This is only another way of stating that Kant is the real founder of the _Coherence_ theory of truth.[161] He never himself employs the term Coherence, and he constantly adopts positions which are more in harmony with a _Correspondence_ view of the nature and conditions of knowledge. But all that is most vital in his teaching, and has proved really fruitful in its after-history, would seem to be in line with the positions which have since been more explicitly developed by such writers as Lotze, Sigwart, Green, Bradley, Bosanquet, Jones and Dewey, and which in their tenets all derive from Hegel’s restatement of Kant’s logical doctrines. From this point of view principles and facts mutually establish one another, the former proving themselves by their capacity to account for the relevant phenomena, and the latter distinguishing themselves from irrelevant accompaniments by their conformity to the principles which make insight possible. In other words, all proof conforms in general type to the hypothetical method of the natural sciences. Kant’s so-called transcendental method, the method by which he establishes the validity of the categories, is itself, as we have already observed,[162] of this character. Secondly, the distinction between the empirical and the _a priori_ must not be taken (as Kant himself takes it in his earlier, and occasionally even in his later utterances) as marking a distinction between two kinds of knowledge. They are elements inseparably involved in all knowledge. And lastly, the contrast between analysis and synthesis becomes a difference not of kind but of degree. Nothing can exist or be conceived save as fitted into a system which gives it meaning and decides as to its truth. In the degree to which it can be studied in relative independence of the supporting system analysis will suffice; in the degree to which it refers us to this system it calls for synthetic interpretation. But ultimately the needs of adequate understanding must constrain us to the employment of both methods of enquiry. Nothing can be known save in terms of the wider whole to which it belongs. There is, however, one important respect in which Kant diverges in very radical fashion from the position of Hegel. The final whole to which all things must be referred is represented to us only through an “Idea,” for which no corresponding reality can ever be found. The system which decides what is to be regarded as _empirically_ real is the mechanical system of natural science. We have no sufficient theoretical criterion of absolute reality. These somewhat general considerations may be made more definite if we now endeavour to determine in what specific respects the distinctions employed in the _Introduction_ fail to harmonise with the central doctrines of the _Analytic_.