Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/394

 372 KANT. nected system. This is supplied to it by the Ideas-i'-which, consequently, do not relate directly to the objects of intui- tion, but only to the understanding and its judgments — in order, through the concept of the unconditioned, to give completion to the knowledge of the understanding, which always moves in the sphere of the conditioned, i. e., to give it the greatest possible unity together with the greatest possible extension. The concept of the absolute grows out of the logical task which is incumbent on reason, i. e., inference^and it may be best explained from this as a starting point. In the syllogism the judgment asserted in the conclusion is derived from a general rule, the major premise. The validity of this general propo- sition is, however, itself conditional, dependent on higher conditions. Then, as reason seeks the condition for each conditioned moment, and always commands a further advance in the series of conditions, it acts under the Idea of the totality of conditions, which, nevertheless, since it can never be given in experience, does not denote an object, but only an heuristic maxim for knowledge, the maxim, namely, never to stop with any one condition as ultimate, but always to continue the search further. The Idea of the ' unconditioned or of the completeness of conditions is a goal which we never attain, but which we are continually to approach. The categories and the principles of the understanding were constitutive principles, the_Jxlea*-arc reg ulative merely ; their function is to guide the under- standing, to give it a direction helpful for the cojinection of knowledge, not to inform it concerning the actual char- V acter of things. , Since reason is the faculty of inference (^s the under- standing was found to be the faculty of judgment), the forms of the syllogism perform the same service for us in our search for the Ideas as the forms of judgment in the discovery of the categories. To the categorical, hypothet- ical, and disjunctive syllogisms correspond the three con- cepts of reason, the sou^or the thinking subject, the world or the totality of phenomena, and Gdd, the original being or the supreme condition of the possibility of all that can be thought. By means of these we refer all inner phe- «:.|