HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



the forms by which judgments are conditioned. He 

 also made the important distinction between judgments 

 a posteriori and judgments a priori. A judgment 

 a posteriori is founded on experience. On the other 

 hand, a judgment a priori is one having the marks of 

 universality and necessity. Thus the latter judgments 

 are either absolutely independent of experience, or they 

 are relatively independent, in the sense that the con- 

 ceptions employed are deduced from other conceptions 

 which had been previously derived from experience. 

 He assumes that the necessity and universality of a 

 priori judgments cannot arise from any combination of 

 experiences. Again, he draws a distinction between 

 analytical and synthetical judgments. If by analys- 

 ing the conception of the subject we find the predicate, 

 or if the subject and the predicate are identical, the 

 judgment is analytical ; but if the conception of the 

 subject does not contain the predicate, so that the 

 latter must be added to it, the judgment is synthetical. 

 Synthetic judgments fall into two classes : those 

 synthetic a posteriori^ in which the synthesis of subject 

 and predicate is effected by experience ; and those 

 synthetic a priori^ if the synthesis occurs apart from all 

 experience. Some a priori judgments are thus 

 synthetic, such as those of mathematics. The funda- 

 mental judgments of arithmetic, such as 6 = 6, are 

 analytic, but all those of geometry, such as the so- 

 called axioms of Euclid, have the marks of strict 

 universality and necessity, and are synthetic a priori. 

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