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THE FALL.
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pendently of myself, but must adhere to the intellect itself. (3) For the same reason, all data given from without merely suffice to state what is there, but not that something is necessarily so and not otherwise. Perception has no tongue for the word necessity, consequently all determinations of things, with which is associated the consciousness of necessity, must originate, not in perception, but within mysell. (4) From this it follows that sciences the doctrines of which have apodictic certainty, cannot have obtained it from perception, and that consequently that part of the perceptual world to which they refer must belong to the elements originally inherent in my intellect. (5) Perception can only furnish me with sensations. These are, as such, isolated and fragmentary, for, difficult as it is to grasp at first, the materials of sensation given from without contain only the sensations themselves, but not any connection between them, for such a connection is merely the link between the different sensations and therefore not itself sensation. Consequently that faculty, which makes of the variety of perception a unity and so creates coherence between my representations, must belong to me a priori. Therefore, whatever serves to establish the continuity of nature, belongs to the innate functions of my intellect. (6) Perception can never embrace infinity. If, now, I find in my representations of things elements of which I am conscious as being infinite, it follows with certainty, that I have not taken them from perception, but must possess them as forms of intellect, wherefore, however far I proceed in representing, I can neyer get beyond them, in which precisely consists their infinity."
Such is the conception of Understanding, the original of the personification Arachne, which one of the "baby" progenitors of our race--and one not known to have been an abnormal or supernormal type of the tribe of the apish man, or mannish anthropoid, to which according to our most authentic' views he must have belonged-has bequeathed to us in the form of the story of the rivalry between the Olympian Patroness of wisdom and a conceited mortal maid. It may be that after all Narcissus is not dead, since the echo of his spirit is still to be found moving on the
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