Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/145

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Sect. 5.]

GENERAL QUESTIONS.

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ledge.^[1] Upon the solution of this problem, the standing or falling of metaphysics, in other words, its very existence. entirely depends. Let any one lay down assertions, however plausible, with regard to it, pile up conclusions upon conclusions to the point of overwhelming, if he has not been able first to answer satisfactorily the above question, I have a right to say: It is all vain, baseless philosophy, and false wisdom. You speak through pure Reason, and claim to create à priori cognitions, inasmuch as you pretend not merely to dissect given conceptions but new connections which do not rest on the principle of contradiction, and which you think you conceive quite independently of all experience. How do you arrive at them, and how will you justify yourself in such pretensions? To appeal to the concurrence of the general common sense of mankind you cannot be allowed, for that is a witness whose reputation rests only on vulgar report.

Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi.
(All that thou thus showest me, I disbelieve and hate.)

Horat.

But indispensable as is the answer to this question, it is at the same time no less difficult, and although the chief cause why men have not long ago endeavoured to answer it, lies in the fact of its never having occurred to them that anything of the kind could be asked; there is a second cause, in that the satisfactory answer to this one question demands a more persistent, a deeper

↑ It is impossible to avoid certain expressions become classical, and which have originated in the infancy of science, being found inadequate and unsuitable as knowledge gradually progresses, and a newer and more appropriate terminology from standing in some danger of confusion with the older. Analytic method, in so far as it is opposed to synthetic, is something quite distinct from a complex of analytic propositions. The former merely means that we start from what is sought as if it were given, and ascend to the conditions under which it is alone possible. Upon this method we often use none but synthetic propositions, of which mathematical analysis affords an instance, and it might perhaps with more propriety be termed the regressive method, in contradistinction to the synthetic or progressive. A main department of logic is known as analytic, moreover, which means the logic of truth in contrast to dialectic, without any special reference to the analytic or synthetic character of the cognitions belonging to it.

[1] It is impossible to avoid certain expressions become classical, and which have originated in the infancy of science, being found inadequate and unsuitable as knowledge gradually progresses, and a newer and more appropriate terminology from standing in some danger of confusion with the older. Analytic method, in so far as it is opposed to synthetic, is something quite distinct from a complex of analytic propositions. The former merely means that we start from what is sought as if it were given, and ascend to the conditions under which it is alone possible. Upon this method we often use none but synthetic propositions, of which mathematical analysis affords an instance, and it might perhaps with more propriety be termed the regressive method, in contradistinction to the synthetic or progressive. A main department of logic is known as analytic, moreover, which means the logic of truth in contrast to dialectic, without any special reference to the analytic or synthetic character of the cognitions belonging to it.

[1]