The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 16
Note A.—Page 8
Note A.—Page 8.
"The question now is as to the criterion by which we can securely distinguish a pure from an empirical cognition. Experience teaches us, indeed, that something is constituted in such and such a manner, but not that it could not be otherwise. In the first place, therefore, a proposition is met with which is conceived of at the same time with its necessity, it is then a judgment a priori; and if, besides this it is not deduced from any other, and, as itself, again holds true as a necessary proposition, it is thus absolutely a priori. In the second place, experience never gives to its judgments certain and strict universality, but only assumed and comparative (by induction); so that, strictly speaking, it must be said, so far as we have hitherto perceived, there is no exception to this or that rule."— (Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason, pp. 2, 3.)