Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/135

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Sect. 2.]
SPECIALITY OF METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE.
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of a body; it enlarges, that is to say, my knowledge, in so far as it adds something to my conception; and must therefore be termed a synthetic judgment.

b. The common principle of all analytic judgments is the principle of contradiction.

All analytic judgments are based entirely on the principle of contradiction, and are by their nature cognitions à priori, whether the conceptions serving as their matter be empirical or not. For inasmuch as the predicate of an affirmative analytic judgment is previously cogitated in the conception of the subject, it cannot without contradiction be denied of it; in the same way, its contrary, in a negative analytic judgment, must necessarily be denied of the subject, likewise in accordance with the principle of contradiction. It is thus with the propositions—every body is extended; no body is unextended (simple). For this reason all analytic propositions are judgments à priori, although their conceptions may be empirical. Let us take as an instance the proposition, gold is a yellow metal. Now, to know this, I require no further experience beyond my conception of gold, which contains the propositions that this body is yellow and a metal; for this constitutes precisely my conception, and therefore I have only to dissect it, without needing to look around for anything elsewhere.

c. Synthetic judgments demand a principle other than that of contradiction.

There are synthetic judgments à posteriori whose origin is empirical; but there are also others of an à priori certainty. that spring from the Understanding and the Reason. But both are alike in this, that they can never have their source solely in the axiom of analysis, viz., the principle of contradiction; they require an altogether different principle, notwithstanding that whatever principle they may be deduced from, they must always conform to the principle of contradiction, for nothing can be opposed to this principle, although not everything can