CHAPTER 3 - (Part 2)

335. Another error of the school of critical philosophy is this: Kant gratuitously assumes that each time we perceive something external with our understanding, we are also obliged to perceive intellectually its quantity, its quality and its relationship. This shows that he had not inquired deeply enough into the nature of the intellectual act with which we perceive things.
In fact, to perceive some reality with my understanding, I have to judge that it exists. But I do not need to judge about anything else; I do not need to assign specifically to the reality any quantity, quality and relationship. I can suspend judgment on all these matters and still perceive the thing intellectually, provided I say to myself, 'It exists.'
The judgment which I make in the first act of intellectual perception could be expressed as follows: 'Something exists which modifies my senses'. Here I implicitly assume that the thing must certainly be endowed with all the conditions of existence.

I do not need, however, to decide to conceive intellectually these conditions in the thing. The complex of sensations provides my spirit with the means to determine its object adequately enough to enable me to form the judgment, 'It exists'. I do not have to search with my understanding for the mode or particular determinations of this existence. Indeed, I can prescind from particular sensations, or sensations of any sort. I do this when, for example, I am thinking of a sensible object in general, or of an ens and nothing more.
Kant's error here consists in assuming that the four categories, quantity, quality, relationship and modality, are conditions of intellectual perception or, as he says, of experience. In fact, they are merely conditions of the existence of external things.

Certainly, no bodily thing can exist without quantity, quality and relationships but all these things, which are in it or belong to it, do not have to be intellectually perceived by me together with it for me to be able to say that I have perceived or conceived it. In fact, there are always many properties concealed in things which only time and study reveal. Nevertheless, the thing could have been perfectly well perceived without any thought of these properties or qualities.

To sum up: examining what is required by the act of our understanding when it perceives some bodily thing, we see: 1. that an agent has had an impact on our senses; 2. that our understanding pronounces judgment upon its existence.
The judgment, pronounced by the understanding on the existence of the agent as the producer of the sensations is the act of intellective perception.

However, the mind does not need to pronounce similar judgments on the quantity, quality and relations of a thing in order to perceive it, still less to conceive it. The understanding can conceive and perceive things without having to conceive and perceive their quantity, quality and relationships. These are conditions for the existence of things outside the mind in their real, particular existence. They are not, as Kant claims, conditions of intellectual perception. The understanding, even without the use of the ideas of quantity, quality, relationships, can perceive things. But it cannot perceive them without the use of the idea of existence.
When the understanding has perceived something proffered by the senses, it can also examine it and gradually discover its quantity, its qualities and its relationships. This is how we perfect our knowledge. Knowledge exists by means of a judgment upon subsistence; it is perfected by means of more particular judgments made about what has already become the object of our spirit.

336. It was inevitable that Kant should fall into the error to which I am referring; it is a consequence of the fundamental error outlined in the previous article.
He did not observe that there exists in the real thing some real, particular qualities corresponding to the four ideas of quantity, quality, relationship and modality. He imagined them as emerging from the mind to form part of the thing (which he no longer distinguished from the object of the mind) through an illusion on our part, by which we attribute to the thing what actually belongs to us.
Once this distinction was removed, he was unable to distinguish the conditions of the existence of external things from the conditions of the perception and of the ideas of those things.

In Kant's view, things are for the most part not only known, but created. It follows that the conditions for things to exist and to be perceived must be the same. But the truth is that we do not posit anything of our own in things; we add to them with our act of perception what is needed to render them objects of our mind. The thing as it is in itself is one thing; the thing becoming the object of our mind is another.
Once the verbal ambiguity is dispelled, we see that there is quantity and particular qualities in things, and universal quantity and quality in the mind. The former are something real, and must be present in things which otherwise could not exist; they are conditions of their existence. The latter are something ideal; they are in the mind and are the knowability of real qualities, the rules by which we judge things after perceiving them but not conditions necessary for perceiving them. Both, however, are identical relative to being, different relative to the mode of being.

337. What I have said about the way intellectual perception takes place may cause the reader some doubt, which I must now dispel. This will help me clarify the nature of intellectual perception on the clear knowledge of which the whole question of the origin of ideas ultimately depends.
The doubt I refer to is not wholly new. I have mentioned it when expounding Aristotle's views on the question in hand.

I stated that the intellectual perception of external, material things consists in a judgment through which our spirit says to itself: 'An ens exists corresponding to my sensations.' Now someone may reply: 'The judgment is either pronounced by the understanding or not.' If not, the understanding does not perceive anything because intellectual perception is simply this judgment. If it is pronounced, the understanding necessarily perceives sensations upon which, or at least on the occasion of which, it pronounces its inner judgment of the existence of something corresponding to them. But if the understanding perceives sensations, judgment is not needed for intellectual perception because the mind first perceives sensations and then judges them.

338. This objection is due solely to a confusion of ideas about the faculties of the spirit and to a failure to distinguish the names which philosophers normally apply to them. It is met by a clear description of intellectual perception, which I am about to give, and a listing of the faculties in us which combine to produce it.
Let us recall the definition of the intellectual perception of corporeal things: 'It is a judgment through which the spirit affirms as subsistent something perceived by the senses.'
Analysing this act of the spirit, we find that it cannot take place without the following:

It is clear from this analysis that perception involves the concurrence and co-operation of three different faculties:

Whatever these faculties are named, the distinction between them should always be maintained. They should never be confused.
If we call the first bodily sensitivity, the second intellect and the third reason or faculty of judgment and keep rigidly to these names, the following observations will, I feel, constitute a valid, complete solution to the proposed objection.

Sensitivity perceives the action of the body sensibly and passively (sensations); the intellect possesses within it the idea of existence (wherever it gets this idea, it has to possess it, as we saw, before the judgment of which we are speaking can take place). There is no doubt that as long as one potency possesses separately the complex of sensations (or whatever it has undergone), and the other power has only the idea of existence, no judgment is forthcoming. We do have, of course, the two elements making up a judgment, that is, subject and predicate, but the judgment is not formed as long as one is separated from the other. It is their synthesis or union which constitutes judgment, and it happens like this.

