Categorical judgments have as their metalogical principle the laws of
thought of identity and contradiction. But the _ground_ of the connection
of the concept-spheres which gives _truth_ to the judgment, which is
nothing but this connection, may be of very different kinds; and,
according to this, the truth of the judgment is either logical, or
empirical, or metaphysical, or metalogical, as is explained in the
introductory essay, § 30-33, and does not require to be repeated here. But
it is apparent from this how very various the direct cognitions may be,
all of which exhibit themselves in the abstract, through the combination
of the spheres of two concepts, as subject and predicate, and that we can
by no means set up the sole function of the understanding as corresponding
to them and producing them. For example, the judgments, “Water boils, the
sine measures the angle, the will resolves, business distracts,
distinction is difficult,” express through the same logical form the most
different kinds of relations; but from this we obtain the right, however
irregular the beginning may be, of placing ourselves at the standpoint of
abstract knowledge to analyse direct intuitive knowledge. For the rest,
the categorical judgment springs from knowledge of the understanding
proper, in my sense, only when causation is expressed by it; this is,
however, the case in all judgments which refer to a physical quality. For
if I say, “This body is heavy, hard, fluid, green, sour, alkaline,
organic, &c., &c.,” this always refers to its effect, and thus is
knowledge which is only possible through the pure understanding. Now,
after this, like much which is quite different from it (for example, the
subordination of very abstract concepts), has been expressed in the
abstract through subject and predicate, these mere relations of concepts
have been transferred back to knowledge of perception, and it has been
supposed that the subject and predicate of the judgment must have a
peculiar and special correlative in perception, substance and accident.
But I shall show clearly further on that the conception substance has no
other true content than that of the conception matter. Accidents, however,
are quite synonymous with kinds of effects, so that the supposed knowledge
of substance and accident is never anything more than the knowledge of
cause and effect by the understanding. But the special manner in which the
idea of matter arises is explained partly in § 4 of the first book, and
still more clearly in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason at
the end of § 21, p. 77 (3d ed., p. 82), and in some respects we shall see
it still more closely when we investigate the principle of the permanence
of substance.