THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 79 



mined, it ceases to be, by that very fact, the peculiar character- 

 istic of any proposition or set of propositions. If determined at 

 all, knowledge must in so far be universal or necessary, and to 

 belong to experience or to be knowledge means to be determined. 

 In this conclusion, that all knowledge is necessary, the concept of 

 necessity has itself become transformed. It no longer stands for 

 an immediately given, as in rationalistic logic. The necessity 

 of truth does not lie in the isolation of its absolute self-sufficiency, 

 but in its inherent dependence on the entire system of knowledge. 

 Its validity is part and parcel of the validity of all other truth. 

 But as the system is likewise contingent through and through, 

 no validity is more than relative validity. That is to say, no 

 proposition is more than approximately universal. Pure uni- 

 versality is a limit never fully reached. Just as no analysis of 

 experience can, as Kant showed, yield us the final product 

 bare matter of sensation, pure contingency so no analysis ever 

 reaches the pure universal. 



It has been pointed out by Kant's successors, that the ultimate-- 

 ness of the Kantian distinction between form and content does 

 not hold, and that, furthermore, on Kant's own principles it 

 does not hold. It is, so it is agreed, a doctrine inconsistent 

 with the implied logic of the critical philosophy. Now it is true 

 that the separation of form and content is inconsistent with 

 criticism, so far as criticism conceives necessity as the universal 

 conditionality of thought. But it is the prerequisite assumption 

 of criticism, so far as criticism maintains that any particular law 

 or laws form the indispensable condition of experience. The 

 fundamental ambiguity of criticism lies in its holding at once 

 these two doctrines: first, that knowledge to belong to experience 

 must conform to conditions, or, in other words, that knowledge 

 as such must be conditional and in so far universal ; and, secondly, 

 that there are particular describable conditions to which all knowl- 

 edge must conform. If there are any particular conditions neces- 

 sary to experience, and these are capable of formulation, then 

 that very formulation yields propositions which are merely for- 



