85. Kant, in the introduction to his Critic of the Pure Reasonn, started an extremely important question about the logic of mathematics. He begins by drawing a famous distinction, as follows:
“In judgments wherein the relation of a subject to a predicate is thought . . . this relation may be of two kinds. Either the predicate, B, belongs to the subject, A, as something covertly contained in A as a concept; or B is external to A, though connected with it. In the former case, I term the judgment analytical; in the latter synthetical. Analytical judgments, then, are those in which the connection of the predicate with the subject is thought to consist in identity, while those in which this connection is thought without identity, are to be called synthetical judgments. The former may also be called explicative, the latter ampliative judgments, since those by their predicates add nothing to the concept of the subject, which is only divided by analysis into partial concepts that were already thought in it though confusedly; while these add to the concept of the subject a predicate not thought in it at all, and not to be extracted from it by any analysis. For instance, if I say all bodies are extended, this is an analytical judgment. For I need not go out of the conception I attach to the word body, to find extension joined to it; it is enough to analyze my meaning, i.e., merely to become aware of the various things I always think in it, to find that predicate among them. On the other hand, if I say, all bodies are heavy, that predicate is quite another matter from anything I think in the mere concept of a body in general.”
Like much of Kant's thought this is acute and rests on a solid basis, too; and yet is seriously inaccurate. The first criticism to be made upon it is, that it confuses together a question of psychology with a question of logic, and that most disadvantageously; for on the question of psychology, there is hardly any room for anybody to maintain Kant right. Kant reasons as if, in our thoughts, we made logical definitions of things we reason about! How grotesquely this misrepresents the facts, is shown by this, that there are thousands of people who, believing in the atoms of Boscovich, do not hold bodies to occupy any space. Yet it never occurred to them, or to anybody, that they did not believe in corporeal substance. It is only the scientific man, and the logician who makes definitions, or cares for them.
86. At the same time, the unscientific, as well as the scientific, frequently have occasion to ask whether something is consistent with their own or somebody's meaning; and that sort of question they themselves widely separate from a question of how experience, past or possible, is qualified. The Aristotelian [logicians] — and, in fact, all men who ever have thought — have made that distinction. It is embodied in the conjugations of some barbarous languages. What was peculiar to Kant — it came from his thin study of syllogistic figure — was his way of putting the distinction, when he says we necessarily think the explicatory proposition although confusedly, whenever we think its subject. This is monstrous!
The question whether a given thing is consistent with a hypothesis, is the question of whether they are logically compossible or not. I can easily throw all the axioms of number, which are neither numerous nor complicated, into the antecedent of a proposition — or into its subject, if that be insisted upon — so that the question of whether every number is the sum of three cubes, is simply a question of whether that is involved in the conception of the subject and nothing more. But to say that because the answer is involved in the conception of the subject, it is confusedly thought in it, is a great error. To be involved, is a phrase to which nobody before Kant ever gave such a psychological meaning.
Everything is involved which can be evolved. But how does this evolution of necessary consequences take place? We can answer for ourselves after having worked a while in the logic of relatives. It is not by a simple mental stare, or strain of mental vision. It is by manipulating on paper, or in the fancy, formulæ or other diagrams — experimenting on them, experiencing the thing. Such experience alone evolves the reason hidden within us and as utterly hidden as gold ten feet below ground — and this experience only differs from what usually carries that name in that it brings out the reason hidden within and not the reason of Nature, as do the chemist's or physicist's experiments.
87. There is an immense distinction between the Inward and the Outward truth. I know them alike by experimentation only. But the distinction lies in this, that I can glut myself with experiments in the one case, while I find it most troublesome to obtain any that are satisfactory in the other. Over the Inward, I have considerable control, over the Outward very little. It is a question of degree only.
Phenomena that inward force puts together appear similar; phenomena that outward force puts together appear contiguous. We can try experiments establishing similarity so easily, that it seems as if we could see through and through that; while contiguity strikes us as a marvel. The young chemist precipitates Prussian blue from two nearly colorless fluids a hundred times over without ceasing to marvel at it.
Yet he finds no marvel in the fact that any one precipitate when compared in color with the other seems similar every time. It is quite as much a mystery, in truth, and you can no more get at the heart of it, than you can get at the heart of an onion.
But nothing could be more extravagant than to jump to the conclusion that because the distinction between the Inward and the Outward is merely one of how much, therefore it is unimportant; for the distinction between the unimportant and the important is itself purely one of little and much. Now, the difference between the Inward and the Outward worlds is certainly very, very great, with a remarkable absence of intermediate phenomena.
