Note BE — PREFACE (continued 2)

Strictly speaking, the term noumenon, as meaning that which can be apprehended only by the intellect, implies a relation to the intellect apprehending it; and in this sense τὸ νοούμενον is opposed by Plato to τὸ ὁρώμενον—the object of intellect to the object of sight. But as the intellect was supposed to take cognisance of things as they are, in opposition to the sensitive perception of things as they appear, the term noumenon became synonymous with thing in itself (τὸ ὃν καθ’ αὑτό). And this meaning is retained in the Kantian philosophy, in which the noumenon is identical with the Ding an sich. But as Kant denied to the human intellect any immediate intuition of things as they are (though such an intuition may be possible to a superhuman intellect), hence the term noumenon in the Kantian philosophy is opposed to all of which the human intellect can take positive cognisance. Hamilton, in this respect, agrees with Kant. But neither Kant nor Hamilton, in opposing the thing in itself to the phenomenon, meant to imply that the former is necessarily self-existent, and therefore uncreated.