Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

pleteness of all knowledge, so that, beginning with the genus and descending to the manifold that may be contained in it, we try to impart extension to our system, as we tried to impart unity to it, when ascending to a genus.

For if we only know the sphere of a concept which determines a genus, we can no more judge how far its subdivision may be carried than we can judge how far the divisibility of matter may be carried, by knowing the space it occupies.

Hence every genns requires species, and these again sub-species, and as none even of these sub-species is without a sphere (extent as conceptiis commnnis), reason in its utmost extension requires that no species or sub-species should in itself be considered as the lowest.

Every species is always a concept containing that only which is common to different things, and as it cannot be completely determined, it cannot be directly referred to an individual, but [p. 656] must always comprehend other concepts, that is, subspecies. This principle of specification might be expressed by entimn varietates non temere esse min^ie^idas.

It is easily seen that this logical law also would be without meaning and incapable of application, unless it were founded on a transcendental law of specification which, though it cannot demand a real ififinity of variety in things that are to become our objects (for this would not be justified by the logical principle, which only asserts the indeterminability of the logical sphere with regard to a possible division), yet imposes on the understanding the duty of looking for sub-species under every species, and for smaller varieties for every variety.

If there were no lower concepts, there could not be higher concepts. Now the understanding knows all that it knows by concepts

528 Transcendental Dialectic only, and hence, however far it may carry the division, never by means of intuition alone, but again and again by lower concepts. In order to know phenomena in their complete determination (which is possible by the understanding only) it is necessary to carry on without stopping the specification of its concepts, and always to proceed to still remaining differences or varieties of which abstraction had been made in forming the concept of the species, and still more in forming that of the genus.

Nor can this law of specification have been [p. 657] derived from experience, which can never give so farreaching a prospect. Empirical specification very soon comes to a standstill in the distinction of the manifold, unless it is led by the antecedent transcendental law of specification, as a principle of reason, and impelled to look for and to conjecture still differences, even where they do not appear to the senses. That absorbent earths are of different kinds (chalk and muriatic earths) could only be discovered by an antecedent rule of reason, which required the understanding to look for diversity, because it presupposed such wealth in nature as to feel justified in anticipating such diversity. For it is only under a presupposition of a diversity in nature, and under the condition that its objects should be homogeneous, that we have understanding, because it is this very diversity of all that can be comprehended under a concept which constitutes the use of that concept, and the occupation of the understanding.

Reason thus prepares the field for the understanding — 1st. Through the principle of the homogeneonsness of the manifold, as arranged under higher genera.

Transcendental Dialectic 529

2ndly. Through the principle of the variety of the homogeneous in lower species ; to which,

3rclly, it adds a law of the affinity of all concepts, which requires a continual transition from every species to every other species, by a gradual increase of [p. 658] diversity. We may call these the principles of homogeneoiisnesSy of specification, and of continnity of forms. The last arises from the union of the two former, after both in ascending to higher genera, and in descending to lower species, the systematical connection in the idea has been completed ; so that all diversities are related to each other, because springing from one highest genus, through all degrees of a more and more extended determination.

We may represent to ourselves the systematical unity under these three logical principles, in the following manner. Every concept may be regarded as a point which, as the standpoint of the spectator, has its own horizon, enclosing a number of things that may be represented, and, as it were, surveyed from that point. Within that horizon, an infinite number of points must exist, each of which has again its own narrower horizon ; that is, every species contains sub-species, according to the 'principle of specification, and the logical horizon consists of smaller horizons (sub-species only), but not of points, which possess no extent (individuals). But for all these different horizons, that is genera, determined by as many concepts, a common horizon may be imagined, in which they may all be surveyed, as from a common centre. This would be the higher genus, while the highest [p. 659] genus would be the universal and true horizon, determined from the standpoint of the highest concept, and comprehending all variety as genera, species, and sub-species. 2 M