we gladly concede its truth), you lapse when they come to be
employed for your principal object, into such doubtful
assertions, that in all ages one Metaphysics has contradicted
another, either in its assertions, or their proofs, and thus has
itself destroyed its own claim to lasting assent. Nay, the very
attempts to set up such a science are the main cause of the early
appearance of skepticism, a mental attitude in which reason
treats itself with such violence that it could never have arisen
save from complete despair of ever satisfying our most important
aspirations. For long before men began to inquire into nature
methodically, they consulted abstract reason, which had to some
extent been exercised by means of ordinary experience; for reason
is ever present, while laws of nature must usually be discovered
with labor. So Metaphysics floated to the surface, like foam,
which dissolved the moment it was scooped off. But immediately
there appeared a new supply on the surface, to be ever eagerly
gathered up by some, while others, instead of seeking in the
depths the cause of the phenomenon, thought they showed their
wisdom by ridiculing the idle labor of their neighbors.

     The essential and distinguishing feature of pure
mathematical cognition among all other a priori cognitions is,
that it cannot at all proceed from concepts, but only by means of
the construction of concepts (see Critique II., Method of
Transcendentalism, Chap. I., sect. 1). As therefore in its
judgments it must proceed beyond the concept to that which its
corresponding visualization [Anschauung] contains, these
judgments neither can, nor ought to, arise analytically, by
dissecting the concept, but are all synthetical.

     I cannot refrain from pointing out the disadvantage
resulting to philosophy from the neglect of this easy and
apparently insignificant observation. Hume being prompted (a task
worthy of a philosopher) to cast his eye over the whole field of
a priori cognitions in which human understanding claims such
mighty possessions, heedlessly severed from it a whole, and
indeed its most valuable, province, viz., pure mathematics; for
he thought its nature, or, so to speak, the state-constitution of
this empire, depended on totally different principles, namely, on
the law of contradiction alone; and although he did not divide
judgments in this manner formally and universally as I have done
here, what he said was equivalent to this: that mathematics
contains only analytical, but metaphysics synthetical, a priori
judgments. In this, however, he was greatly mistaken, and the
mistake had a decidedly injurious effect upon his whole
conception. But for this, he would have extended his question
concerning the origin of our synthetical judgments far beyond the
metaphysical concept of Causality, and included in it the
possibility of mathematics a priori also, for this latter he must
have assumed to be equally synthetical. And then he could not
have based his metaphysical judgments on mere experience without
subjecting the axioms of mathematics equally to experience, a
thing which he was far too acute to do. The good company into
which metaphysics would thus have been brought, would have saved
it from the danger of a contemptuous ill-treatment, for the
thrust intended for it must have reached mathematics, which was
not and could not have been Hume's intention. Thus that acute man
would have been led into considerations which must needs be
similar to those that now occupy us, but which would have gained
inestimably by his inimitably elegant style.

     Metaphysical judgments, properly so called, are all
synthetical. We must distinguish judgments pertaining to
metaphysics from metaphysical judgments properly so called. Many
of the former are analytical, but they only afford the means for
metaphysical judgments, which are the whole end of the science,
and which are always synthetical. For if there be concepts
pertaining to metaphysics (as, for example, that of substance),
the judgments springing from simple analysis of them also pertain
to metaphysics, as, for example, substance is that which only
exists as subject; and by means of several such analytical
judgments, we seek to approach the definition of the concept. But
as the analysis of a pure concept of the understanding pertaining
to metaphysics, does not proceed in any different manner from the
dissection of any other, even empirical, concepts, not pertaining
to metaphysics (such as: air is an elastic fluid, the elasticity
of which is not destroyed by any known degree of cold), it
follows that the concept indeed, but not the analytical judgment,
is properly metaphysical. This science has something peculiar in
the production of its a priori cognitions, which must therefore
be distinguished from the features it has in common with other
rational knowledge. Thus the judgment, that all the substance in
things is permanent, is a synthetical and properly metaphysical
judgment.

     If the a priori principles, which constitute the materials
of metaphysics, have first been collected according to fixed
principles, then their analysis will be of great value; it might
be taught as a particular part (as a philosophia definitiva),
containing nothing but analytical judgments pertaining to
metaphysics, and could be treated separately from the synthetical
which constitute metaphysics proper. For indeed these analyses
are not elsewhere of much value, except in metaphysics, i.e., as
regards the synthetical judgments, which are to be generated by
these previously analyzed concepts.

     The conclusion drawn in this section then is, that
metaphysics is properly concerned with synthetical propositions a
priori, and these alone constitute its end, for which it indeed
requires various dissections of its concepts, viz., of its