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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 16

Note A.—Page 8

page 22

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.)