Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/378

35* KANT. J six. which appear in pairs, the dynamical categories. The former relate to objects of (pure or of empirical) intui- V tion, the latter to the existence of these objects (in relation jt6 one another or to the understanding). Although all other a priori division though concepts must be dichoto- mous, each of the four heads includes three categories, the third of which in each case arises from the combination of the second and first,* Sut, nevertheless, is an original (not a derivative) concept, since this combination requires a special actus of the understanding. Universality or totality is plurality regarded as unity, limitation is reality combined with negation, community is the reciprocal causality of substances, and necessity is the actuality given by pos- sibility itself. Kant omits, as unnecessary here, the useful, easy, and not unpleasant task of noting the great number of derivative concepts a priori (predicables) which spring from the combination of these twelve original concepts (predicaments = categories) with one another, or with the modes of pure sensibility, — the concepts force, action, pas- sion, would belong as subsumptions under causality, presence and resistance under community, origin, extinc- tion, and change under modality, — since his object is not a system, but only the principles of one. His liking or even love for this division according to quantity, quality,*^ relatiorf^ and modality^ which he always has ready as though it were a universal key for philosophical problems, reveals a very strong architectonic impulse, against which even his ever active skeptical tendency is not able to keep up the battle. In view of the derivation of the forms of thought from the forms of judgment Kant does not stop to give a detailed proof that the categories are concepts, and that they are pure. Their discursive (not intuitive) character is evident from the fact that their reference to the object is mediate only (and not, as in the case of intuition, immediate), • Concerning this " neat observation," Kant renurked that it might "perhaps have important consequences in regard to the scientific form of all knowledge of reason." This prophecy was fulfilled, although in a different sense from that which floated before his mind. Fichte and Hegel composed their " thought- symphonies " in the three-four time given by Kant. J