Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/198

184 G. E. MOOBE : tion which offers a striking correspondence to that between the categorical and hypothetical judgments ; and since one object of this paper is to combat the view which inclines to take the categorical judgment as the typical form, and attempts in consequence to reduce the hypothetical judg- ment to it, it will not be out of place to discuss Kant's distinction at some length. Kant himself offers us two marks by which an a priori judgment may be distinguished. ' A proposition,' he says, ' which is thought along with its necessity is an a priori judgment.' And it is absolutely a priori only if it be not deduced from any proposition, that is not itself a necessary proposition. The second mark of the a priori is strict uni- versality. But unfortunately Kant himself seems to admit the invalidity of this as a mark ; since he immediately pro- ceeds to state that an empirical universality may hold in all cases (' for example, in the proposition : All bodies are heavy ') and hence be strictly universal. 1 It is true Kant states that this empirical universality is merely arbitrary. We ought, he says, to express our proposi- tion in the form : ' So far as we have yet observed, there is no exception from ' the rule that all bodies are heavy. But it would seem that such a qualification can only affect the truth of our proposition and not its content. It may be questioned whether we have a right to assert universality, but it is universality which we assert. The limitations which Kant points out as belonging to the proposition, can properly be expressed only in the doubt whether we have found a rule at all, not in a doubt whether there are exceptions to it. It may not be true that all bodies are heavy ; but whether true or not, it is a universal proposition. There is no difference between this proposition and such as are a priori, in respect of universality. And Kant could hardly wish to assert that the difference lay in its truth. For this proposition, he would admit, may be true ; and, if so, then it would be a priori. But he would not admit the suggestion that it may be a priori : he asserts that it is not so. The difference between the empirical and the a priori, if there is a difference, must therefore be in some other mark than in this universality, which Kant nevertheless asserts to be ' by itself an infallible criterion ' (ib., p. 35X We may next consider whether such a mark is to be found in ' necessity '. In this investigation, too, it may be well to examine his example 'All bodies are heavy,' since this proposition might 1 R.V., p. 35. ' Hartenstein, ed. 1867.'