the history of philosophy by exploring the subjective factor of cognition. It was obvious to him that knowledge is a product of two factors: the object entering as one factor and the constitution of the knowing subject forming the other. He suggested that in order to solve the problems of philosophy it is necessary to make a careful exploration of the subjective factor of knowledge. If we can learn to recognize the subjective coefficient in our experience— in other words, if we can make allowance for what the mind itself adds to the object in the process of knowing it— we are in a condition to know the object in its purity, or as it is in itself.

On this ground the attempt of Kant and his followers seems promising. They essayed to take a complete inventory of the forms that belong to the constitution of the mind. Long practice in this kind of investigation gave them such power of introspection that for the first time in the history of human thought psychology began to be a real science. We all remember, if we have studied the writings of this school of philosophers, how Rh