Kant says: we judge by means of conceptions; and that judgment is the mediate cognition of an object, and consequently its representation. The scholastics said: we know objects by means of an intelligible species, which is derived from the sensible species, and is its intelligible representation. Kant says, that in every judgment there is a conception applicable to many things, and that under this plurality it comprises also a given representation which is referred immediately to its object. The scholastics said, that the intelligible species was applicable to many things, because universal; that, when separated from a sensible and particular species, it abstracts from all material and _individuating_ conditions, and consequently embraces all individual objects in one common representation. Kant uses the words _conception_, and _to conceive_, to denote the intellectual act, form, or whatever it may be, by which the understanding, making use of sensible intuitions, combines the materials offered by sensibility conformably to the laws of the intellectual order. The scholastics likewise taught that the intelligible species, called also species _impressed_, fecundated the understanding by producing in it an intellectual conception, whence resulted the _word_, internal locution, or species _expressed_, which they also styled _conception_. Kant says, that the cognition of human intelligence is a cognition by conceptions, not intuitive, but discursive and general, and that out of the sphere of sensibility there is for us no true intuition. The scholastics said: our understanding, in this life, has a necessary relation to the nature of material things, and for this reason it cannot _primo et per se_, know immaterial substances: hence it happens that we know them perfectly only by certain comparisons with material things, and chiefly by way of removal, _per viam remotionis_, in a negative way. 53. The sample we have just given is exceedingly interesting, since it enables us to appreciate as they merit the points of similarity in these two systems, which occupy a prominent place in the history of ideology,--a similarity which has not always hitherto been sufficiently noticed, although apparent upon the simple perusal of the German philosopher. Nor is this extraordinary: the study of the scholastics is exceedingly difficult; one must accommodate one's self to the language, the style, the opinions, and the prejudices of their epoch, and travel over much useless ground to collect a little pure ore. Note well, however, that I do not pretend to discover the "_Critic of Pure Reason_" in the works of the scholastics, I would only mark a fact but little known; it is that whatever is good, fundamental, and conclusive against the sensism of Condillac, in the German philosopher's system, had been said ages before by the scholastics.