In the same way we can empirically distinguish intention and action in the practical spirit. But in reality pure intention outside effectual action, is not even intention, because it is nothing. And an action beyond and without intention is nothing, for practical reality is the identity of intention and action. Here, too, theoretical spirit and practical spirit correspond at every point. II THE LOGICAL, _A PRIORI_ SYNTHESIS [Sidenote: _The identity of the judgment of definition and of the individual judgment, as synthesis a priori._] If analysis apart from synthesis, the _a priori_ apart from the _a posteriori,_ be inconceivable, and if synthesis apart from analysis, the _a posteriori_ apart from the _a priori,_ be equally inconceivable, then the true act of thought will be a synthetic analysis, an analytic synthesis, an _a posteriori-a priori,_ or, if it be preferred, an _a priori synthesis._ In this manner, the identity that we have established between the judgment of definition and the individual judgment comes to assume a name celebrated in the annals of modern philosophy. And by assuming it at this point, it is also able to affirm, since it has already demonstrated, the truth of the _a priori_ synthesis, and to determine its exact content. [Sidenote: _Objections raised by abstractionists and empiricists against the a priori synthesis._] This is not the place to enter again into the objections which the Kantian concept elicited (indeed could not fail to elicit): objections which in Italy too gave rise to very acute attempts at confutation, and which ended in the partial absorption of that concept into the mental organism of its opponents. Suffice it to say that all the objections to the _a priori_ synthesis, when thoroughly examined, seem to be derived, as was to be expected, from the upholders of the two one-sided doctrines which were surpassed by the synthesis. Thus the dogmatists or abstractionists believed the concept to be thinkable apart from or above the facts (simple analysis); the empiricists perceived only the representative element and claimed to obtain the concept from mere facts (simple synthesis). Both failed to explain perception, or the individual judgment. The former found it to arise from the external and almost accidental contact between pure concepts and given facts; the latter sometimes assumed it without explanation, sometimes confused it with pure intuition, if not altogether with sensibility and emotion. It can be said that whoever does not accept the _a priori_ synthesis is outside the path of modern philosophy, indeed of all philosophy. Strive to find or to rediscover that path, unless you wish to incur the punishment of trifling with empiricism, of lying to yourself with mysticism, or of wandering in the void with scholasticism. [Sidenote: _False interpretation of the a priori synthesis._]