does not reflect for a moment upon that which really lies before him. These forms of judgment are indeed words and combinations of words; yet it ought first to have been asked what these directly denote: it would have been found that they denote conceptions. The next question would then have been as to the nature of conceptions. It would have appeared from the answer what relation these have to the ideas of perception in which the world exists; for perception and reflection would have been distinguished. It would now have become necessary to examine, not merely how pure and merely formal intuition or perception a priori, but also how its content, the empirical perception, comes into consciousness. But then it would have become apparent what part the understanding has in this, and thus also in general what the understanding is, and, on the other hand, what the reason properly is, the critique of which is being written. It is most remarkable that he does not once properly and adequately define the latter, but merely gives incidentally, and as the context in each case demands, incomplete and inaccurate explanations of it, in direct contradiction to the rule of Descartes given above.[1] For example, at p. 11; V. 24, of the "Critique of Pure Reason," it is the faculty of principles a priori; but at p. 299; V. 356, it is said that reason is the faculty of principles, and it is opposed to the understanding, which is the faculty of rules! One would now think that there must be a very wide difference between principles and rules, since it entitles us to assume a special faculty of knowledge for each of them. But this great distinction is made to lie merely in this, that what is known a priori through pure perception or through the forms of the understanding is a rule, and only what results from mere
- ↑ Observe here that I always quote the "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" according to the paging of the first edition, for in Rosenkranz's edition of Kant's collected works this paging is always given in addition. Besides this, I add the paging of the fifth edition, preceded by a V.; all the other editions, from the second onwards, are the same as the fifth, and so also is their paging.
