Transcendental analytic showed us how the mere logical form of our
cognition can contain the origin of pure conceptions à priori,
conceptions which represent objects antecedently to all experience, or
rather, indicate the synthetical unity which alone renders possible an
empirical cognition of objects. The form of judgements—converted into a
conception of the synthesis of intuitions—produced the categories which
direct the employment of the understanding in experience. This
consideration warrants us to expect that the form of syllogisms, when
applied to synthetical unity of intuitions, following the rule of the
categories, will contain the origin of particular à priori conceptions,
which we may call pure conceptions of reason or transcendental ideas,
and which will determine the use of the understanding in the totality
of experience according to principles.
The function of reason in arguments consists in the universality of a
cognition according to conceptions, and the syllogism itself is a
judgement which is determined à priori in the whole extent of its
condition. The proposition: “Caius is mortal,” is one which may be
obtained from experience by the aid of the understanding alone; but my
wish is to find a conception which contains the condition under which
the predicate of this judgement is given—in this case, the conception
of man—and after subsuming under this condition, taken in its whole
extent (all men are mortal), I determine according to it the cognition
of the object thought, and say: “Caius is mortal.”
Hence, in the conclusion of a syllogism we restrict a predicate to a
certain object, after having thought it in the major in its whole
extent under a certain condition. This complete quantity of the extent
in relation to such a condition is called universality (universalitas).
To this corresponds totality (universitas) of conditions in the
synthesis of intuitions. The transcendental conception of reason is
therefore nothing else than the conception of the totality of the
conditions of a given conditioned. Now as the unconditioned alone
renders possible totality of conditions, and, conversely, the totality
of conditions is itself always unconditioned; a pure rational
conception in general can be defined and explained by means of the
conception of the unconditioned, in so far as it contains a basis for
the synthesis of the conditioned.
To the number of modes of relation which the understanding cogitates by
means of the categories, the number of pure rational conceptions will
correspond. We must therefore seek for, first, an unconditioned of the
categorical synthesis in a subject; secondly, of the hypothetical
synthesis of the members of a series; thirdly, of the disjunctive
synthesis of parts in a system.