Our objective standpoint is realistic and therefore conditioned, so far as, in taking for granted the existence of beings in Nature, it abstracts from the fact that their objective existence postulates an intellect, which contains them as its representation; but Kant's subjective and idealistic standpoint is likewise conditioned, inasmuch as he starts from the intelligence, which itself, however, presupposes Nature, in consequence of whose development as far as animal life that intelligence is for the first time enabled to make its appearance.--Keeping steadily to this realistic, objective standpoint of ours, we may also define Kant's theory as follows: After Locke, in order to know things in themselves, had abstracted the share of sensuous functions--called by him secondary qualities--from things as they appear, Kant with infinitely greater depth deducted from them the incomparably larger share of the cerebral function, which includes precisely what Locke calls primary qualities. But all I have done here has been to show why all this must necessarily be as it is, by indicating the place occupied by the intellect in the nexus of Nature, when we start realistically from the objective as given, but, in doing so, take the only thing of which we are quite directly conscious, the _will_--that true ποῦ στῶ of Metaphysics--for our support, as being what is primarily real, everything else being merely its phenomenon. What now follows serves to complete this. I have mentioned already, that where knowledge takes place, the motive which appears as representation and the act of volition resulting from it, remain _the more clearly separated one from the other_, the more perfect the intellect; that is, the higher we ascend in the scale of beings. This calls for fuller explanation. As long as the will's activity is roused by stimuli alone, and no representation as yet takes place--that is, in plants--there is no separation at all between the receiving of impressions and the being determined by them. In the lowest order of animal intelligence, such as we find it in _radiaria_, _acalepha_, _acephala_, &c., the difference is still small; a feeling of hunger, a watchfulness roused by this, an apprehending and snapping at their prey, still constitute the whole content of their consciousness; nevertheless this is the first twilight of the dawning world as representation, the background of which--that is to say, everything excepting the motive which acts each time--still remains shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Here moreover the organs of the senses are correspondingly imperfect and incomplete, having exceedingly few data for perception to bring to an understanding yet in embryo. Nevertheless wherever there is sensibility, it is always accompanied by understanding, _i.e._ with the faculty for referring effects experienced to external causes; without this, sensibility would be superfluous and a mere source of aimless suffering. The