Sensitivity and intellect are two faculties of one and the same perfectly simple subject (the rational soul). This subject unites, in the simplicity of its intimate feeling, the two distinct elements bestowed upon it by its two distinct faculties. In other words, myself, who is on the one hand modified by sensitivity through which I feel the sensible agent acting upon me, am the same subject who, on the other hand, possesses the idea of existence in my intellect. This would not be sufficient, however, because the external agent and the idea of existence could both exist in a simple subject beside each other without uniting, without their revealing their connection to the soul. It is also necessary for this simple subject, which possesses these elements of judgment - the sensible element (matter) and the idea of existence (form of the judgment) - to possess a power or efficacy enabling it to focus its attention on what it experiences and what it has in itself. This subject therefore 1. is aware of having simultaneously what it experiences in its sensitivity and what shines in its intellect, that is, the idea of existence; 2. compares the sensible entity with existence; 3. perceives in the sensible element an existence which is merely a particular realisation of that ideal existence which it first conceived only as possible. These three operations, which we distinguish for greater clarity but which occur swiftly and even instantaneously in the depth of the intimate feeling of a sentient and intelligent ens, constitute the third of the faculties already mentioned, that is, the faculty of judgment, which is a function of reason.

In answering the proposed objection, therefore, I maintain that, in accordance with the names given to the three faculties, it is not the intellect which judges. Consequently the intellect is not the faculty which perceives, but that which provides reason with the means to perceive, that is, the rule by which to judge. This means and rule consists in the idea which serves as predicate in the formation of a judgment. What we are describing is termed intellectual perception because the intellect, although it does not specifically perceive, provides intellectual perception with its main, formal part.

339. It is not difficult now to offer a more explicit definition of intellectual perception: 'Intellectual perception is what our spirit makes of something felt when it sees(246) this contained in the universal notion of existence.'

340. Kant's main achievement, I feel, was in seeing more keenly than any other modern philosopher, the essential difference between the two operations of our spirit, feeling and understanding.(247)
The distinction he made between these two operations enabled him to analyse the second, that is, understanding. It could not have been subjected to accurate analysis unless it were first isolated or separated from all other related or associated operations.

Accurate analysis of understanding enabled Kant to discover a most important truth. All the operations of our mind are ultimately reduced to judgments: 'We can reduce all acts of the understanding,' he writes, 'to judgments, so that understanding may be represented in general as the faculty of judging.'(248) This is true, however, only of the fleeting operations which the mind performs after it is first constituted; it does not hold good for the primal intuition.

341. Kant had grasped that every function of our understanding came down, in the end, to a judgment. He was able to see, in a more general and more profound way than all other modern philosophers before him, the precise difficulty in explaining the origin of human knowledge.
He recognised straightaway that our understanding could not judge unless it possessed notions, or concepts as he calls them, because judgment means submitting the particular to a universal concept. He said to himself: 'I can see very well how we can have the representation(249) of something particular through the senses, but I do not see at all how we can have concepts, that is, universal notions which have to serve us as attribute and predicate for the ens represented to us. The problem, therefore, can only consist in explaining these anticipated concepts, that is, those necessarily presupposed to sensations.'
He concluded that his first task was to analyse the function of judgment and indicate all the concepts it required. This he proposed to do in the part entitled: Transcendental Analytic:

342. Kant, had realised, more clearly than any other modern philosopher, that the general mode of all intellective operations and, therefore, of intellectual perception, is judgment.
This shining truth could have led him straight to a full knowledge of intellective perception if he had carefully focused on it without too much care for regularity and system. Let us see instead where his thoughts led him.
Having fastened on to the principle: 'Thinking is judging', he set out on his philosophical itinerary from this sure point, and began to investigate the nature of judgment.
This inquiry convinced him that there are two possible species of judgment. Our mind operates in two different ways: either it divides an idea into a number of parts (analysis) or it combines a number of parts into one concept (synthesis).(251) Thus, some judgments are analytical, others synthetical.

Analytical judgments are those by means of which we assign to a subject a predicate which is essentially inherent to it, and merges into something identical to it. For example: 'A triangle is a three-sided figure.' This judgment merely explains the word triangle, asserting what it is, neither more nor less, that is, a figure with three sides.

Synthetical judgments are those in which the predicate is not contained in the concept of the subject but is something more than that expressed in this concept. For example, when I say: 'This man is white', I add the predicate white to the subject man, which does not contain it because there are also black men and men of other colours.

Kant noted the different propriety and task of these two species of judgment formed by the human mind when he wrote:

343. Having established the difference between analytical and synthetical judgments, the two types of operation of our intellect, it was necessary to explain how such judgments could be formed in our mind. Clarifying the generation of these judgments would explain the acquisition of ideas and every other function of the mind.

Kant began therefore by noting that every analytical judgment implied a prior synthetical judgment. I can only break down what I have already built up. When I make the analytical judgment 'A triangle is a three-sided figure' I have to know beforehand the worth of the word triangle. Otherwise I could not define it as I do with this judgment. But to know the worth of the word triangle, I must 1. have in my mind the concept of triangle; 2. know that this name was given to this concept.

But how can I have the concept of a triangle(252) if I have not united in my mind the idea of a figure with the idea of three sides, that is, unless I have first said to myself: 'Is a figure with three sides possible?' But saying: 'A figure with three sides is possible', is simply to utter a synthetical judgment because the determination, or predicate, three-sided, does not form part of the concept of figure. In fact, there are figures with a various number of sides. We cannot, therefore, form an analytical judgment without presupposing the formation of a synthetical judgment. We cannot divide a concept without presupposing that we have intuited it united with all its parts. In other words, we have formed a synthetical judgment.

On the other hand, assuming that I already possess concepts as a result of these synthetical judgments, there is no difficulty in understanding how the concepts can be broken down into their elementary parts to generate analytical judgments. To do so, all I need to do is focus exclusively on some element of them, from which the concept is derived, and transfer my attention in turn from one element to another.(253)

Any difficulty, therefore, in explaining the operations of the human mind can lie only in attributing a sufficient cause to synthetical judgments.

344. Kant now focuses all his inquiry upon synthetical judgments, and first sets out to determine which they are.
He claims to have found two kinds: those relating to experience and those made a priori.
Empirical judgments, those derived from the experience of the senses, are all synthetical.(254)

In fact, sensible experience provides the accidents which are not necessarily contained in our primal concepts. For example, I know from experience that certain men are white. I had not included the predicate white in my concept of man, but added it from outside. I use it therefore to form a synthetical judgment.
Kant sees no difficulty in the formation of such synthetical judgments because, he says, they are buttressed by experience 'which is itself a synthesis(255) of intuitions.'

