St. Thomas evidently holds them to be objective, for he holds them to be necessary and self-evident principles, principles _per se nota_, as may be seen in his answer to the question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per se notum?_ and we need strong reasons to induce us to dissent from any philosophical conclusion of the angelic doctor. Moreover, Kant by no means proves his own conclusion, that they are forms of the subject. All he proves is that there is and can be no fact of human knowledge without them, which may be true without their being subjective. He proves, if you will, that they are constituent principles of the human understanding, in the sense that the human understanding cannot exist and operate without their initiative and concurrence; but this no more proves that they are forms of the subject than the fact that the creature can neither exist nor act without the creative and concurrent act of the creator proves that the creator is an inherent law or form of the creature. To our mind, Kant confirms a conclusion contrary to his own. His masterly _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_ establishes simply this fact, that man's own subjective reason alone does not suffice for science, and that man, in science as in existence, is dependent on that which is not himself; or, in a word, that man depends on the intelligibleness of the object, or that which renders it intelligible, to be himself intelligent, or knowing. Man is, no doubt, created with the power or faculty of intelligence, but that power or faculty is not the power or faculty to know without an intelligible object, or to know what is not knowable independently of it. Hence, from Kant's facts, we conclude that the ideas or categories, without which no object is intelligible and no fact of intelligence possible, are not subjective, but objective, real, and independent of the subject.