| For example, a man who is young cannot at the same time be old; but the same man can very well be at one time young, and at another not young, that is, old. |
| Now the principle of contradiction as a merely logical proposition must not by any means limit its application merely to relations of time, and consequently a formula like the preceding is quite foreign to its true purpose. |
| The misunderstanding arises in this way. |
| We first of all separate a predicate of a thing from the conception of the thing, and afterwards connect with this predicate its opposite, and hence do not establish any contradiction with the subject, but only with its predicate, which has been conjoined with the subject synthetically-- a contradiction, moreover, which obtains only when the first and second predicate are affirmed in the same time. |
| If I say; "A man who is ignorant is not learned," the condition "at the same time" must be added, for he who is at one time ignorant, may at another be learned. |
| But if I say; "No ignorant man is a learned man," the proposition is analytical, because the characteristic ignorance is now a constituent part of the conception of the subject; and in this case the negative proposition is evident immediately from the proposition of contradiction, without the necessity of adding the condition "the same time." This is the reason why I have altered the formula of this principle--an alteration which shows very clearly the nature of an analytical proposition. |
| SECTION II. Of the Supreme Principle of all Synthetical Judgements. |
| The explanation of the possibility of synthetical judgements is a task with which general logic has nothing to do; indeed she needs not even be acquainted with its name. |
| But in transcendental logic it is the most important matter to be dealt with--indeed the only one, if the question is of the possibility of synthetical judgements a priori, the conditions and extent of their validity. |
| For when this question is fully decided, it can reach its aim with perfect ease, the determination, to wit, of the extent and limits of the pure understanding. |
| In an analytical judgement I do not go beyond the given conception, in order to arrive at some decision respecting it. |
| If the judgement is affirmative, I predicate of the conception only that which was already cogitated in it; if negative, I merely exclude from the conception its contrary. |
| But in synthetical judgements, I must go beyond the given conception, in order to cogitate, in relation with it, something quite different from that which was cogitated in it, a relation which is consequently never one either of identity or contradiction, and by means of which the truth or error of the judgement cannot be discerned merely from the judgement itself. |
| Granted, then, that we must go out beyond a given conception, in order to compare it synthetically with another, a third thing is necessary, in which alone the synthesis of two conceptions can originate. |
| Now what is this tertium quid that is to be the medium of all synthetical judgements? |
| It is only a complex in which all our representations are contained, the internal sense to wit, and its form a priori, time. |
| The synthesis of our representations rests upon the imagination; their synthetical unity (which is requisite to a judgement), upon the unity of apperception. |
| In this, therefore, is to be sought the possibility of synthetical judgements, and as all three contain the sources of a priori representations, the possibility of pure synthetical judgements also; nay, they are necessary upon these grounds, if we are to possess a knowledge of objects, which rests solely upon the synthesis of representations. |
| If a cognition is to have objective reality, that is, to relate to an object, and possess sense and meaning in respect to it, it is necessary that the object be given in some way or another. |
| Without this, our conceptions are empty, and we may indeed have thought by means of them, but by such thinking we have not, in fact, cognized anything, we have merely played with representation. |
| To give an object, if this expression be understood in the sense of "to present" the object, not mediately but immediately in intuition, means nothing else than to apply the representation of it to experience, be that experience real or only possible. |