Here Kant located the core of the difficulty with which we are dealing:

345. To enable the reader to understand the argument more clearly, I now summarise my findings to show how Kant endeavours to state his case.

Anyone can see that in this series of five statements there is one which merits careful verification and solid justification. The fourth, the existence of a priori predicates not contained in the concept of the subject or - and this is the same - the existence of a priori synthetical judgments.

Do we really form a priori synthetical judgments? If we do, are they the judgments indicated by Kant? This is one of the foundation questions in Kant's whole edifice. It is a fact which must be proved. Its importance is such that we should dwell upon it for a while. It is, so to speak, the invisible leverage point which CRITICISM requires to raise the universe.

346. Kant claims that we make certain a priori synthetical judgments, and puts forward examples by way of proof; there was no other way in which to prove such a statement of fact.
I shall, therefore, examine all the examples of a priori synthetical judgments produced by Kant. If I succeed in showing that they are not genuine, it follows that a priori synthetical judgments do not exist, or that Kant has wrongly included them in his list and misunderstood them. In this case, he built his system on a false basis.

To understand what I am going to say, note carefully which a priori synthetical judgments I deny. They are judgments in which an attempt is made to add to a presupposed subject a predicate which is neither contained in the concept already formed in the mind nor furnished by sense experience.
1. In Kant's view, the judgments of pure mathematics are all a priori synthetical. He first cites as an example the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 which he claims is such a judgment.
The only reason he gives is this: the concept 12 cannot be derived from the sum of the two numbers 7 and 5, except by means of some external sign such as the fingers. The need for such external signs in addition is seen much more clearly (he adds) if we choose larger totals.

But this reason is useless for his purposes. Our need for some external sign to derive the number 12 from 7 + 5 does not prove that the concept 12 is not comprised in the concept of the sum of the two numbers. On the contrary, it proves that it certainly is comprised in it. If it were not, we would be unable to deduce it even with the help of signs which add nothing to the concept but simply help us to recognise the same thing under two different forms or expressions. Note carefully that the form of a concept is one thing, and the concept itself another. In short, either we need the senses to conceive separately the number 7 and the number 5, or there is no absolute necessity for them in order to add the numbers together and obtain 12. The concept of 12 units, therefore, and that of seven plus five units is merely the same thing conceived by different acts of the mind. This gives the concept different cogitative forms in which the thing itself exists in equal measure.(257)

347. 2. Pure geometry, says Kant, is full of a priori synthetical judgments. His example is the proposition: 'A straight line is the shortest distance between two given points.'
He claims that the concept of a straight line does not include the quality of being the shortest, and that sight alone cannot furnish such a proposition.

It is impossible to agree with this. Whether or not sight is necessary for us to deduce the shortness of a straight line, it seems obvious that this quality is of necessity included in the notion of being straight. All that is required is the pure concept of straightness and curvature to find, after analysis, that the concept of straightness contains the quality of the greatest possible shortness in relation to all the curves that terminate in the same points.(258)

348. 3. Kant claims that there are a priori synthetical judgments even in the physical sphere. He gives the following proposition as an example: 'In all changes that occur in the corporeal world the quantity of matter always remains the same.'
However, this proposition is necessary only on the assumption that by 'changes that occur in the corporeal world', we understand changes in forms and constituents, as happens in actual life. But if we add such a concept to the expression 'changes that occur in the corporeal world', it is obvious that the judgment is analytical. The immutability of the quantity of matter is a concept contained in the idea of the kind of changes mentioned in the proposition.

349. 4. Finally, Kant claims that even metaphysics (if, in fact, it exists) cannot but consist of a priori synthetical judgments. His example is the famous proposition: 'Everything that happens must have a cause'. This, he claims, is one of his a priori synthetical judgments. I do not agree but, because the proposition deserves the most careful attention, I shall apply myself to examining it in detail in the following Article.

350. Kant claims that 'the idea of a cause lies totally outside the concept of event, and indicates something entirely different from it. Consequently this idea is not contained in the concept of what happens.'(259) According to Kant, in such a judgment a predicate (having a cause) is added to a subject (what happens). The predicate cannot be given by experience because experience does not indicate causes but only successive facts; nor is it contained in the concept of subject. As a result, he concludes, we have here an a priori synthetical judgment.

In my opinion, Kant needs to carry out a more painstaking analysis of the judgment, 'What happens must have its cause.'
I maintain that the concept 'what happens' contains the concept of cause. As far as I can see, the concept of effect and that of cause seem to me to be related in such a way that one is necessarily included in the other, that one cannot be had without implicit possession of the other.
Indeed, effect means 'what is produced by a cause'; cause means 'what produces an effect'. The definition of each of these two concepts, therefore, necessarily involves the other. One cannot be defined without understanding the other.

Kant, on his part, assumes that I already have the concept of subject, that is, of effect but, in making this assumption, he must also assume that I have implicitly the concept of predicate. If one is to exist, the other is absolutely necessary.

The judgment of the common sense of humanity, 'Every effect must have its cause' is not synthetical, therefore, because it is a judgment which has the predicate (cause) already contained in the subject (effect).

I am well aware of the objection that will be raised. It will be said that this judgment is made by mankind independently of the idea of effect, but solely with the idea of what happens. The judgment put forward as a priori synthetical was not: 'Every effect must have its cause' but: 'Everything that happens must have its cause.'

I feel the force of the objection. However, when we perceive something which occurs again, when, for example we see a tree in autumn bending under the weight of fruit which had not been seen the previous winter, we either see the new crop in its essence, and nothing more, or we consider its beginning to exist. In the first case (in the simple idea of the existing thing thought without its exterior relationships), there is no idea of effect or cause. In the second case, we come to consider it as an effect of some cause (however we arrive at this). Only at this second stage do we say: 'That fruit must have a cause', but we say this precisely because we have conceived it as an effect. In the second case, we have applied the general principle: 'Every effect must have its cause.' This principle, therefore, cannot be applied before the new crop is conceived as an effect, that is, until we have thought it with a concept so made that it contains the concept of cause. The concept of effect (subject), therefore, does not precede the concept of cause (predicate), nor is it ever independent of it. Rather, as soon as we conceive effect, we conceive cause implicit in it.

