its content from that principle. However, Kant finally comes forward with a pretended principle of the reason answering to his demand, yet only with this _one_, from which others afterwards follow as corollaries. It is the principle which Chr. Wolf set up and explained in his “_Cosmologia_,” sect. i. c. 2, § 93, and in his “_Ontologia_,” § 178. As now above, under the title of the Amphiboly, mere Leibnitzian philosophemes were taken for natural and necessary aberrations of the reason, and were criticised as such, so here precisely the same thing happens with the philosophemes of Wolf. Kant still presents this principle of the reason in an obscure light, through indistinctness, indefiniteness, and breaking of it up (p. 307; V. 361, and 322; V. 379). Clearly expressed, however, it is as follows: “If the conditioned is given, the totality of its conditions must also be given, and therefore also the _unconditioned_, through which alone that totality becomes complete.” We become most vividly aware of the apparent truth of this proposition if we imagine the conditions and the conditioned as the links of a suspended chain, the upper end of which, however, is not visible, so that it might extend _ad infinitum_; since, however, the chain does not fall, but hangs, there must be above _one_ link which is the first, and in some way is fixed. Or, more briefly: the reason desires to have a point of attachment for the causal chain which reaches back to infinity; it would be convenient for it. But we will examine the proposition, not in figures, but in itself. Synthetic it certainly is; for, analytically, nothing more follows from the conception of the conditioned than that of the condition. It has not, however, _a priori_ truth, nor even _a posteriori_, but it surreptitiously obtains its appearance of truth in a very subtle way, which I must now point out. Immediately, and _a priori_, we have the knowledge which the principle of sufficient reason in its four forms expresses. From this immediate knowledge all abstract expressions of the principle of sufficient reason are derived, and they are thus indirect; still more, however, is this the case with inferences or corollaries from them. I have already explained above how _abstract_ knowledge often unites a variety of _intuitive_ cognitions in _one_ form or _one_ concept in such a way that they can no longer be distinguished; therefore abstract knowledge stands to intuitive knowledge as the shadow to the real objects, the great multiplicity of which it presents through one outline comprehending them all. Now the pretended principle of the reason makes use of this shadow. In order to deduce from the principle of sufficient reason the unconditioned, which directly contradicts it, it prudently abandons the immediate concrete knowledge of the content of the principle of sufficient reason in its particular forms, and only makes use of abstract concepts which are