is not less true than that of the straight stick; the absurdity, occasioned by the empirical concept, arises from seeking the true perception among various perceptions, in order to make of it the basis and foundation of the others declared illusory. This error would seem to be of slight importance, so long at least as it is a matter of a stick; but it entails most serious consequences, since it is owing to similar errors that outside the Spirit there has come to be posited _the Thing in itself._ [Sidenote: _Abstract concepts and individual judgments._] Passing from the empirical to the abstract concepts, if these latter presuppose the pure concept, they do not on the other hand presuppose individual judgments. For example, in order to form the concepts of numerical series, or of geometrical figures, it is not necessary to know individual things. Those concepts are abstract, just because they are without any representative content, and therefore no representative element is required for their formation. [Sidenote: _Impossibility of direct application of the first to the second._] But if this be so, it is clear that they cannot alone be translated into individual pseudojudgments. They will certainly give rise to judgments of definition (though always arbitrary and abstract), but not to individual judgments. And in truth numerical and geometrical series is not applicable to individual facts, as affirmed in individual judgments. These are at the same time different and yet inter-connected, in such a way that the one is somehow in the other. The application of numerical series or geometrical figures implies that we have before us _homogeneous_ objects (or objects which have been made homogeneous, which amounts to the same thing). Things qualitatively different elude such procedure: we cannot add up a cow, an oak, and a poem. It may be urged that all things have this at least in common, that they are _things_ and can therefore be enumerated as such. But things, as such, or things in general are innumerable, being infinite; which amounts to saying that the series of things in general is the same as numerical series. Doubtless numerical series can be constituted; but our enquiry concerns the possibility of making direct applications of numbers to the individual; that is to say, whether or not they give rise to _abstract_ individual judgments. We must reply to this question in the negative. The formula "abstract individual judgments" is itself a contradiction in terms; for the individual taken in itself can never be abstract, nor the abstract ever individual, even through a practical fiction. [Sidenote: _Intervention of empirical judgments as intermediaries. Reduction of the heterogeneous to the homogeneous._]