The difficulty cannot lie, as Kant maintains, in explaining how we pass to the idea of the predicate (which, he says, is not contained in the subject), but consists in our forming the idea of the subject itself (effect) which contains the concept of predicate.(260)
In other words, the universal proposition is necessary, and the a priori judgment can only be: 'Every effect must have its cause.' This is not an a priori synthetical judgment in Kant's sense, because the concept of predicate (cause) is contained in the concept of subject (effect).

351. Let us now apply this a priori proposition: 'Every effect must have its cause.'
How is this done? As follows: 1. we perceive an event; 2. we recognise it as an effect; 3. we conclude that it must have a cause because this concept is called for and required by that of effect.
The difficulty to be explained in these stages is not found at the first stage because we perceive a sensible event with the help of the senses. Nor at the third, that is, in finding the predicate of our judgment, as Kant claims, because, having conceived the event as an effect, we have implicitly posited a cause. The entire problem consists in explaining how we can take the second step and think of an event under the concept, effect. In other words, how we find the subject of the judgment, 'Every effect must have its cause', applied to a particular event.

Regardless of its explanation, however, we can take as fact the following proposition: 'We conceive any event whatsoever as an effect.' For the moment, I am not looking for an explanation; but the fact is undoubted.
This fact allows us to see the place occupied by Kant's proposition, 'Everything that happens must have its cause', amongst philosophical propositions.
Expressed in this way, the proposition does not express an a priori judgment but the application of an a priori judgmenet. The application generally made of an a priori judgment is only a fact. It is not a principle.

This is the order of these different propositions in their relationship to causality:
A priori principle: every effect must have its cause.
General fact: every event is considered by us as an effect.
General application of the a priori principle: everything which happens must have its cause.

Let me repeat. We need to explain the general fact: 'How does it happen that we conceive every new event, not only in itself, but also in its concept of effect?' If we succeed in explaining how we consider everything new that happens from this viewpoint, we also offer an adequate explanation of why we attribute a cause to this event.

352. Let us briefly analyse the universal judgment: 'Every event is an effect.'
Whenever a new event occurs, something begins to be which previously was not. I conceive two successive moments: in the first, the thing was not, in the second, it is.(261)

Starting from this observation, I argue as follows:
We cannot conceive the operation unless we first conceive existence (the existing operant).
Existence itself is an operation (an act). When the existence of a thing begins, therefore, and I consider this existence as an operation, I necessarily affirm some existence prior to the thing. This existence is precisely what we call cause.
It follows that an event is conceived as an effect when it is considered as beginning to exist, that is, when its new existence is thought as a change or, again, as an operation. This operation cannot be thought on its own but, to be thought, must be seen as preceded by another existence because the concept of operant being is included in the concept of operation.

The following, therefore, is the sequence of our conceptions:

Consequently:

The entire difficulty, therefore, consists ultimately in explaining how we form the concept of coming into existence, that is, the passage from non-existence to existence. If we have the concept of this passage, we have the concept of change included in it; in the concept of change, that of operation; in the concept of operation, that of an existence prior to it; and, in the concept of an existence which necessarily precedes the first operation of a subject (which is precisely what exists), the concept of cause.
How, then, can we conceive the passage of a thing from non-existence to existence?

If we suppose that we can conceive the existence of real entities which fall under our senses, the passage of a thing from non-existence to existence presents no difficulty. It is administered to us from the senses with an act of judgment. We see, we touch, we feel what, in a word, we previously did not see, touch, feel, and could not sense.
The comparison we make of these two moments constitutes, in fact, the concept of the passage of one ens or of one entity from non-existence to existence. However, this implies, as I said, that we possess the faculty of conceiving the existence of that entity (that is, of that event). If we had only sensations, without the power to conceive something existent outside, that is, distinct from ourselves, we could never conceive the passage intellectually.
This analysis leads to the conclusion that the sole remaining difficulty in explaining the idea of cause, lies in the question: 'How do we perceive entia in so far as they are furnished with existence? How do we conceive existence? What is the source of the idea of being?' This is the problem of ideology.

353. Kant stated the problem of ideology as follows: 'How are synthetical a priori propositions possible', that is, those judgments in which the predicate is not contained in the concept of the subject nor furnished by experience? The problem could also be expressed in this way: 'How is it possible for us to occasionally attribute to a given subject a predicate which does not come from experience, and which is not contained in its concept?' In formulating the problem in this way, it would seem that if we could find the predicate either in the concept of the subject or in experience, the difficulty would be solved.

First, if we could find the predicate in the concept of the subject, we would by implication already possess the concept.
The pity is that the problem lies precisely in our forming the concept of subject, in thinking things as existing, in transforming them into objects of the mind and therefore subjects of our judgments.
If we assume that we have formed the concepts of things, there is no difficulty in analysing and connecting them in any way whatsoever. The nub of the issue, then, consists in explaining how we form the concepts of things. Certainly we cannot form such concepts unless we think existence in these things. This implies that we have the idea of existence which cannot however come to us from mere sensations because sensations are particulars, nor from the concepts of things before we have formed them.

354. Second, Kant's way of presenting the ideological problem implies that there is no problem if we can find the predicate through sense experience.
It is certainly true that sense experience can, in a certain way, provide us with a predicate. Thus, when I judge a wall to be white, I am prompted by sense experience to apply the predicate white to it. Nevertheless, I must first have the concept of this particular subject to which I attribute whiteness, that is, I must have thought it as something existent. The difficulty, therefore, reappears: 'How can I think an ens, that is, conceive something real as existing?' I cannot derive the idea of existence (which I always need to enable me to form the concept of anything) by abstraction from the concept itself because I cannot abstract anything from a concept which I have not yet formed.

To summarise: even if I could find a predicate by resorting to sense experience or in the concept of subject, the difficulty of explaining the acts of our understanding would remain if it is necessary for me to have formed already a concept of the subject to which I then add the predicate. I would still need to ask how I had put together and formed this concept. The problem cannot consist in discovering the origin of a predicate to be attributed to a subject of which the concept is already formed, but in discovering the origin of the concept of the subject.

