Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/54

Secondly, How is the unsatisfactory state of philosophy to be remedied? Short answer.§ 32. Secondly, How is the present unsatisfactory condition of philosophy to be remedied? The short answer is, that it can be remedied only by a diligent attempt to digest a body of philosophical institutes which shall be both true and reasoned, in the strictest and most thorough-going sense of the word reasoned. No indulgence on the score of well-meant intentions; no excuse on the ground of the incompetency of human reason (for this incompetency is always mere laziness aping the virtue of humility); no allowance on the plea of the difficulty of the undertaking, should be either asked or given. The thing must either be done thoroughly or not at all. Such a work must

ments. These synthetic or ampliative judgments are, according to Kant, of two kinds; they are either a posteriori (contingent, the product of experience), or they are a priori (necessary, the ground or condition of experience). "Gold is fusible," Is an instance of synthetic judgment a posteriori; for the conception of gold does not necessarily involve the conception of fusibility. Gold might not have been fusible. Its fusibility is learned only from experience, and is a new conception added to the conception of gold.

Up to this point there is no difficulty in understanding the distinction. It is when he comes to speak of the synthetic judgments a priori, that Kant becomes erroneous and confused. He holds that all such propositions express necessary truths (necessary at least in respect to human intelligence), and yet that they are not to be tested by the criterion of contradiction; and that, in their case, the predicate is in no way involved in the conception of the subject. He maintains that all the axioms of geometry and arithmetic are synthetic judgments a priori, and that the law of contradiction does not apply to them. His most prominent illustration is the proposition 7+5=12, which, he says, cannot be tested by this law. It is obvious, however, that it can; and that therefore it is an analytic proposition. For let us say "7+5 are unequal to 12:" but that is equivalent to saying that 7+5 are not 7+5 (that a thing is not what it is); In other words, the predicate (unequal to 12) contradicts