 Meinong saw himself neither in the camp of the empiricists nor in the camp of the rationalists; instead he claimed to be an empirical although not a psychologistic thinker (1907, §§25–6). Although Meinong’s theory of objects is an a priori science, its method can be characterized as a philosophy from below, a working method that follows the precepts of a kind of bottom-up thinking. There is an important analogy between the empirical (a posteriori) sciences and the theory of objects as a paradigmatic a priori science: both start from given data. In the case of the empirical sciences these data are experiences, while the data of the theory of objects usually are things that are not existent but only subsistent [bestehend] or even merely outside of being [außerseiend] (1917, §11: 103 [92]; 1921a, Sect. 2.F: 130). This “empirical manner of investigating” was appreciated by Russell (1904: 205), for instance. Moreover, our general as well as our particular knowledge of language facts is able to supply us with additional data as basis of further theorizing. Meinong (1904b, §10: 33 [103]) thus says “that the general theory of objects has to learn from grammar just as the specialized theory of objects can and must learn from mathematics” (cf. also 1904b: 15 [88]; 1907: 109). He also told his students that it is best to begin one’s investigations with linguistic data (Nachlass, Karton IV/b), and — because of this — that the answer to the question what the common man thinks of this or that situation or of this or that word is an indispensable presupposition of all other inquiry (Nachlass, Karton XI/e; cf. Manotta 2005: 65–68).