355. The problem: 'How is the object of thought formed?' where the object is subsequently to be the subject of judgments or, in a nutshell, 'How are concepts formed?', sums up the entire issue under discussion. I shall now proceed to analyse it as thus formulated, just as I have done up to now when it was formulated in different terms.
The formation of the concept of a thing involves an intrinsic judgment through which we consider this thing objectively, that is, in itself, not as some modification of ourselves. In short, we consider it in its possible existence.
As there has to be a predicate and a subject in every formed judgment, we first have to discover in our intrinsic judgment which is the predicate and which the subject. The next problem is the source of the subject and the predicate.

In our case, the predicate is simply existence. Perceiving a thing objectively is merely to perceive it in itself, that is, in the existence it can have. The subject is the thing which has fallen under our senses, that which has acted upon them.
Granted this, it is clear that the subject, prior to this judgment, is not something which has already been perceived by us intellectually. Indeed, the judgment itself is the act of intellectual perception. The subject, therefore - if we wish to call it that prior to the act of judgment - is merely the real entity perceived by the senses. It is, therefore, something of which we have no concept but only sensation. It is the felt element.

The greatest attention needs to be paid to this factual distinction, that is, first there are subjects in our judgments of which we have no concept prior to the judgments themselves, but only sensation. This simple observation is the golden key to the whole philosophy of the human spirit.
In fact, if we wish to express such judgments, which are the first made by our understanding, we say: 'What I feel exists.' I perceive intellectually by adding the predicate of existence to what I feel. I therefore take as subject of this judgment what is left when the predicate has been removed. But what remains when the word exists is removed? Only 'what I feel'. In other words, what I feel and do not, as yet, perceive as having an existence in se, that is, as something which does not yet exist for me in the immense throng of existent things.

It is this analysis of the primal judgment of our understanding in the formation of concepts, this purely mental division of the predicate 'existence' from the subject 'what I feel', which reveals the secret of the operation of our intelligent spirit.
The analysis of this primal judgment which enables us to form concepts of things, that is, ideas, reveals a subject - if it can be called this when isolated in this way - which is furnished by the senses alone and of which we do not, as yet, have any intellectual concept, and a predicate (the idea of existence) which cannot be furnished in any way by the senses and cannot, therefore, be explained by any thinkers who endeavour to derive all human knowledge from the senses alone.
The ideological problem consists therefore in discovering 'How the primal judgment with which we perceive intellectually what we feel, and hence form concepts of it, is possible.'

356. The primal judgment, by means of which we perceive things and then form concepts from them, is achieved through a synthesis between the predicate, which is not provided by the senses (existence) and the subject furnished by the senses (complex of sensations).
In one respect, therefore, this primal judgment is synthetical and, as such, makes the formation of analytical judgments possible. Their function is merely to analyse the concepts of things which we have formed by means of the synthesis.

However, Kant does not use the word synthetical in this valid sense. Before I proceed any further, therefore, I feel I should point out the germ of the error, which lies in the ambiguous nature of this word.
The word synthesis means union. The expression 'synthetical judgment' means, therefore, 'a judgment which unites something to a subject without finding it in the subject itself.'(262)

However, the words union, to unite are metaphorical or at least conjure up the image of physical unions. We need to explain, therefore, right at the start, in what sense these unions can express how sensations and ideas are joined in purely immaterial operations.
When I say: 'I unite a predicate with a subject', I may understand that I insert this predicate in the subject as I put a precious stone in a ring, or as I fit a wooden beam into the house which I am building. The stone and the beam are only in the ring or the house because I put them there. This is the sense in which Kant understands it.

Kant also assumes, as we saw, that in certain judgments the predicate, which I introduce and consider as an integral part of the subject itself, does not emanate from the concept of the subject and is not given me by experience.

He therefore concluded: 'It is I myself, it is my mind which places in the subject something which is not in the subject per se. My spirit, as though sending it out from itself, partly creates this subject for itself. That is, it creates the predicate in the subject. At times, I consider this predicate as a necessary part of the subject. I myself, through the activity of my spirit form or construct for myself the subject of which I am thinking even when something appears necessary and essential to the subject as the result of an illusion and deception on the part of my nature.'(263)

The entire argument is, in fact, coherent but it is unfortunately based on two gratuitous, false suppositions:
First false supposition: the attribute which we give to a subject is not found either in experience or in the concept of the subject itself. On the contrary, when we assign an attribute to a subject, this attribute, if not given us by experience or by reasoning based upon experience, is always found in the concept of the subject itself.
Second false supposition: when we form a synthetical judgment, we unite the predicate with the subject in such a way that the predicate itself becomes an integral part of the subject although it forms an integral part only of the concept of the subject.

357. If we cannot take the word synthesis in the material sense attributed to it by Kant when we form a judgment, let us see what meaning the word has when it is applied to the operations of our spirit. This will serve to throw greater light upon the way in which intellectual perception occurs in us. An exact description and analysis of this perception is the key to the success of these investigations.

When we perceive a body intellectually, we attribute existence to it or, to put it more accurately, we conceive it in itself, in the existence it has, and not in its relationship to us.

There are three elements to this perception:
First element: everything pertaining to the body which comes to us through the senses (what is felt);
Second element: existence in all its universality, which is the idea;
Third element: the particular, real existence which we perceive in the body, and which we attribute to it by means of a judgment.
Existence in all its universality (at which stage it is still ideal) can be called predicable; the particular, real existence can be called attribute.

Kant, as I have already mentioned (cf. 322-323) confused the predicable with the attribute already predicated and affirmed. He confused the idea, which we predicate of a number of things (for example, the idea of existence in all its universality), with the particular, real quality which we attribute to the sensible body (for example, the particular, real existence) with which the bodily entity is endowed. He made these two things one. That is, he supposed that idea-existence and thing-existence were the same mode, although we call the second subsistence to distinguish it from the first. He failed to realise that the existence of an ens is particular to itself and not in any way applicable to other entia. Idea-existence, however, which is still not applied, is universal and applicable to infinite entia, to all those of which we can think. Particular existence is multiple, that is, there are as many different existences as there are existent things, and cannot strictly be called existence because it is inseparable from the existent thing. If we are to be precise, only the word ens can be used to express it. On the other hand, existence in all its universality, as it is present to our intellect, is one and unchangeable, and to it alone the word existence properly refers.

