SS 8.
In the transcendental philosophy of the ancients there exists one
more leading work, which contains pure conceptions of the
understanding, and which, although not numbered among the
categories, ought, according to them, as conceptions a priori, to be
valid of objects. But in this case they would augment the number of
the categories; which cannot be. These are set forth in the
proposition, so renowned among the schoolmen— "Quodlibet ens est UNUM,
VERUM, BONUM." Now, though the inferences from this principle were
mere tautological propositions, and though it is allowed only by
courtesy to retain a place in modern metaphysics, yet a thought
which maintained itself for such a length of time, however empty it
seems to be, deserves an investigation of its origin, and justifies
the conjecture that it must be grounded in some law of the
understanding, which, as is often the case, has only been
erroneously interpreted. These pretended transcendental predicates
are, in fact, nothing but logical requisites and criteria of all
cognition of objects, and they employ, as the basis for this
cognition, the categories of quantity, namely, unity, plurality, and
totality. But these, which must be taken as material conditions,
that is, as belonging to the possibility of things themselves, they
employed merely in a formal signification, as belonging to the logical
requisites of all cognition, and yet most unguardedly changed these
criteria of thought into properties of objects, as things in
themselves. Now, in every cognition of an object, there is
unity of
conception, which may be called
qualitative unity, so far as by this
term we understand only the unity in our connection of the manifold;
for example, unity of the theme in a play, an oration, or a story.
Secondly, there is
truth in respect of the deductions from it. The
more true deductions we have from a given conception, the more
criteria of its objective reality. This we might call the
qualitative plurality of characteristic marks, which belong to a
conception as to a common foundation, but are not cogitated as a
quantity in it. Thirdly, there is
perfection— which consists in
this, that the plurality falls back upon the unity of the
conception, and accords completely with that conception and with no
other. This we may denominate
qualitative completeness. Hence it is
evident that these logical criteria of the possibility of cognition
are merely the three categories of quantity modified and transformed
to suit an unauthorized manner of applying them. That is to say, the
three categories, in which the unity in the production of the
quantum must be homogeneous throughout, are transformed solely with
a view to the connection of heterogeneous parts of cognition in one
act of consciousness, by means of the quality of the cognition,
which is the principle of that connection. Thus the criterion of the
possibility of a conception (not of its object) is the definition of
it, in which the unity of the conception, the truth of all that may be
immediately deduced from it, and finally, the completeness of what has
been thus deduced, constitute the requisites for the reproduction of
the whole conception. Thus also, the criterion or test of an
hypothesis is the intelligibility of the received principle of
explanation, or its unity (without help from any subsidiary
hypothesis)— the truth of our deductions from it (consistency with
each other and with experience)— and lastly, the completeness of the
principle of the explanation of these deductions, which refer to
neither more nor less than what was admitted in the hypothesis,
restoring analytically and
a posteriori, what was cogitated
synthetically and
a priori. By the conceptions, therefore, of unity,
truth, and perfection, we have made no addition to the
transcendental table of the categories, which is complete without
them. We have, on the contrary, merely employed the three categories
of quantity, setting aside their application to objects of experience,
as
general logical laws of the consistency of cognition with itself.
*
[*]
Kant's meaning in the foregoing chapter is this: — These three conceptions of unity,
truth, and goodness, applied as predicates to things, are the three categories of quantity under a
different form. These three categories have an immediate relation to things as phænomena; without them
we could form no conceptions of external objects. But in the above—mentioned proposition, they are changed
into logical conditions of thought, and then unwittingly transformed into properties of things in themselves.
These conceptions are properly logical or formal, and not metaphysical or material. The three categories are quantitative;
these conceptions, qualitative. They are logical conditions employed as metaphysical conceptions, — one of the
very commonest errors in the sphere of mental science. — Tr.
