Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/168

 therefore rightly called the Theory of Reason. But this very Logic teaches us also, that the conceptions which constitute those judgments and conclusions to which all logical laws refer, must look to intuitive knowledge for their material and their content; just as the Understanding, which creates this intuitive knowledge, looks to sensation for the material which gives content to its a priori forms.

Thus all that is material in our knowledge : that is to say, all that cannot be reduced to subjective form, to individual mode of activity, to functions of our intellect,—its whole material therefore,—comes from outside ; that is, in the last resort, from the objective perception of the corporeal world, which has its origin in sensation. Now it is this intuitive and, so far as material content is concerned, empirical knowledge, which Reason—real Reason works up into conceptions, which it fixes sensuously by means of words ; these conceptions then supply the materials for its endless combinations through judgments and conclusions, which constitute the weft of our thought-world. Reason therefore has absolutely no material, but merely a formal, content, and this is the object-matter of Logic, which consequently contains only forms and rules for thinking operations. In reflecting, Reason is absolutely forced to take its material contents from outside, i.e., from the intuitive representations which the Understanding has created. Its functions are exercised on them, first of all, in forming conceptions, by dropping some of the various qualities of things while retaining others, which are then connected together to a conception. Representations, however, forfeit their capacity for being intuitively perceived by this process, while they become easier to deal with, as has already been shown. It is therefore in this, and in this alone, that the efficiency of Reason consists ; whereas it can never supply material content from its own resources.—It has nothing but forms : its nature is feminine ; it only conceives, but does not generate. It is not by mere