358. It may be objected that the existence which is in the perceived ens is itself either perceived or not perceived by our intellect. If it is not perceived, nothing can be said about it; if it is perceived, we have two ideas, one of existence in all its universality (predicable) and the other of particular existence (attribute).
I rebutted this objection earlier (cf. 324-326). However, it is so important to grasp the answer that I consider the solution worth restating in different words. I hope this will help the reader understand more deeply the intimate nature of the act carried out by our spirit when it perceives intellectually.
First, we must be careful to speak with propriety. The difficulty will then soon disappear.

The word existence, taken on its own, refers only to an idea. No ens whatsoever is said to have existence until we have conceived it. Before we conceive a material ens, therefore, this ens exists although we do not know it. Relative to us, it remains totally unexpressed.
If this material ens impinges on our senses - assuming that our intelligent spirit is inactive and that only sensations subsist within us - it would begin to have some relationship with us. The effect of this upon us would produce some sound which, however, would never be a word expressing what we had undergone and the cause which produced it. The sound would not be a sign of a judgment; it would not express an ens as it is in itself. It would be the involuntary effect of what we had undergone, of the feeling produced in us by that agent. It would not yet be perception of an ens. Inarticulate animal sounds are examples of what I mean, or exclamations of pleasure and pain which, although conveying no message in words, are instinctive effects of our animal experiences. All the articulated words which can be cited, for example, ens, body, mind etc., express already formed intellectual concepts. At this stage, therefore, I would not have perceived the existence of the ens, but only experienced the passion produced in me by its action.

But in activating my faculty of knowledge (reason), I assume that this agent, passively perceived by my senses, comes to be known in itself, that is, intellectually. What happens in the intellective act of my spirit?
I simply make an interior comparison between the experience undergone by my senses in particular (or, more exactly, the term of this experience) that is, the felt element and the idea of existence. I find a relationship between what is felt and the existence of an agent different from myself. I say to myself: 'What I feel is an agent which has existence (in a certain degree and mode determined by the senses).' In this way I form a judgment which constitutes my intellectual perception of the corporeal ens. Through this judgment, I consider this ens as posited in the immense host of entia, if I may speak in such a way. And I contemplate it from a universal point of view; I contemplate it as having an existence in se, independent of me, of my experience and of any other ens.

From this analysis of intellectual perception I conclude that 'intellectual perception is merely the vision of the relationship between that which is felt (the term of the experience) and the idea of existence'.
I can now resolve the objection set before me.

The intellect, if defined as the faculty of universal existence, merely intuits universal existence. It has no other ideas than this.
Reason, if defined as the faculty which applies the universal idea to external sensible things, is the faculty, possessed by our spirit, of seeing the relationship between what the senses provide and the idea of existence present to the intellect.
It follows that no corporeal ens can be intellectually perceived unless the following three factors are verified:

If any one of these three elements is missing, perception cannot exist in us, nor therefore the concept of a corporeal ens.(264) If we now assume that we have perceived through our sense the action of a particular corporeal agent and, to use an inexact expression, 'the particular existence of that ens', we would still not possess the concept or the idea of this ens. We would only have the sensation, the action. The particular ens, therefore, or (inaccurately) the particular existence is not per se knowable, it is not a concept. It is merely a sensible element from which the concrete idea or perception arises. This concrete idea or perception is 'the vision of the relationship between this particular agent in sense or (inaccurately) its particular existence, and the universal idea of existence'.
I conclude therefore: there are not two ideas of existence, one particular and the other universal. Only the following ideas exist:

359. Having resolved the problem put to me in this way and analysed more thoroughly the act of our understanding, it will now be clear how I can apply the word synthesis, or union, to a spiritual act.
The act of understanding or intellectually conceiving a corporeal ens consists in 'seeing the relationship between the particular agent as it is perceived by the senses and the universal idea of existence'.

It does not consist in our positing and uniting our idea (in our case, existence) in an ens, but in simply conceiving the relationship between it and our concept of existence by means of the unity of our intimate feeling. Perceiving a relationship does not mean confusing or mingling the two terms of the relationship in a single thing. This would be a material species of union; it would be like that in which two liquids are poured into a vessel, or two ingredients mixed in food. On the contrary, when we conceive a relationship, the two terms are kept separate and are united only by an act of the spirit which considers one relative to the other and consequently finds a relationship between them. This relationship is a mental entity which in no way disrupts or alters them, but simply acts as a light to the spirit itself, forming what we call perception, knowledge and concept.

Accordingly, I call the primal judgment of our spirit, which gives rise to intellectual perception, synthetical and a priori because a spiritual union is formed between one thing given by the senses, which becomes subject, and another which does not enter the subject in so far as the subject is furnished by the senses. It is found only in the intellect, and is the predicate.

360. Note that while I say that this predicate does not exist in the subject furnished by the senses (that which is felt) I do not say, as Kant does, that it does not exist in the concept of the subject.
In fact, the predicate certainly does exist in the concept of the subject. The formed concept of the subject is simply the sensible subject to which the intelligible predicate has already been applied.

To say: 'The predicate does not exist in the concept of the subject' is entirely different from saying: 'The predicate does not exist in the subject.' The former is Kant's phrase, which contains the ambiguity and the error; the latter is the only one I accept and recognise as exact.
In a word: the subjects of our judgments are either furnished by our senses alone or already conceived by our intellect. In the second case, we have the concept of the subject of our judgment; in the first case, we have somehow the subject of the judgment, the subject in potency, which will become subject when the judgment has been made, but we do not possess its concept. Only when we add the predicate to the subject and form the judgment do we finally acquire, through this very judgment, concept of the subject.

These are primal judgments which constitute our perceptions of real entia from which we have concepts or determined ideas.
If, for example, we say: 'This man is wise' we make a judgment in which we already have the concept of the subject (this man). It is not, therefore, a primal judgment. But if we say 'What we are feeling at this moment with our senses exists', then 'What we are feeling at this moment with our senses' is indeed a subject of an already formed judgment but not of a judgment formed by the senses alone. Consequently, we do not have the concept until we have completed the judgment and said to ourselves: 'It exists'. Only then have we begun to perceive it intellectually.

The judgments, therefore, which enable us to form concepts or the ideas of things are primal, that is, the first we form of those things. They are synthetical because we add to the subject something which is not in it or, more precisely, we consider the subject in relationship to something external to it, that is, an idea in our intellect. Such judgments can still be rightly called a priori in that, although we need the matter of such judgments to be furnished by the senses, we find the form of the judgments in our intellect alone. In these synthetical a priori judgments lies the ideological problem, the first problem in philosophy.

