these qualities, matter remains behind as that which is without qualities, the _caput mortuum_ of nature, out of which nothing can honestly be made. If, on the contrary, in the manner referred to, one leaves it all these properties, one is guilty of a concealed _petitio principii_, for one has assumed the _Quæsita_ beforehand as _Data_. But what is accomplished with _this_ will no longer be a proper _materialism_, but merely _naturalism_, _i.e._, an absolute system of _physics_, which, as was shown in chap. 17 already referred to, can never assume and fill the place of metaphysics, just because it only begins after so many assumptions, thus never undertakes to explain things from the foundation. Mere naturalism is therefore essentially based simply upon _qualitates occultæ_, which one can never get beyond except, as I have done, by calling in the aid of the _subjective_ source of knowledge, which then certainly leads to the long and toilsome round‐about path of metaphysics, for it presupposes the complete analysis of self‐consciousness and of the intellect and will given in it. However, the starting from what is _objective_, at the foundation of which lies _external perception_, so distinct and comprehensible, is a path so natural and which presents itself of its own accord to man, that _naturalism_, and consequently, because this cannot satisfy as it is not exhaustive, _materialism_, are systems to which the speculative reason must necessarily have come, nay, must have come first of all. Therefore at the very beginning of the history of philosophy we meet naturalism, in the systems of the Ionic philosophers, and then materialism in the teaching of Leucippus and Democritus, and also later we see them ever appear anew from time to time. Chapter XXV. Transcendent Considerations Concerning The Will As Thing In Itself.