74 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



relationship, but there is no ground for assuming that such uni 

 versal forms would apply to them at all. Universal forms of 

 thought, as necessary modes of relationship, are altogether in 

 capable of determining the terms which they relate; they are 

 altogether incompetent to determine the content for whose valid 

 ity they are the necessary ground. Furthermore, even supposing 

 discrete ^4 s and B s to be given, to which a priori forms must 

 apply, what ground is there for determining the application of 

 the forms to this particular A and B rather than to C and D? 



It scarcely needs to be pointed out, that this inability of the 

 critical philosophy to account for the application of the forms to 

 the content of thought is identical with the inability of rationalism 

 to apply universals to particulars. That the emergence of this 

 dualism, implied, as we have tried to show, in the very basis 

 of criticism, is inevitable, appears more plainly upon further 

 consideration. Necessary truth, as conceived by rationalism, 

 was truth which could be deduced from axioms of a priori 

 certainty. Any proposition which could not be exhibited as a 

 consequence from a priori premises was incapable of attaining 

 rational validity. The result of this procedure of rationalism 

 was, as we have seen, to divide experience squarely in two, leaving 

 on the side of necessity all universal propositions, and on the side 

 of contingency the whole mass of particular propositions. Now 

 criticism, in its contention that necessity springs from the a 

 priori forms of thought, attempts to avoid this rationalistic 

 dichotomy, and to institute a new conception of the distinction 

 between necessity and contingency. That is, instead of there 

 being one type of cognition giving rise to truths of reason, and 

 another type giving rise to truths of fact, every possible bit of 

 experience has at once a necessary and a contingent side. How 

 ever contingent a given proposition, such as This wax is white, 

 may seem, it is by the very fact of its belonging to experience, 

 already partly determined by the forms of perception and judg 

 ment, and in so far necessary. To be in experience at all is 

 to be subject to the necessary conditions of possible experience. 



