We might say that the root-conception of L.'s system is the assumption that some external objective reality distinct from human thought exercises a causative action upon our minds. L.'s first concession toward rectifying his mistake is that thought is in part constitutive of knowledge, the reason being that each of two objects which act upon one another contributes from its own nature to the resultant effect. But he makes a second, and still greater, concession to the importance of the work of thought. Thought always colors objects given to it, but sometimes it even makes its own objects entirely out of its own nature. We must now examine those claims to be independent which 'things' put forth. Why are 'things' more than thoughts? First, because they account for the a posteriori element in knowledge. As such an element is excluded from L.'s narrow and formal view of thought, it must be referred to an unknown, outside thought. But this is not enough. The a posteriori element might be a flux of particulars, in which case 'things,' being void of permanent qualities, could not be the subject-matter of a theory. It is therefore necessary to universalize 'things,' so that metaphysical attributes may be predicated of them. Thought had previously been stripped of its concrete particularity, in order that 'things' might be clothed with reality; now its universality is borrowed from it, in order that 'things' may be invested with the only property which can make them cognizable. For L. time is transcendentally real. If tenable, this view constitutes the stronghold of his system. Cause and effect differ from reason and consequence in that the former are in time, the latter not. Now if time-relationship is in any way applicable to 'supersensuous' or 'intelligible' 'things,' it at once becomes possible to invest those 'things' with a causal activity. No sooner has L. completed his vindication of the 'reality' of time than he is seized with an uneasy foreboding that he has committed himself to a doctrine incompatible with the ultimate goal of his philosophy. It is to the philosophy of religion, he concludes, that we must look for help.
From one end to the other of Holbach's Systeme de la Nature, which is regarded to-day as an exploded materialism of the past, we recognize the essential traits of modern evolutionist philosophy as this is embodied in Spencer. We find there nature conceived as a real existence independent of our mind and possessing in itself a system of simple, uniform,
