shall be known and thought as different in spite of a partial agreement,
and the identical shall be known and thought as identical in spite of a
partial difference, all in accordance with the end and intention which in
each case is in view; all this is done by the _faculty of judgment_.
Deficiency in judgment is _silliness_. The silly man fails to grasp, now
the partial or relative difference of concepts which in one aspect are
identical, now the identity of concepts which are relatively or partially
different. To this explanation of the faculty of judgment, moreover,
Kant’s division of it into reflecting and subsuming judgment may be
applied, according as it passes from the perceived objects to the
concepts, or from the latter to the former; in both cases always mediating
between empirical knowledge of the understanding and the reflective
knowledge of the reason. There can be no truth which could be brought out
by means of syllogisms alone; and the necessity of establishing truth by
means of syllogisms is merely relative, indeed subjective. Since all
demonstration is syllogistic, in the case of a new truth we must first
seek, not for a demonstration, but for direct evidence, and only in the
absence of such evidence is a demonstration to be temporarily made use of.
No science is susceptible of demonstration throughout any more than a
building can stand in the air; all its demonstrations must ultimately rest
upon what is perceived, and consequently cannot be demonstrated, for the
whole world of reflection rests upon and is rooted in the world of
perception. All primal, that is, original, _evidence_ is a _perception_,
as the word itself indicates. Therefore it is either empirical or founded
upon the perception _a priori_ of the conditions of possible experience.
In both cases it affords only immanent, not transcendent knowledge. Every
concept has its worth and its existence only in its relation, sometimes
very indirect, to an idea of perception; what is true of the concepts is
also true of the judgments constructed out of them, and of all science.
Therefore it must in some way be possible to know directly without
demonstrations or syllogisms every truth that is arrived at through
syllogisms and communicated by demonstrations. This is most difficult in
the case of certain complicated mathematical propositions at which we only
arrive by chains of syllogisms; for example, the calculation of the chords
and tangents to all arcs by deduction from the proposition of Pythagoras.
But even such a truth as this cannot essentially and solely rest upon
abstract principles, and the space-relations which lie at its foundation
also must be capable of being so presented _a priori_ in pure intuition or
perception that the truth of their abstract expression is directly
established. But of mathematical demonstration we shall speak more fully
shortly.