Chapter C: Nature the Creation of Thought

3. In one sense of the the word, it would no doubt be true to say that nature is simply and altogether that which we make it to be. Modern philosophy has discarded the language which represented our knowledge of things as the result of impressions and the transmission of images.[2] If we still not only speak but think of ourselves as primarily passive and in contact with an alien world, this arises simply from the difficulty of conceiving a pure spontaneous activity. Driven from the crude imagination which found the primary condition of knowledge in the reception of "ideas" from without, "common sense" took refuge in the more refined hypothesis of unknown objects, which cause our sensations, and through sensations our knowledge.[3] But this standing-ground has been swept away by the consideration that such a cause may be found within as well as without, in the laws of the subject's activity as well as in objects confessedly beyond the reach of cognition. Our ultimate analysis can find no element in knowledge which is not supplied by ourselves in conformity to a ruling law, or which exists independently of the action of human thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] As, _e.g._, in the philosophy of Locke.

[3] Probably referring to Herbert Spencer.