In order to bring Kant’s mode of expression nearer the Platonic, we might say: Time, space, and causality are that arrangement of our intellect by virtue of which the _one_ being of each kind which alone really is, manifests itself to us as a multiplicity of similar beings, constantly appearing and disappearing in endless succession. The apprehension of things by means of and in accordance with this arrangement is _immanent_ knowledge; that, on the other hand, which is conscious of the true state of the case, is _transcendental_ knowledge. The latter is obtained _in abstracto_ through the criticism of pure reason, but in exceptional cases it may also appear intuitively. This last is an addition of my own, which I am endeavouring in this Third Book to explain. If the doctrine of Kant had ever been properly understood and grasped, and since Kant’s time that of Plato, if men had truly and earnestly reflected on the inner meaning and content of the teaching of these two great masters, instead of involving themselves in the technicalities of the one and writing parodies of the style of the other, they could not have failed to discern long ago to what an extent these two great philosophers agree, and that the true meaning, the aim of both systems, is the same. Not only would they have refrained from constantly comparing Plato to Leibnitz, on whom his spirit certainly did not rest, or indeed to a well-known gentleman who is still alive,(44) as if they wanted to mock the manes of the great thinker of the past; but they would have advanced much farther in general, or rather they would not have fallen so disgracefully far behind as they have in the last forty years. They would not have let themselves be led by the nose, to-day by one vain boaster and to-morrow by another, nor would they have opened the nineteenth century, which promised so much in Germany, with the philosophical farces that were performed over the grave of Kant (as the ancients sometimes did at the funeral obsequies of their dead), and which deservedly called forth the derision of other nations, for such things least become the earnest and strait-laced German. But so small is the chosen public of true philosophers, that even students who understand are but scantily brought them by the centuries—Εισι δη ναρθηκοφοροι μεν πολλοι, βακχοι δε γε παυροι (_Thyrsigeri quidem multi, Baachi vero pauci_). Ἡ ατιμια φιλοσοφιᾳ δια ταυτα προσπεπτωκεν, ὁτι ου κατ αξιαν αυτης ἁπτονται; ου γαρ νοθους εδει ἁπτεσθαι, αλλα γνησιους (_Eam ob rem philosophia in infamiam incidit, quad non pro dignitate ipsam attingunt: neque enim a spuriis, sad a legitimis erat attrectanda_).—Plato.