Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/113

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DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES.

71

general logical laws of the consistency of cognition with itself.^[1]

Analytic of Conceptions.

CHAPTER II.

Of the Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding.

Sect. I.—Of the Principles of a Transcendental Deduction in general.

§ 9.

Teachers of jurisprudence, when speaking of rights and claims, distinguish in a cause the question of right (quid juris) from the question of fact (quid facti), and while they demand proof of both, they give to the proof of the former, which goes to establish right or claim in law, the name of Deduction. Now we make use of a great number of empirical conceptions, without opposition from any one; and consider ourselves, even without any attempt at deduction, justified in attaching to them a sense, and a supposititious signification, because we have always experience at hand to demonstrate their objective reality. There exist also, however, usurped conceptions, such as fortune, fate, which circulate with almost universal indulgence, and yet are occasionally challenged by the question, quid juris? In such cases, we have great difficulty in discovering any deduction for these terms, inasmuch as we cannot produce any manifest ground of right, either from experience or from reason, on which the claim to employ them can be founded.

↑ Kant’s meaning in the foregoing chapter is this:—These three conceptions of unity, truth, and goodness, applied as predicates to things, are the three categories of quantity under a different form. These three categories have an immediate relation to things, as phænomena; without them we could form no conceptions of external objects. But in the above-mentioned proposition, they are changed into logical conditions of thought, and then unwittingly transformed into properties of things in themselves. These conceptions are properly logical or formal, and not metaphysical or material. The three categories are quantitative; these conceptions, qualitative. They are logical conditions employed as metaphysical conceptions,—one of the very commonest errors in the sphere of mental science.—Tr.

[1] Kant’s meaning in the foregoing chapter is this:—These three conceptions of unity, truth, and goodness, applied as predicates to things, are the three categories of quantity under a different form. These three categories have an immediate relation to things, as phænomena; without them we could form no conceptions of external objects. But in the above-mentioned proposition, they are changed into logical conditions of thought, and then unwittingly transformed into properties of things in themselves. These conceptions are properly logical or formal, and not metaphysical or material. The three categories are quantitative; these conceptions, qualitative. They are logical conditions employed as metaphysical conceptions,—one of the very commonest errors in the sphere of mental science.—Tr.

[1]