The whole development of Kant's thought up to this point is intelligible when regarded from the Leibnitzian point of view, with which he started. There appears no reason to conclude that Hume at this time exercised any direct influence. One may go still further, and add that even in the _Dissertation_ of 1770, generally regarded as more than foreshadowing the _Kritik_, the really critical question is not involved. A brief notice of the contents of this tract will suffice to show how far removed Kant yet was from the methods and principles of the critical or transcendental philosophy. Sense and understanding, according to the _Dissertation_, are the two sources of knowledge. The objects of the one are things of sense or _phenomena_; the objects of the other are _noumena_. These are absolutely distinct, and are not to be regarded as differing only in degree. In _phenomena_ we distinguish _matter_, which is given by sense, and _form_, which is the law of the order of sensations. Such form is twofold--the order of space and time. Sensations formed by space and time compose the world of appearance, and this when treated by the understanding, according to logical rules, is _experience_. But the logical use of the understanding is not its only use. Much more important is the _real_ use, by which are produced the pure notions whereby we think things as they are. These pure notions are the laws of the operation of the intellect; they are _leges intellectus_. Apart, then, from the expanded treatment of space and time as subjective forms, we find in the _Dissertation_ little more than the very precise and definite formulation of the slowly growing opposition to the Leibnitzian doctrines. That the pure intellectual notions should be defended as springing from the nature of intellect is not out of harmony with the statement of the _Traume eines Geistersehers_, for there the pure notions were allowed to exist, but were not held to have validity for actual things except on grounds of experience. Here they are supposed to exist, dissevered from experience, and are allowed validity as determinations of things in themselves.