361. Every error in philosophy is due perhaps to the poor way in which the problem is stated. I think it is much easier to solve a problem than to state it correctly. In fact, it cannot be correctly stated unless one knows it through and through. And this is impossible unless it has been worked out in one's own mind.
We have seen that Kant stated the problem of ideology in the following way: 'How are synthetical a priori judgments possible?' By synthetical a priori judgments he understood those in which we ourselves introduce the predicate into the subject without its being included in the concept of the subject and without its being derived from experience.

Kant started from a false assumption. He began from the existence of such judgments. Having mistaken the first step, he had no choice but to construct the system of critical philosophy using an argument which can be summed up as follows:
If there are synthetical a priori judgments, that is, judgments in which the predicate is not derived from experience nor found in the concept of the subject, we must derive it from within ourselves.
Consequently, there exists deep in our spirits an awesome energy from which emanate the predicates of the species of things whenever we experience sensations.

The nature of these predicates, which are not given to us by experience and are a priori, is inevitably endowed with two features peculiar to a priori knowledge, that is, necessity and universality.

These predicates must be endowed with necessity because they are essential to our perception of entia, and they must possess universality because all perceived entia must be seen by us furnished with these predicates.

If real entia can be perceived by us only when furnished with predicates, the predicates must appear to us as integral, essential parts of the entia we have perceived. It is the energy of our spirit which, from deep within, supplies these predicates in entia, and so to a certain degree constructs and forms for us perceived entia. In other words, it transfers from itself into them what they need for subsistence. It does not see in them that which is present of its nature, but that which has been placed there drawn from itself. And it sees itself in them.

Granted these principles, ideology has to deal with two principal points:

The first of these two inquiries is called by Kant: Analytic of conceptions; the second: Analytic of judgments. Together they constitute the analytical section of Transcendental Logic.

362. First, in his attempt to discover and gradually elicit all the concepts (or predicates) which are used to form the synthetical a priori judgments previously mentioned, Kant thinks he can demonstrate that there are twelve of them, for which he preserves the Aristotelian term: categories. As sensations occur, our intelligence extrudes from within itself these twelve predicates or categories, as constituents in objects themselves. The objects result, therefore, from two elements: 1. from these pure concepts; 2. from intuitions of sensibility as he calls them, that is, sensations clothed in the forms of space and time.
The second task was to discover how this composition of pure concepts (categories) and intuitions of sensibility (sensations) comes about, so that they are like two elements making up the object itself.
In this inquiry, Kant thought he had established the need for a mediator between the (completely pure) categories and the (completely empirical) sensations in such a way that the latter could be seen in the former. He found the mediator to be time which unites with the pure concepts of the intellect (categories) and with sensations.
He assumed that time, in uniting with the categories or predicates, produces certain notions which are closer to sensible things (although still pure). He called them schemata, which are mid-way between completely pure, universal predicates and fully constructed objects.

He distinguished, therefore, the following different steps which our pure intellect takes in engaging with sensibility.

Thus, Kant solved the problem of ideology and philosophy coherently with the way in which he had formulated it. He had answered the question he posed: 'How are synthetical a priori judgments possible', that is, how do we form for ourselves the objects of our thought?

363. It would appear, from what I have said about the way in which Kant formulated the problem and therefore about the way to solve it, that he formed an inaccurate, material concept of intellective perception.
In fact, intellective perception, as I have analysed it, is simply 'the vision of the relationship between an idea (existence) and that which we perceive with the senses'.
In this operation, the idea (existence) does not mingle with what we perceive with the senses, nor does it merge with it, but remains completely distinct. But it does apprehend the relationship between what is felt and this idea, a relationship which, as we shall see more clearly later on, enables us to know sensible entia.

On the other hand, Kant assumed that the universal idea (the categories) was so closely merged with what we perceive with the senses that together they formed the external object of our thought. He committed this error through his failure to distinguish the predicate from the attribute (cf. 330-332), that is, the particular element which really is in the known ens(267) from the universal element which is the type of which the particular is the realisation. For example, quantity in general, as a type, is certainly not the same as the quantity present in the real ens, although the second quantity has a singular relationship of identity with the first. This relationship makes the second quantity knowable, and constitutes it as known. 'The possibility of such a relationship of identity between the particular thing in the known ens and the universal thing in the mind' is the real issue which Kant should have formulated, but did not succeed in grasping.

364. Kant's thought is merely a development of Reid's theory.(268) In Kant's view, our spirit has nothing innate prior to sense experience. When the spirit is provided with the matter of its cognitions by the senses, it is obliged to accept it in accordance with certain laws, to endow it with certain forms. Together, the matter of the senses and the forms which the spirit adds to them form external objects.
These forms, in relation to the intellect, are the twelve categories or pure concepts already noted, that is, predicates which our spirit adds necessarily and universally to the data of experience.

The best image of the human spirit in action, Kant says, is that of a prism which breaks up the light, as I mentioned earlier (cf. 256-257). The white is broken down by the form of the prism which splits it up into seven colours. In the same way, the sensations in our spirit take on all the forms of our spirit itself and are transformed into external entia which then seem to be things distinct from us and totally independent.

From one point of view, this way of considering the human spirit results in too little that is innate, as we have seen when discussing Reid; from the other, it endows the spirit with an energy which creates the external world, but is nevertheless subject to inexorable laws. Thanks to these laws, it simultaneously and continuously emanates from itself and involves itself in a profound, inextricable, necessary illusion, and in a fearful inevitability from which it can only escape by means of practical philosophy, another necessary, fatal illusion [App., no. 32].

365. I placed Reid in the ranks of philosophers who admitted too little that was innate in the human spirit, and Kant in the school of those who admitted too much, although Kant's system is a development of Reid's.
Effectively Reid did not foresee Kant's consequences, and considered as innate only an instinct for judging the existence of bodies. He did not realise that, once this was conceded, it was impossible to call a halt. Kant's was the only possible conclusion, and he had the courage to reach it. It takes courage for a man to condemn as deceitful the very nature of things.

(246) Terms derived from the sense of sight and applied metaphorically to indicate the operations of the other senses are the source of endless ambiguities and errors, as we shall repeatedly have the opportunity to observe. Nevertheless, I do not think that the same can be said of the verb to see, applied to the mind. Moreover, it can be said that this is now its proper sense. Common usage has changed its original, metaphorical meaning.

