But it is quite possible for these very things in themselves to have relations with us from which the above-mentioned occurrences may have arisen, concerning which accordingly we have to wait for the decision _à posteriori_, and must not forestall it. That the English and French should persist in denying _à priori_ all such occurrences, comes at the bottom from the influence of Locke's philosophy, under which these nations still stand as to all essential points, and by which we are taught that, after merely subtracting sensation, we know things in themselves. According to this view therefore, the laws of the material world are held to be ultimate, and no other influence than _influxus physicus_ is admitted. Consequently these nations believe, it is true, in a physical, but not in a metaphysical, science, and therefore reject all other than so-called "Natural Magic:" a term which contains the same _contradictio in adjecto_ as "Supernatural Physics," but is nevertheless constantly used quite seriously, while the latter was used but once, and then in joke, by Lichtenberg. On the other hand, the common people, with their universal readiness to give credit to supernatural influences, express by it in their own way the conviction, that all things which we perceive and comprehend are mere phenomena, not things in themselves; although, with them, conviction is only felt. I quote the following passage from Kant's "Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten," as a proof that this is not saying too much: "There is an observation requiring no great subtlety of reflection, which we may on the contrary suppose the most ordinary understanding capable of making, albeit in its own way and by an obscure distinction of the faculty of judgment, which it calls feeling. It is this: that all our involuntary representations (such as those of the senses) give us no further knowledge of objects than as they affect us, whereby we are left in ignorance as to what those objects may be in themselves; that, as far as this sort of representation is concerned therefore, we are still only able by this means to attain knowledge of phenomena, but never of _things in themselves_, even by dint of the utmost clearness and the most strenuous attention the understanding is able to give to this point. When once this distinction is made, however, it stands to reason, that the existence of something else behind these phenomena, something which is not phenomenon, _i.e._ the thing in itself, has still to be admitted and assumed."[303] [303] Kant, "First Principles of Ethical Metaphysic," 3rd edition, p. 105.