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The phrases in their context!

Extract from THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

For, in this case, the danger is not that of being refuted, but of being misunderstood.
For my own part, I must henceforward abstain from controversy, although I shall carefully attend to all suggestions, whether from friends or adversaries, which may be of use in the future elaboration of the system of this propaedeutic.
As, during these labours, I have advanced pretty far in years this month I reach my sixty-fourth year--it will be necessary for me to economize time, if I am to carry out my plan of elaborating the metaphysics of nature as well as of morals, in confirmation of the correctness of the principles established in this Critique of Pure Reason, both speculative and practical; and I must, therefore, leave the task of clearing up the obscurities of the present work--inevitable, perhaps, at the outset--as well as, the defence of the whole, to those deserving men, who have made my system their own.
A philosophical system cannot come forward armed at all points like a mathematical treatise, and hence it may be quite possible to take objection to particular passages, while the organic structure of the system, considered as a unity, has no danger to apprehend.
But few possess the ability, and still fewer the inclination, to take a comprehensive view of a new system.
By confining the view to particular passages, taking these out of their connection and comparing them with one another, it is easy to pick out apparent contradictions, especially in a work written with any freedom of style.
These contradictions place the work in an unfavourable light in the eyes of those who rely on the judgement of others, but are easily reconciled by those who have mastered the idea of the whole.
If a theory possesses stability in itself, the action and reaction which seemed at first to threaten its existence serve only, in the course of time, to smooth down any superficial roughness or inequality, and--if men of insight, impartiality, and truly popular gifts, turn their attention to it--to secure to it, in a short time, the requisite elegance also.
Konigsberg, April 1787. INTRODUCTION
I. Of the difference between Pure and Empirical Knowledge
That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt.
For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience?
In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it.
But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.
For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skilful in separating it.
It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions?
Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience.
But the expression, "a priori," is not as yet definite enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the question above started.
For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or that may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience.
Thus, if a man undermined his house, we say, "he might know a priori that it would have fallen;" that is, he needed not to have waited for the experience that it did actually fall.
But still, a priori, he could not know even this much.