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KANT'S PROLEGOMENA.

[Sect. 5.

here concerned), namely, pure mathematics and pure natural science, for only these can present to us objects in intuition, and therefore (if a cognition à priori should occur in them) show their truth or agreement with the object in concreto, i.e., their reality; from which to the ground of their possibility we can proceed on the analytic road. This facilitates the matter very much, as the universal considerations are not merely applied to facts but even start from them, rather than as in synthetic procedure, being obliged to be derived, wholly in abstracto, from conceptions.

But from these real and at the same time well-grounded pure cognitions à priori, to rise to a possible one such as we are seeking, namely, to metaphysics as a science, we must needs embrace under our main question that which occasions it, to wit, the naturally given, though as regards its truth not unsuspicious, knowledge à priori lying at its foundation, and the working out of which, without any critical examination of its possibility, is now usually called metaphysics—in a word, the natural tendency to such a science; and thus the transcendental main question, divided into four other questions, will be answered step by step:—

1. How is pure mathematics possible?
2. How is pure natural science possible?
3. How is metaphysics in general possible?
4. How is metaphysics as a science possible?

It will be seen, that although the solution of these problems is chiefly meant to illustrate the essential contents of the Critique, it has nevertheless something special, which is of itself worthy of attention, namely, to seek the sources of given sciences in the Reason, in order to investigate and measure this, their faculty of knowing something à priori, by means of the act itself. In this way the particular science itself must gain, if not in respect of its content, at least as regards its right employment, and while it throws light on the higher question of its common origin, at the same time give occasion to better elucidating its own nature.