37° KAI^T. possible, but the transcendent use of them, and conse- quently the metaphysics of the suprasensible, impossible. The case would be different if our intuition w.ere intellectual instead of sensuous, or, which is the same thing, if our understanding were intuitive instead of discursive ; then the objects which we think would not need to be given us from another source (through sensuous intuition), but would be themselves produced in the act by which we thought them. The divine spirit may be such an archetypal, cre- ative understanding {intellectus archetypiis), which generates objects by its thought; the human spirit is not such, and therefore is confined, with its knowledge, within the circle of possible perception. — The conception of " intellectual intuition " leads to a distinction in regard to things ini themselves: in its negative meaning noumenon denotes a] | thing in so far as it is not the object of our sensuous intui-l " tion, in its positive meaning a thing which is the object of 3ijio>i=S£tisuous intuition. The positive thing in itself is a problematical concept; its possibility depends on the exist- ence of an intuitive understanding, something about which we are ignorant. The negative thing in itself cannot be known, indeed, but it can be thought ; and the representa- tion of it is a possible concept, one which is not self-contra- dictory* (a principle which is of great importance for practical philosophy). Still further, it is an indispensable concept, which shows that the boundary where our intui- tion ends is not the boundary of the thinkable as well; and even if it affords no positive extension of knowledge f it is, nevertheless, very useful, since it sets bounds to the use of
- The thing in itself denotes the object in so far as it can be thought by us,
but not intuited, and consequently not determined by intuitions, i. e., cannot be known. It is only through the schematism that the categories are limited to phenomena. O. Liebmann {Kant und die Epigonen, p. 27, and passim) over- looks or ignores this when he says : Kant here allows himself to "recognize an object emancipated from the forms of knowledge, therefore an irrational object, i. e., to represent something which is not representable — wooden iron." The thing in itself is insensible, but not irrational, and the forms of intuition and forms of thought joined by Liebmann under the title forms of knowledge have in Kant a by no means equal rank. f A category by itself, freed from all conditions of intuition (<r. g. , the repres- entation of a substance which is thought without permanence in time, or of a cause which should not act in time), can yield no definite concept of an object
