 Intuition is itself a “function”, because even intuitions are active or spontaneous, and not merely given. Similarly, they were often uncomfortable with Kant’s word “synthesis” because it suggests that the function of thinking is only to combine a content that is already given. Instead, Cohen prefers the term “generate” in order to indicate the “creative sovereignty of thinking” (1902: 25). In another favorite slogan, an object is not given [geben] to knowledge, but given as a task [aufgegeben], echoing the genetic view of knowledge described in the previous paragraph (Natorp 1912a: 183–4; Natorp 1910: Ch.1, §5). In Substance and Function (1910: Ch.1), Cassirer attacks the given by attacking a related doctrine: the traditional view that all concepts are formed by abstraction. On this view of concept formation, concepts would have to be abstracted from given material that is completely independent of thought and its concepts—thus presupposing the doctrine of the given.