—generally; to show how, to what extent, ana under what conditions, and perhaps in what degree something can be certain, and indeed to show what it really means to be certain ; and, secondly, to prove particularly the fundamental principles of all possible sciences, which can not be proven in those sciences themselves.
Every science, which is to be a whole of component parts, has a systematic form. This form—the condition of the connection of the deduced propositions with the fundamental principle, and the ground which justifies us in drawing conclusions from this connection, that the deduced propositions have necessarily the same certainty which pertains to the fundamental principle—can also, like the truth of the fundamental principle, not be demonstrated in the particular science itself, but is presupposed as the possibility of its form. Hence, a general science of knowledge must, moreover, show up the ground for the systematic form of all possible sciences.
2d. The science of knowledge is itself a science. Hence it must also have one fundamental principle, which can not be proven in it, but must be presupposed for its very possibility as a science. But this fundamental principle can not be proven in another higher science, since otherwise this other higher science would be the science of knowledge. This fundamental principle of the science of knowledge, and hence of all sciences and of all knowledge, is, therefore, absolutely not to be proven; that is, it
