Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/153

 Twelfth Essay on Human Understanding, Hume expresses himself in agreement with this view, as also Rousseau in his "Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inégalité." Kant's doctrine, on the contrary, is a totally different one. The matter is one which introspection and clear reflection can alone decide. Each of us must therefore examine himself as to whether he is conscious in his own conceptions of a " Monogram of Pure Imagination a priori ; " whether, for instance, when he thinks dog, he is conscious of something entre chien et loup ; or whether, as I have here explained it, he is either thinking an abstract conception through his Reason, or representing some representative of that conception as a complete picture through his imagination.

All thinking, in a wider sense : that is, all inner activity of the mind in general, necessitates either words or pictures of the imagination : without one or other of these it has nothing to hold by. They are not, however, both necessary at the same time, although they may co-operate to their mutual support. Now, thinking in a narrower sense—that is, abstract reflection by means of words—is either purely logical reasoning, in which case it keeps strictly to its own sphere ; or it touches upon the limits of perceptible representations in order to come to an understanding with them, so as to bring that which is given by experience and grasped by perception into connection with abstract conceptions resulting from clear reflection, and thus to gain complete possession of it. In thinking therefore, we seek either for the conception or rule to which a given perception belongs, or for the particular case which proves a given conception or rule. In this quality, thinking is an activity of the faculty of judgment, and indeed in the first case, a reflective, in the second, a subsuming activity. The faculty of judgment is accordingly the mediator between intuitive and abstract knowledge, or between the Underderstanding and the Reason.