This would seem to be the view to which Kant’s Critical teaching, when consistently developed, is bound to lead. For in insisting that the synthetic character of a judgment need not render it invalid, and that all the fundamental principles and most of the derivative judgments of the positive sciences are of this nature, Kant is really maintaining that the justification of a judgment is always to be looked for beyond its own boundaries in some implied context of coherent experience. But though the value of his argument lies in clear-sighted recognition of the synthetic factor in all genuine knowledge, its cogency is greatly obscured by his continued acceptance of the possibility of judgments that are purely analytic. Thus there is little difficulty in detecting the synthetic character of the proposition: all bodies are heavy. Yet the reader has first been required to admit the analytic character of the proposition: all bodies are extended. The two propositions are really identical in logical character. Neither can be recognised as true save in terms of a comprehensive theory of physical existence. If matter must exist in a state of distribution in order that its parts may acquire through mutual attraction the property of weight, the size of a body, or even its possessing any extension whatsoever, may similarly depend upon specific conditions such as may conceivably not be universally realised. We find the same difficulty when we are called upon to decide whether the judgment 7 + 5 = 12 is analytic or purely synthetic. Kant speaks as if the concepts of 7, 5, and 12 were independent entities, each with its own quite separate connotation. But obviously they can only be formed in the light of the various connected concepts which go to constitute our system of numeration. The proposition has meaning only when interpreted in the light of this conceptual system. It is not, indeed, a self-evident identical proposition; but neither is the connection asserted so entirely synthetic that intuition will alone account for its possibility. That, however, brings us to the third main defect in Kant’s argument.