“A _universal material_ criterion of truth is not possible; the phrase is indeed self-contradictory. For being _universal_ it would necessarily abstract from all distinction of objects, and yet being a material criterion, it must be concerned with just this distinction in order to be able to determine whether a cognition agrees with the very object to which it refers, and not merely with some object or other, by which nothing would be said. But _material_ truth must consist in this agreement of a cognition with the definite object to which it refers. For a cognition which is true in reference to one object may be false in reference to other objects. It is therefore absurd to demand a universal material criterion of truth, which is at once to abstract and not to abstract from all distinction of objects. “But if we ask for a universal _formal_ criterion of truth, it is very easy to decide that there may be such a criterion. For formal truth consists simply in the agreement of the cognition with itself when we abstract from all objects whatever, and from every distinction of objects. And hence the universal formal criteria of truth are nothing but universal logical marks of agreement of cognitions with themselves, or, what is the same thing, with the general laws of the understanding and the Reason. These formal universal criteria are certainly not sufficient for objective truth, but yet they are to be viewed as its _conditio sine qua non_. For before the question, whether the cognition agrees with the object, must come the question, whether it agrees with itself (as to form). And this is the business of logic.”[661] The remaining paragraphs[662] of Section III. may similarly be compared with the following passage from an earlier section of Kant’s _Logic_:[663] “Analytic discovers, by means of analysis, all the activities of reason which we exercise in thought. It is therefore an analytic of the form of understanding and of Reason, and is justly called the logic of truth, since it contains the necessary rules of all (formal) truth, without which truth our knowledge is untrue in itself, even apart from its objects. It is therefore nothing more than a canon for deciding on the formal correctness of our knowledge. “Should we desire to use this merely theoretical and general doctrine as a practical art, that is, as an organon, it would become a _dialectic_, _i.e. a logic of semblance_ (_ars sophistica disputatoria_), arising out of an abuse of the analytic, inasmuch as by the mere logical form there is contrived the semblance of true knowledge, the characters of which must, on the contrary, be derived from agreement with objects, and therefore from the _content_.