Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/158

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of Knowing. In the general employment of our Reason, we do not, it is true, before admitting them to be true, reduce judgments which follow from the four laws of thinking to their last reasons, as premisses ; for most men are even ignorant of the very existence of these abstract laws. The dependence of such judgments upon them, as their premisses, is however no more diminished by this, than the dependence of the first judgment upon the second, as its premiss, is diminished by the fact, that it is not at all necessary for the principle, "all bodies incline towards the centre of the earth," to be present in the consciousness of any one who says, "this body will fall if its support is removed." That in Logic, therefore, intrinsic truth should hitherto have been attributed to all judgments founded exclusively on the four laws of thinking : that is to say, that these judgments should have been pronounced directly true, and that this intrinsic logical truth should have been distinguished from extrinsic logical truth, as attributed to all judgments which have another judgment for their reason, I cannot approve. Every truth is the reference of a judgment to something outside of it, and the term intrinsic truth is a contradiction.

§ 31. Empirical Truth.

A judgment may be founded upon a representation of the first class, i.e. a perception by means of the senses, consequently on experience. In this case it has material truth, and moreover, if the judgment is founded immediately on experience, this truth is empirical truth.

When we say, "A judgment has material truth" we mean on the whole, that its conceptions are connected, separated, limited, according to the requirements of the intuitive representations through which it is inferred. To attain knowledge of this, is the direct function of the