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

The idea requires for its realisation a schema^ that is an essential variety, and an order of its parts, which are determined a priori, according to the principles inherent in its aim. A schema, which is not designed according to an idea, that is, according to the principal aim of reason, but empirically only, in accordance with accidental aims (the number of which cannot be determined beforehand) gives technical unity ; but the schema which originates from an idea only (where reason dictates the aims a priori and does not wait for them in experience) supplies architectonical unity. Now what we call a science, the schema of which must have its outline {monogramma) and the division of the whole into parts devised according to the idea, that is, a priori, and keep it perfectly distinct from everything else according to principles, cannot be produced technically according to the similarity of its various parts or the accidental use of knowledge in concreto for this or that external purpose, but architectonically only, as based on the affinity of its parts and their dependence on one supreme and internal aim through which alone the whole becomes possible. [p. 834]

No one attempts to construct a science unless he can base it on some idea ; but in the elaboration of it the schema, nay, even the definition, which he gives in the beginning of his science, corresponds very seldom to his

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idea which, Uke a germ, lies hidden in reason, and all the parts of which are still enveloped and hardly distinguishable even under microscopical observation.

It is necessary, therefore, to explain and determine all sciences, considering that they are contrived from the point of view of a certain general interest, not according to the description given by their author, but according to the idea which, from the natural unity of its constituent parts, we may discover as founded in reason itself.

We shall often find that the originator of a science, and even his latest successors are moving vaguely round an idea which they have not been able to perceive clearly, failing in consequence to determine rightly the proper contents, the articulation (systematical unity), and the limits of their science.

It is a misfortune that only after having collected for a long time at haphazard, under the influence of an idea that lies hidden in us, materials belonging to a science, nay, after having for a long time fitted them together [p. 835] technically, a time arrives when we are able to see its idea in a clearer light, and to devise architectonically a whole system according to the aims of reason. Systems seem to develope like worms through a kind of generatio aeqiiivocay by the mere aggregration of numerous concepts, at first imperfect, and gradually attaining to perfection, though in reality they all had their schema, as their original germ, in reason which was itself being developed. Hence, not only is each of them articulated according to an idea, but all may be properly combined with each other in a system of human knowledge, as members of one whole, admitting of an architectonic of all human knowledge which in our time, when so much material has been collected or may be taken over from the ruins of old

670 Architectonic of Ptire Reason systems, is not only possible, but not even very difficult. We shall confine ourselves here to the completion of our proper business, namely, to sketch the architectonic of all knowledge arising ixom. pure reason, beginning only at the point where the common root of our knowledge divides into two stems, one of which is reaso7i. By reason, however, I understand here the whole higher faculty of knowledge, and I distinguish therein rational from empirical knowledge.