(247) He was aware that understanding was essentially different from feeling but he never really grasped the true nature of intellectual operation. What he grasped was that understanding was something active, feeling something passive. 'All intuitions, as sensuous,' he says, 'depend on affections; concepts, therefore, upon functions' (Transcendental Logic, Analytic, vol. 1, chap. 1, section 1). He called anything produced by the senses 'intuitions', somewhat inaccurately. This general habit of philosophers of speaking about other senses in metaphorical language taken from the particular sense of sight was the cause of frequent errors.

(248) Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Logic, div. 1, bk. 1, section 1.

(249) The senses actually represent nothing. They merely give something felt to the spirit.

(250) Critique of Pure Reason, Logic, div. 1, bk. 1, section 1.

(251) Kant maintains that no philosopher before him had thought of this division into synthetical and analytical judgments (Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction 6). This, it seems to me, is a customary boast of philosophers: they all claim to have been the first to see the most important truths. But the two operations of our intelligence, that of combining and of dividing (synthesis and analysis) were admirably described by Aristotle and were, after his time, more or less familiar to all philosophers. These two ways of operating cover, in fact, Kant's two species of judgments. In the Phaedo, Plato clearly describes synthetical a priori judgments (p. 13, 14), although he does not call them that.

(252) The concept of triangle in general, referred to here, is not to be confused with the mere sensation of a physically existing, particular triangle.

(253) This is the extent to which reflection can reach. For the rest, when I conceive separately the single elements of a concept which I am analysing, I must also be able to conceive these elements with the existence and union they have in se. To do this, I need to carry out a synthesis. Analysis, therefore, always presupposes synthesis.

(254) Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction 4. Kant calls these judgments synthetical because in them predicates are furnished by experience (we are speaking of empirical judgments) and are not contained in the concept of the thing. For example, when I see a white horse, I attribute to that horse whiteness not contained in the concept of horse, but given by sight sensation. But if the predicate is given me by experience, where do I get the subject to which to attribute it? The subject horse is an abstract which I would never have unless I had seen horses. But because the concept is abstract, it cannot be given by the senses. This is where the real difficulty lies; it does not consist in explaining where we find the predicates of subjects already conceived with our intellect but in explaining how we conceive subjects, or rather how we form concepts of them.

(255) Ignoring the inappropriateness of the word intuition used to signify everything real furnished by the five senses, I would merely point out that this proposition would merit extensive proof from Kant. Nevertheless, it can have a true meaning as long as this synthesis of intuitions does not go so far as producing the idea of existence. However, if we discard this idea, we cannot have any synthetic judgment suitable for analysis; in fact, a judgment of any kind is impossible. Kant therefore concedes to sensitivity more than a careful examination warrants. This shows the weak side of his philosophy and its sensist origin.

(256) Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction 4.

(257) The truth is rather that in nature there are no collections, but only separate individuals. Any numerical concept, therefore, implies something over and above what is in nature, or in sensation, precisely because it is the concept of a collection. This shows that in every concept of any number at all, the mind truly contributes unity by means of which it unites separate individuals and turns them into a collection. It can therefore be fairly said that in the concept of number there is always a corresponding a priori synthetic judgment. Kant's mistake, however, lies in looking for the synthetic judgment in the summation of 5 and 7 instead of looking for and finding it in the concept of 5, of 7, of 12 and of any other number, as I said.

(258) On the other hand, in the concept of every line, we can find a truly a priori synthetic judgment. Having the concept of a line is to think a possible line. But possibility does not lie in the physical line; it is a predicate furnished by the mind.

(259) Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction 4.

(260) Kant could not have found an a priori synthetic judgment in the proposition, 'What happens must have a cause', but he could have found such a judgment in the intellective conception of 'Whatever happens'.

(261) The fact that I am aware at one and the same time of these two stages and compare them is due to the unity of my intimate sense.

(262) I do not say in the concept of the subject but in the subject itself. I want to avoid giving the impression that we can think it possible to form the concept of the subject before forming the judgments whereby we perceive things, and hence forming concepts of them for ourselves.

(263) It really is humiliating for us to be presented with a philosophy which would always have us believe that we are inevitably and essentially deceived not by our fellows but by our own nature and by the author of our nature, if indeed the Creator survives in such a system! Can there be any greater humility in philosophy! It not only humbles mankind, but nature itself and God.

(264) Eliminating the idea, and leaving only the real, as Reid did, comes down to the same thing. Reid removed the idea, Kant removed the real and left the idea. Both agree that entia are immediately perceived by our spirit. Reid says that the immediate objects of our spirit are real objects; Kant says that they are, in part, concepts.

(265) Kant's reasoning here is incorrect. It is not, in fact, the case that all necessary, universal cognitions are a priori. Only the necessity and the universality of these cognitions is a priori.

(266) The following contradiction in Kant's thought should be noted. He maintains that these predicates come to form part of the ens we perceive. But he describes ens, as perceived by us, as originating from two elements: 1. from intellectual concepts; 2. from empirical intuition: 'This extension of concepts beyond the range of our intuition is of no advantage; for they are then mere empty concepts of objects' (Transcendental Logic, Introduction 4). But those intellectual concepts are pure. They are the predicates of synthetic judgments. However, if pure concepts are the predicates of synthetic a priori judgments, how can he assert that the predicates of synthetic a priori judgments are not to be found in the concept of the perceived object? This concept is impossible unless it contains the pure concepts which are the conditions of our experience and of all our conceptions.

(267) The particular element in an ens is only intelligible by means of the universal element in our mind; the former is not in itself an idea but the term of a judgment which unites it to the universal idea.

(268) Reid's thought that our spirits do not contain any ideas but only perceptions of entia, so that our spirit immediately perceives the entia themselves, was already present in the work of Arnauld: Traité des vraies et fausses idées (On True and False Ideas). However, in the work of this adversary of Malebranche, one sees, perhaps, even more clearly the link between his system, which has no room for ideas, and Kant's thought. Arnauld, in stating that there are no ideas between entia and ourselves, but that we immediately perceive entia themselves, said that our perceptions are of their nature representative and modalities of the soul. It is the soul, therefore, which has the modes (forms) of all entia. Anyone can see how close this is to the system of transcendental philosophy.