We have laid the foundations of the Theory of Knowledge as the science of the significance of all human knowledge. It alone clears up for us the relation of the contents of the separate sciences to the world. It enables us, with the help of the sciences, to attain to a philosophical world-view. Positive knowledge is acquired by us through particular cognitions; what the value of our knowledge is, considered as knowledge of reality, we learn through the Theory of Knowledge. By holding fast strictly to this principle, and by employing no particular cognitions in our argumentation, we have transcended all one-sided world-views. One-sidedness, as a rule, results from the fact that the inquiry, instead of concentrating on the process of cognition itself, busies itself about some object of that process. If our arguments are sound, Dogmatism must abandon its “thing-in-itself” as fundamental principle, and Subjective Idealism its “Ego,” for both these owe their determinate natures in their relation to each other first to thinking. Scepticism must give up its doubts whether [348]the world can be known, for there is no room for doubt with reference to the “Given,” because it is as yet untouched by any of the predicates which cognition confers on it. On the other hand, if Scepticism were to assert that thinking can never apprehend things as they are, its assertion, being itself possible only through thinking, would be self-contradictory. For, to justify doubt by thinking is to admit by implication that thinking can produce grounds sufficient to establish certainty. Lastly, our theory of knowledge transcends both one-sided Empiricism and one-sided Rationalism in uniting both at a higher level. Thus it does justice to both. It justifies Empiricism by showing that all positive knowledge about the Given is obtainable only through direct contact with the Given. And Rationalism, too, receives its due in our argument, seeing that we hold thinking to be the necessary and exclusive instrument of knowledge.

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