Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/342

 320 KANT. side had recognized that the peculiar character of judg- ment consists in active connection. The rationalists made judgment an active function, it is true, but a mere activity jof conscious development, of elucidation and analytical finference, which does not advance knowledge a single step. The empiricists described it as a process of compari- son and discrimination, as the mere perception and recog- nition of the relations and connections already existing between ideas ; while in reality judgment does not discover the relations and connections of representations, but itself establishes them. In the former case the syn- thetic moment is ignored, in the latter the active moment. The imperfect view of judgment was one of the reasons for the appearance of extreme theories concerning the origin / of ideas in reason or in perception. Rationalism regards i even those concepts which have a content as innate, J whereas it is only formal concepts which arc so. Em- piricism regards all, even the highest formal concepts 1 (the categories), as abstracted from experience, whereas experience furnishes only the content of knowledge, and not the synthesis which is necessary to it. On the one hand too much, and on the other too little, is regarded as the original possession of the understanding. The question "What concepts are innate?" can be decided only by answering the further question, What are the concepts through which the faculty of judgment connects the re- presentations obtained from experience ? These connective! concepts, these formal instruments of synthesis are a priori. The agreement of the two schools is still greater in regard to the relation of sense and understanding, notwith- standing the apparently sharp contrast between them. iThe empiricist considers thought transformed, sublimated perception, while the rationalist sees in perception only confused and less distinct thought. For the former con- cepts are faded images of sensations, for the latter sen- sations are concepts which have not yet become clear ; the difference is scarcely greater than if the one should call ice frozen water, and the other should prefer to call water melted ice. Both arrange intuition and thought in a single series, and derive the one from the other by enhance-