| But if, in addition to the fundamental cognition, a second judgement is necessary for the production of the conclusion, it is called a conclusion of the reason. |
| In the proposition; All men are mortal, are contained the propositions; Some men are mortal, Nothing that is not mortal is a man, and these are therefore immediate conclusions from the first. |
| On the other hand, the proposition; all the learned are mortal, is not contained in the main proposition (for the conception of a learned man does not occur in it), and it can be deduced from the main proposition only by means of a mediating judgement. |
| In every syllogism I first cogitate a rule (the major) by means of the understanding. |
| In the next place I subsume a cognition under the condition of the rule (and this is the minor) by means of the judgement. |
| And finally I determine my cognition by means of the predicate of the rule (this is the conclusio), consequently, I determine it a priori by means of the reason. |
| The relations, therefore, which the major proposition, as the rule, represents between a cognition and its condition, constitute the different kinds of syllogisms. |
| These are just threefold--analogously with all judgements, in so far as they differ in the mode of expressing the relation of a cognition in the understanding--namely, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive. |
| When as often happens, the conclusion is a judgement which may follow from other given judgements, through which a perfectly different object is cogitated, I endeavour to discover in the understanding whether the assertion in this conclusion does not stand under certain conditions according to a general rule. |
| If I find such a condition, and if the object mentioned in the conclusion can be subsumed under the given condition, then this conclusion follows from a rule which is also valid for other objects of cognition. |
| From this we see that reason endeavours to subject the great variety of the cognitions of the understanding to the smallest possible number of principles (general conditions), and thus to produce in it the highest unity. |
| C. OF THE PURE USE OF REASON. |
| Can we isolate reason, and, if so, is it in this case a peculiar source of conceptions and judgements which spring from it alone, and through which it can be applied to objects; or is it merely a subordinate faculty, whose duty it is to give a certain form to given cognitions--a form which is called logical, and through which the cognitions of the understanding are subordinated to each other, and lower rules to higher (those, to wit, whose condition comprises in its sphere the condition of the others), in so far as this can be done by comparison? |
| This is the question which we have at present to answer. |
| Manifold variety of rules and unity of principles is a requirement of reason, for the purpose of bringing the understanding into complete accordance with itself, just as understanding subjects the manifold content of intuition to conceptions, and thereby introduces connection into it. |
| But this principle prescribes no law to objects, and does not contain any ground of the possibility of cognizing or of determining them as such, but is merely a subjective law for the proper arrangement of the content of the understanding. |
| The purpose of this law is, by a comparison of the conceptions of the understanding, to reduce them to the smallest possible number, although, at the same time, it does not justify us in demanding from objects themselves such a uniformity as might contribute to the convenience and the enlargement of the sphere of the understanding, or in expecting that it will itself thus receive from them objective validity. |
| In one word, the question is; "does reason in itself, that is, does pure reason contain a priori synthetical principles and rules, and what are those principles?" |
| The formal and logical procedure of reason in syllogisms gives us sufficient information in regard to the ground on which the transcendental principle of reason in its pure synthetical cognition will rest. |
| 1. Reason, as observed in the syllogistic process, is not applicable to intuitions, for the purpose of subjecting them to rules--for this is the province of the understanding with its categories--but to conceptions and judgements. |
| If pure reason does apply to objects and the intuition of them, it does so not immediately, but mediately- through the understanding and its judgements, which have a direct relation to the senses and their intuition, for the purpose of determining their objects. |