 Herder’s philosophy of mind also advances another important thesis: that the mind is a unity, that there is no sharp division between its faculties. This thesis contradicted theorists such as Sulzer and Kant. However, it was not in itself new with Herder, having already been espoused in a strong form by the Rationalists, especially Wolff (Herder’s introduction to his 1775 draft shows that he is fully aware of this debt). Where Herder is more original is in rejecting the Rationalists’ reduction of sensation and volition to cognition; establishing the unity thesis in an empirical rather than an apriorist way; and adding a normative dimension to it—this is not only how the mind is but also how it ought to be. This last feature might sound incoherent at first hearing, for if the mind is this way by its very nature, what sense can there be in prescribing to people that it should be so rather than otherwise? However, Herder’s idea here is rather the perfectly coherent one that, while the mind is indeed this way by its very nature, people nonetheless sometimes behave as though one faculty could be abstracted from another, and try to effect such an abstraction, but this then leads to various malfunctions, and should therefore be avoided.