No objection can be raised to this paragraph; for the premise of our conclusion is a mere analysis of the above-stated conception of Philosophy, and from the premise the conclusion is drawn. If somebody should wish to remind us that the conception of a ground must be differently explained, we can, to be sure, not prevent him from forming another conception of it, if he so chooses; but we declare, on the strength of our good right, that _we_, in the above description of Philosophy, wish to have nothing else understood by that word. Hence, if it is not to be so understood, the possibility of Philosophy, as we have described it, must be altogether denied, and such a denial we have replied to in our first section. III. The finite intelligence has nothing beyond experience; experience contains the whole substance of its thinking. The philosopher stands necessarily under the same conditions, and hence it seems impossible that he can elevate himself beyond experience. But he can abstract; i. e. he can separate by the freedom of thinking what in experience is united. In Experience, _the Thing_—that which is to be determined in itself independent of our freedom, and in accordance with which our knowledge is to shape itself—and the Intelligence—which is to obtain a knowledge of it—are inseparably united. The philosopher may abstract from both, and if he does, he has abstracted from Experience and elevated himself above it. If he abstracts from the first, he retains an intelligence _in itself_, i. e. abstracted from its relation to experience; if he abstract from the latter, he retains the Thing _in itself_, i. e. abstracted from the fact that it occurs in experience; and thus retains the Intelligence in itself, or the “Thing in itself,” as the explanatory ground of Experience. The former mode of proceeding is called _Idealism_, the latter _Dogmatism_. Only these two philosophical systems—and of that these remarks should convince everybody—are possible. According to the first system the representations, which are accompanied by the feeling of necessity, are productions of the Intelligence, which must be presupposed in their explanation; according to the latter system they are the productions of a thing in itself which must be presupposed to explain them. If anybody desired to deny this, he would have to prove that there is still another way to go beyond experience than the one by means of abstraction, or that the consciousness of experience contains more than the two components just mentioned. Now in regard to the first, it will appear below, it is true, that what we have here called Intelligence does, indeed, occur in consciousness under another name, and hence is not altogether produced by abstraction; but it will at the same time be shown that the consciousness of it is conditioned by an abstraction, which, however, occurs naturally to mankind.