THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 75 



Now if this new conception of necessity and contingency as 

 aspects of all experience is to be logically followed out, it must be 

 equally true that there can be no merely universal proposition. 

 That is to say, every formally universal proposition must have 

 its aspect or element of contingency. For according to the 

 Kantian logic the necessity or the universality of a proposition 

 lies in the form of connection of subject and predicate. Its 

 terms, which are related by this a priori connection, must, then, 

 be given, since they can never be determined by their connections 

 with each other. If it be asserted that other relations than those 

 in which they now stand have determined them, it is still true 

 that any other relation must itself have given terms. Thus 

 every possible universal proposition must have its contingent 

 aspect. 



That Kant s own position in the matter is not wholly in accor 

 dance with this statement is well known. The formal determina 

 tion of all possible experience is, indeed, a prominent doctrine 

 of the Critique. Not only must every judgment be determined 

 a priori as to its form by the categories, but every perception 

 must also be subject to the forms of space and time. Indeed, 

 sensations themselves, in so far as they belong to experience at 

 all, are already determined. To be given, is to be brought under 

 the necessary conditions of experience. The purely contingent, 

 therefore, the matter of sensation, remains an abstraction to 

 the end. It is a limiting conception, a mere instrument of analy 

 sis. Matter and form, contingency and necessity, however far 

 we may carry our analysis of thought, present an indissoluble 

 union. This is not Kantian language, but it is unmistakably 

 the doctrine of the Critique. Nevertheless, it is not to be denied 

 that Kant draws conclusions which are not in accordance with 

 this doctrine. As we shall try to show, these spring inevitably 

 from the critical failure, or refusal, to admit the complementary 

 thesis, namely, that every universal proposition contains an ele 

 ment of contingency. 



If &quot;percepts without concepts are blind,&quot; in the Kantian die- 



