If, in spite of this essential limitation of the intellect, it is possible, by a circuitous route, to arrive at a certain understanding of the world and the nature of things, by means of reflection widely pursued, and the skilful combination of objective knowledge directed towards without, with the data of self‐consciousness, this will yet be only a very limited, entirely indirect, and relative understanding, a parabolical translation into the forms of knowledge, thus a _quadam prodire tenus_, which must always leave many problems still unsolved. On the other hand, the fundamental error of the old _dogmatism_ in all its forms, which was destroyed by Kant, was this, that it started absolutely from _knowledge_, i.e., _the world as idea_, in order to deduce and construct from its laws being in general, whereby it accepted that world of idea, together with its laws, as absolutely existing and absolutely real; while its whole existence is throughout relative, and a mere result or phenomenon of the true being which lies at its foundation,—or, in other words, that it constructed an ontology when it had only materials for a dianoiology. Kant discovered the subjectively conditioned and therefore entirely immanent nature of knowledge, _i.e._, its unsuitableness for transcendental use, from the constitution of knowledge itself; and therefore he very appropriately called his doctrine the _Critique of Reason_. He accomplished this partly by showing the important and thoroughly _a priori_ part of all knowledge, which, as throughout subjective, spoils all objectivity, and partly by professedly proving that if they were followed out to the end the principles of knowledge, taken as purely objective, led to contradictions. He had, however, hastily assumed that, apart from _objective_ knowledge, _i.e._, apart from the world as _idea_, there is nothing given us except conscience, out of which he constructed the little that still remained of metaphysics, his moral theology, to which, however, he attributed absolutely only a practical validity, and no theoretical validity at all. He had overlooked that although certainly objective knowledge, or the world as idea, affords nothing but phenomena, together with their phenomenal connection and regressus, yet our own nature necessarily also belongs to the world of things in themselves, for it must have its root in it. But here, even if the root itself cannot be brought to light, it must be possible to gather some data for the explanation of the connection of the world of phenomena with the inner nature of things. Thus here lies the path upon which I have gone beyond Kant and the limits which he drew, yet always restricting myself to the ground of reflection, and consequently of honesty, and therefore without the vain pretension of intellectual intuition or absolute thought which characterises the period of pseudo‐philosophy between Kant and me. In his proof of the