à priori to phænomena by means of mere categories, is not competent to enounce other-or more laws than those on which a nature in general, as a conformability to law of phænomena of space and time, depends. Particular laws, inasmuch as they concern empirically determined phænomena, cannot be entirely deduced from pure laws, although they all stand under them. Experience must be superadded in order to know these particular laws; but in regard to experience in general, and everything that can be cognized as an object hereof, these à priori laws are our only rule and guide.

§ 23.

Result of this Deduction of the Conceptions of the Under

standing.

We cannot think any object except by means of the categories; we cannot cognize any thought except by means of intuitions corresponding to these conceptions. Now all our intuitions are sensuous, and our cognition, in so far as the object of it is given, is empirical. But empirical cognition is experience; consequently no à priori cognition is possible for us, except of objects of possible experience.*

But this cognition, which is limited to objects of experience, is not for that reason derived entirely from experience, butand this is asserted of the pure intuitions and the pure con ceptions of the understanding-there are, unquestionably, elements of cognition, which exist in the mind à priori. Now there are only two ways in which a necessary harmony of ex perience with the conceptions of its objects can be cogitated. Either experience makes these conceptions possible, or the conceptions make experience possible. The former of these

*Lest my readers should stumble at this assertion, and the conclusions that may be too rashly drawn from it, I must remind them that the categories in the act of thought are by no means limited by the conditions of our sensuous intuition, but have an unbounded sphere of action. It is only the cognition of the object of thought, the determining of the object, which requires intuition. In the absence of intuition, our thought of an object may still have true and useful consequences in regard to the exer. cise of reason by the subject. But as this exercise of reason is not always directed on the determination of the object, in other words, on cognition thereof, but also on the determination of the subject and its volition, I de not intend to treat of it in this place.

statements will not hold good with respect to the categories (nor in regard to pure sensuous intuition), for they are à priori conceptions, and therefore independent of experience. The assertion of an empirical origin would attribute to them a sort of generatio æquivoca. Consequently, nothing remains but to adopt the second alternative (which presents us with a system, as it were, of the Epigenesis of pure reason), namely, that on the part of the understanding the categories do contain the grounds of the possibility of all experience. But with respect to the questions how they make experience possible, and what are the principles of the possibility thereof with which they present us in their application to phænomena, the following section on the transcendental exercise of the faculty of judgment will inform the reader.

It is quite possible that some one may propose a species of præformation-system of pure reason-a middle way between the two-to wit, that the categories are neither innate and first à priori principles of cognition, nor derived from experience, but are merely subjective aptitudes for thought implanted in us contemporaneously with our existence, which were so ordered and disposed by our Creator, that their exercise perfectly harmonizes with the laws of nature which regulate experience. Now, not to mention that with such an hypothesis it is impossible to say at what point we must stop in the employment of predetermined aptitudes, the fact that the categories would in this case entirely lose that character of necessity which is essentially involved in the very conception of them, is a conclusive objection to it. The conception of cause, for example, which expresses the necessity of an effect under a presupposed condition, would be false, if it rested only upon such an arbitrary subjective necessity of uniting certain empirical representations according to such a rule of relation. I could not then say "The effect is connected with its cause in the object (that is, necessarily)," but only, "I am so constituted that I can think this representation as so connected, and not otherwise." Now this is just what the sceptic wants. For in this case, all our knowledge, depending on the supposed objective validity of our judg ment, is nothing but mere illusion; nor would there be wanting people who would deny any such subjective necessity in respect to themselves, though they must feel it. At all events,

we could not dispute with any one on that which merely depends on the manner in which his subject is organized.

Short view of the above Deduction.

The foregoing deduction is an exposition of the pure conceptions of the understanding (and with them of all theoretical à priori cognition), as principles of the possibility of experience, but of experience as the determination of all phanomena in space and time in general-of experience, finally, from the principle of the original synthetical unity of apperception, as the form of the understanding in relation to time. and space as original forms of sensibility.

*

*

I consider the division by paragraphs to be necessary only up to this point, because we had to treat of the elementary conceptions. As we now proceed to the exposition of the employment of these, I shall not designate the chapters in this manner any further.

TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC.

BOOK II.

ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES,

General logic is constructed upon a plan which coincides exactly with the division of the higher faculties of cognition. These are, Understanding, Judgment, and Reason. This science, accordingly, treats in its analytic of Conceptions, Judgments, and Conclusions in exact correspondence with the functions and order of those mental powers which we include generally under the generic denomination of understanding.

As this merely formal logic makes abstraction of all content of cognition, whether pure or empirical, and occupies itself with the mere form of thought (discursive cognition), it must contain in its analytic a canon for reason. For the form of reason has its law, which, without taking into consideration the particular nature of the cognition about which it is employed, can be discovered à priori, by the simple analysis of the action of reason into its momenta.

Transcendental logic, limited as it is to a determinate content, that of pure à priori cognitions, to wit, cannot imitate general logic in this division. For it is evident that the

transcendental employment of reason is not objectively valid, and therefore does not belong to the logic of truth (that is, to analytic), but as a logic of illusion, occupies a particular department in the scholastic system under the name of transcendental Dialectic.

Understanding and judgment accordingly possess in transcendental logic a canon of objectively valid, and therefore true exercise, and are comprehended in the analytical department of that logic. But reason, in her endeavours to arrive by à priori means at some true statement concerning objects, and to extend cognition beyond the bounds of possible experience, is altogether dialectic, and her illusory assertions cannot be constructed into a canon such as an analytic ought to contain.

Accordingly, the analytic of principles will be merely a canon for the faculty of judgment, for the instruction of this faculty in its application to phænomena of the pure conceptions of the understanding, which contain the necessary condition for the establishment of à priori laws. On this account, although the subject of the following chapters is the especial principles of understanding, I shall make use of the term "Doctrine of the faculty of judgment," in order to define more particularly my present purpose.

INTRODUCTION.

OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL FACULTY OF JUDGMENT IN

GENERAL.

If understanding in general be defined as the faculty of laws or rules, the faculty of judgment may be termed the faculty of subsumption under these rules; that is, of distinguishing whether this or that does or does not stand under a given rule (casus datæ legis). General logic contains no directions or precepts for the faculty of judgment, nor can it contain any such. For as it makes abstraction of all content of cognition, no duty is left for it, except that of exposing analytically the mere form of cognition in conceptions, judgments and conclusions, and of thereby establishing formal rules for all exercise of the understanding. Now if this logic wished to give some general direction how we should subume under these rules, that is, how we should distinguish

whether this or that did or did not stand under them, this again, could not be done otherwise than by means of rule. But this rule, precisely because it is a rule, requires for itself direction from the faculty of judgment. Thus, it is evident, that the understanding is capable of being instructed by rules, but that the judgment is a peculiar talent, which does not, and cannot require tuition, but only exercise. This faculty is therefore the specific quality of the so-called motherwit, the want of which no scholastic discipline can compensate. For although education may furnish, and, as it were, ingraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose, is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse.* A physician therefore, a judge or a statesman, may have in his head many admirable pathological, juridical, or political rules, in a degree that may enable him to be a profound teacher in his particular science, and yet in the application of these rules, he may very possibly blunder,—either because he is wanting in natural judgment (though not in understanding), and whilst he can comprehend the general in abstracto,. cannot distinguish whether a particular case in ought to rank under the former; or because his faculty of judgment has not been sufficiently exercised by examples and real practice. Indeed, the grand and only use of examples, is to sharpen the judgment. For as regards the correctness and precision of the insight of the understanding, examples are commonly injurious rather than otherwise, because, as casus in terminis, they seldom adequately fulfil the conditions of the rule. Besides, they often weaken the power of our understanding to apprehend rules or laws in their universality, independently of particular circumstances of experience; and hence, accustom us to employ

concreto

* Deficiency in judgment is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom nothing is wanting but a proper degree of understanding, may be improved by tuition, even so far as to deserve the epithet of learned. But as such persons frequently labour under a deficiency in the faculty of judgment, it is not uncommon to find men extremely learned, who in the application of their science betray to a lamentable degree this irremediable want.