The particular problem which gave the occasion to the first of the precritical writings is, in an imperfect or particular fashion, the fundamental question to which the _Kritik_ is an answer. What is the nature of the distinction between knowledge gained by analysis of notions and knowledge of matters of fact? Kant seems never to have been satisfied with the Wolffian identification of logical axioms and of the principle of sufficient reason. The tract on the _False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures_, in which the view of thought or reason as analytic is clearly expressed, closes with the significant division of judgments into those which rest upon the logical axioms of identity and contradiction and those for which no logical ground can be shown. Such immediate or indemonstrable judgments, it is said, abound in our experience. They are, in fact, as Kant presently perceived, the foundations for all judgments regarding real existence. It was impossible that the question regarding their nature and legitimacy and their distinction from analytic judgments should not present itself to him. The three tracts belonging to the years 1763-1764 bring forward in the sharpest fashion the essential opposition between the two classes of judgments. In the _Essay on Negative Quantities_, the fundamental thought is the total distinction in kind between logical opposition (the contradictoriness of notions, which Kant always viewed as formed, definite products of thought) and real opposition. For the one adequate explanation is found in the logical axiom of analytical thinking; for the other no such explanation is to be had. Logical ground and real ground are totally distinct. "I can understand perfectly well," says Kant, "how a consequence follows from its reason according to the law of identity, since it is discoverable by mere analysis of the notion contained in it.... But how something follows from another thing and not according to the law of identity, this I should gladly have made clear to me.... How shall I comprehend that, since something is, something else should be?" Real things, in short, are distinct existences, and, as distinct, not necessarily or logically connected in thought. "I have," he proceeds, "reflected on the nature of our knowledge in relation to our judgment of reason and consequent, and I intend to expound fully the result of my reflections. It follows from them that the relation of a real ground to that which is thereby posited or denied cannot be expressed by a judgment but only by means of a notion, which by analysis may certainly be reduced to yet simpler notions of real grounds, but yet in such a way that the final resort of all our cognition in this regard must be found in simple and irreducible notions of real grounds, the relation of which to their consequents cannot be made clear."