wherefore precisely these conceptions, and none others, abide in the pure understanding. It was a design worthy of an acute thinker like Aristotle, to search for these fundamental conceptions.[1] Destitute, however, of any guiding principle, he picked them up just as they occurred to him, and at first hunted out ten, which he called categories (predicaments). Afterwards be believed that he had discovered five others, which were added under the name of post predicaments. But his catalogue still remained defective. Besides, there are to be found among them some of the modes of pure sensibility (quando, ubi, situs, also prius, simul), and likewise an empirical conception (motus)—which can by no means belong to this genealogical register of the pure understanding. Moreover, there are deduced conceptions (actio, passio) enumerated among the original conceptions, and of the latter, some are entirely wanting.
With regard to these, it is to be remarked, that the categories, as the true primitive conceptions of the pure understanding, have also their pure deduced conceptions, which, in a complete system of transcendental philosophy, must by no means be
- ↑ “It is a serious error to imagine that, in his Categories, Aristotle proposed, like Kant, ‘an analysis of the elements of human reason.’ The ends proposed by the two philosophers were different, even opposed. In their several Categories, Aristetie attempted a synthesis of things in their multiplicity,—a classification of objects real, but in relation to thought; Kant, an analysis of mind in its unity,—a dissection of thought, pure, but in relation to its objects. The predicaments of Aristotle are thus objective, of things as understood; those of Kant subjective, of the mind as understanding. The former are results à posteriori—the creations of abstraction and generalisation; the latter, anticipations à priori—the conditions of those acts themselves. It is true, that as the one scheme exhibits the unity of thought diverging into plurality, in appliance to its objects, and as the other exhibits the multiplicity of these objects converging towards unity by the collective determination of thought; while, at the same time, language usually confounds the subjective and objective under a common term;—it is certainly true, that some elements in the one table coincide in name with some elements in the other. This coincidence is, however, only equivocal. In reality, the whole Kantian categories must be excluded from the Aristotelic list, as entia rationis, as notiones secundæ—in short, as determinations of thought, and not genera of real things; while the several elements would be specially excluded, as partial, privative, transcendent,” &c.—Hamilton’s (Sir W.) Essays and Discussions
