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, judgement, and reason. This science, accordingly,
treats in its analytic of conceptions, judgements, 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 a
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 a 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 judgement 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 a 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 judgement, for the instruction of this faculty in its
application to phenomena of the pure conceptions of the understanding,
which contain the necessary condition for the establishment of a
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 judgement, in order to define
more particularly my present purpose.
INTRODUCTION. Of the Transcendental Faculty of judgement in General.
If understanding in general be defined as the faculty of laws or
rules, the faculty of judgement 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 datae legis).
General logic contains no directions or precepts for the faculty of
judgement, 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,
judgements, 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 subsume 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 a rule. But this rule, precisely because it
is a rule, requires for itself direction from the faculty of
judgement. Thus, it is evident that the understanding is capable of
being instructed by rules, but that the judgement 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 mother
wit, the want of which no scholastic discipline can compensate.
For although education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft 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 judgement
(though not in understanding) and, whilst he can comprehend the
general in abstracto, cannot distinguish whether a particular case
in concreto ought to rank under the former; or because his faculty
of judgement bas not been sufficiently exercised by examples and
real practice. Indeed, the grand and only use of examples, is to
sharpen the judgement. 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 them more as formulae
than as principles. Examples are thus the go-cart of the judgement,
which he who is naturally deficient in that faculty cannot afford to
dispense with.
*Deficiency in judgement 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 judgement, it is not uncommon to find
men extremely learned who in the application of their science betray a
lamentable degree this irremediable want.
But although general logic cannot give directions to the faculty
of judgement, the case is very different as regards transcendental
logic, insomuch that it appears to be the especial duty of the
latter to secure and direct, by means of determinate rules, the
faculty of judgement in the employment of the pure understanding. For,
as a doctrine, that is, as an endeavour to enlarge the sphere of the
understanding in regard to pure a priori cognitions, philosophy is
worse than useless, since from all the attempts hitherto made,
little or no ground has been gained. But, as a critique, in order to
guard against the mistakes of the faculty of judgement (lapsus
judicii) in the employment of the few pure conceptions of the
understanding which we possess, although its use is in this case
purely negative, philosophy is called upon to apply all its
acuteness and penetration.
But transcendental philosophy has this peculiarity, that besides
indicating the rule, or rather the general condition for rules,
which is given in the pure conception of the understanding, it can, at
the same time, indicate a priori the case to which the rule must be
applied. The cause of the superiority which, in this respect,
transcendental philosophy possesses above all other sciences except
mathematics, lies in this: it treats of conceptions which must
relate a priori to their objects, whose objective validity
consequently cannot be demonstrated a posteriori, and is, at the
same time, under the obligation of presenting in general but
sufficient tests, the conditions under which objects can be given in
harmony with those conceptions; otherwise they would be mere logical
forms, without content, and not pure conceptions of the understanding.
Our transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgement will contain
two chapters. The first will treat of the sensuous condition under
which alone pure conceptions of the understanding can be employed-
that is, of the schematism of the pure understanding. The second
will treat of those synthetical judgements which are derived a
priori from pure conceptions of the understanding under those
conditions, and which lie a priori at the foundation of all other
cognitions, that is to say, it will treat of the principles of the
pure understanding.
