Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/87

75. quarried out of another and more reliable material. The evolution theory rests upon the ground of a priori arguments.

By a priori we do not understand anything mysterious, but simply such cognition as possesses universality and necessity. That cognition which is in possession of universality and necessity is also called formal cognition. The formal sciences (for instance arithmetic, mathematics, pure logic, and pure mechanics) give us information about such truths as are applicable, because they are purely formal, to the formal conditions of anything and everything possible. Because we know beforehand that the purely formal laws will hold good under all conditions Kant called their formulated theorems "a priori." All the objections to the idea of apriority made by John Stuart Mill and other empiricists are due to their misinterpretation of the term.

Mr. Mill was mistaken when he thought Kant meant a priori cognitions were innate ideas which came to man from spheres unknown. The very first sentence of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" proves that Kant knew of no other knowledge than that which begins with experience. Kant says, "That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt." But our knowledge consists of two elements, viz. the empirical and the formal. The former bears always the character of the special and incidental, the latter of the universal and necessary. The former is sensory, being furnished by the senses, the latter is properly mental originating in and with the action of the mind in dealing with sense-materials, in arranging them and bringing them into certain relations. Formal knowledge is different in kind from empirical knowledge. The rule "twice two is four" will hold good for all possible cases, but the statement "A swan is white" does not hold good for all possible cases. European swans as a rule are white, but Australian swans are black, and for all we know, we might find swans that are blue, or red, or yellow. Empirical knowledge is full of exceptions, formal knowledge is rigid, there is no exception to any rule of formal knowledge.