We have seen that Kant made free use of the metaphor of giving and receiving. But it is hardly possible to use such metaphors and retain independence of judgment. The associations customarily attached to the figurative language carry one away easily, and often for a long way, on the familiar paths of imagination. The analogy is used even where--if all were looked into--its terms become meaningless. No reader of Locke can have failed, e. g., to notice how he is misled by his own images of the dark room and the empty cabinet:--images, useful and perhaps even necessary, but requiring constant restraint in him who would ply them wisely and to his reader's good. From what has been said above it will be clear that the acquisition of experience, the growth of knowledge, is a unique species of gift and acceptance. The consciousness which Kant describes may be the consciousness of John Doe or Richard Roe: but as Kant describes it, the limitations of their personality, i.e. of their individual body and soul, have been neglected. It is consciousness in general which is Kant's theme, just as it is granite in general--and not the block in yonder field,--which is the theme of the geologist. Once get that clear, and you will also see clearly that consciousness is at once giver and recipient--neither or both: at once receptivity and spontaneity. But--you may reply--does not the material object _act_ (chemically, optically, mechanically, &c.) on the sense-organ on the periphery of my body, does not the nerve-string _convey_ the impression to the brain; and is not perception the _effect_ of that process, in which the material object is the initial _cause_?