Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/257

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INTRODUCTION.―OF THE LOGICAL USE OF REASON.
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or conclusion. Now, as we are constantly employing this mode of thought, and have thus become quite accustomed to it, we no longer remark the above distinction, and, as in the case of the so-called deceptions of sense, consider as immediately perceived, what has really been inferred. In every reasoning or syllogism, there is a fundamental proposition, afterwards a second drawn from it, and finally the conclusion, which connects the truth in the first with the truth in the second—and that infallibly. If the judgment concluded is so contained in the first proposition, that it can be deduced from it without the mediation of a third notion, the conclusion is called immediate (consequentia immediata):[1] I prefer the term conclusion of the understanding. But if, in addition to the fundamental cognition, a second judgment is necessary for the production of the conclusion, it is called a conclusion of the reason. In the proposition, All men are mortal, are contained the propositions, Some men are mortal, Nothing that is not mortal is a man, and these are therefore immediate conclusions from the first. On the other hand, the proposition, All the learned are mortal, is not contained in the main proposition (for the conception of a learned man does not occur in it), and it can be deduced from the main proposition only by means of a mediating judgment.

In every syllogism I first cogitate a rule (the major) by means of the understanding. In the next place I subsume a cognition under the condition of the rule (and this is the minor) by means of the judgment. And finally I determine my cognition by means of the predicate of the rule (this is the conclusio), consequently, I determine it à priori by means of the reason. The relations, therefore, which the major proposition, as the rule, represents between a cognition and its condition, constitute the different kinds of syllogisms. These are just threefold—analogously with all judgments, in so far as they differ in the mode of expressing the relation of a cognition in the understanding—namely, categorical, hypothetical and disjunctive.

  1. ↑ A consequentia immediata—if there really be such a thing, and if it be not a contradiction in terms—evidently does not belong to the sphere of logic proper, the object matter of which is the syllogism, which always consists of three propositions, either in thought or expressed. This indeed is tantamount to declaring that there is no such mode of reasoning.—Tr.
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