compassed the whole field of a priori knowledge, to have accomplished its undertaking completely, and to be to posterity a treasure which can never be added unto, because it had only to deal with principles and the limits of their employment, which are fixed by those principles themselves. "In the sphere of pure reason you must determine everything or nothing."[1]
In determining the general intention of the Critique, we have at the same time become apprised of its Copernican contention and of its universalistic pretension. In the introduction, which was undoubtedly improved as it was enlarged in the second edition, as well as in the corresponding part of the Prolegomena, the aim of the work is more fully specified. Its problem is formulated from a new point of view, and then resolved into elementary questions corresponding to the main divisions of the work. In the prefaces it was stated that the inquiry was about knowledge given by pure reason. But all knowledge must be expressed in the form of judgments or propositions. If those judgments derived from experience be called empirical or a posteriori, those independent of all experience may be called pure or a priori. These a priori judgments are the products of reason alone. Hence the inquiry into pure reason resolves itself into an inquiry into a priori judgments.
But the problem admits of still further specification. There is another classification of judgments – a classification that has reference to their content, as that into a priori and a posteriori has reference to their source. If the predicate of a judgment adds nothing to the subject, but merely explicates it, then the judgment is analytic. If I say, All bodies are extended, I have asserted nothing which was not already contained in the notion 'body' and might not have been got from it by analysis. On the other hand, if I say, All bodies are heavy, in that case the predicate is something added to the notion of the subject, for by no analysis of the notion 'body' could the predicate 'heavy' be discovered. Judgments in which the predicate thus goes beyond the content of the subject are
- ↑ IV, 11 (13).
