established by a reason as contingent, because it looked at the relative nature of its necessity and compared this with that entirely imaginary _absolute_ necessity, which is self-contradictory in its conception.(5) Now Kant adheres to this fundamentally perverse definition of the contingent and gives it as explanation. (Critique of Pure Reason, V. p.
most evident contradiction with himself upon this point, for on p. 301 he says: “Everything contingent has a cause,” and adds, “That is contingent which might possibly not be.” But whatever has a cause cannot possibly not be: thus it is necessary. For the rest, the source of the whole of this false explanation of the necessary and the contingent is to be found in Aristotle in “_De Generatione et Corruptione_,” lib. ii. c. 9 et 11, where the necessary is explained as that which cannot possibly not be: there stands in opposition to it that which cannot possibly be, and between these two lies that which can both be and not be,—thus that which comes into being and passes away, and this would then be the contingent. In accordance with what has been said above, it is clear that this explanation, like so many of Aristotle’s, has resulted from sticking to abstract conceptions without going back to the concrete and perceptible, in which, however, the source of all abstract conceptions lies, and by which therefore they must always be controlled. “Something which cannot possibly not be” can certainly be thought in the abstract, but if we go with it to the concrete, the real, the perceptible, we find nothing to support the thought, even as possible,—as even merely the asserted consequent of a given reason, whose necessity is yet relative and conditioned.
I take this opportunity of adding a few further remarks on these conceptions of modality. Since all necessity rests upon the principle of sufficient reason, and is on this account relative, all _apodictic_ judgments are originally, and according to their ultimate significance, _hypothetical_. They become _categorical_ only through the addition of an _assertatory_ minor, thus in the conclusion. If this minor is still undecided, and this indecision is expressed, this gives the problematical judgment.
What in general (as a rule) is apodictic (a law of nature), is in reference to a particular case only problematical, because the condition must actually appear which brings the case under the rule. And conversely, what in the particular as such is necessary (apodictic) (every particular change necessary through the cause), is again in general, and predicated universally, only problematical; because the causes which appear only concern the particular case, and the apodictic, always hypothetical judgment, always expresses merely the general law, not the particular case directly. All this has its ground in the fact that possibility exists only in the province of reflection and for the reason; the actual, in the province of perception and for the understanding; the necessary, for both.
Indeed, the distinction between necessary, actual, and possible really exists only in the abstract and according to the conception; in the real world, on the other hand, all three fall into one. For all that happens, happens _necessarily_, because it happens from causes; but these themselves have again causes, so that the whole of the events of the world, great and small, are a strict concatenation of necessary occurrences. Accordingly everything actual is also necessary, and in the real world there is no difference between actuality and necessity, and in the same way no difference between actuality and possibility; for what has not happened, _i.e._, has not become actual, was also not possible, because the causes without which it could never appear have not themselves appeared, nor could appear, in the great concatenation of causes; thus it was an impossibility. Every event is therefore either necessary or impossible. All this holds good only of the empirically real world, _i.e._, the complex of individual things, thus of the whole particular as such. If, on the other hand, we consider things generally, comprehending them _in abstracto_, necessity, actuality, and possibility are again separated; we then know everything which is in accordance with the _a priori_ laws which belong to our intellect as possible in general; that which corresponds to the empirical laws of nature as possible in this world, even if it has never become actual; thus we distinguish clearly the possible from the actual. The actual is in itself always also necessary, but is only comprehended as such by him who knows its cause; regarded apart from this, it is and is called contingent. This consideration also gives us the key to that _contentio_ περι δυνατων between the Megaric Diodorus and Chrysippus the Stoic which Cicero refers to in his book _De Fato_. Diodorus says: “Only what becomes actual was possible, and all that is actual is also necessary.” Chrysippus on the other hand says: “Much that is possible never becomes actual; for only the necessary becomes actual.” We may explain this thus: Actuality is the conclusion of a syllogism to which possibility gives the premises. But for this is required not only the major but also the minor; only the two give complete possibility. The major gives a merely theoretical, general possibility _in abstracto_, but this of itself does not make anything possible, _i.e._, capable of becoming actual. For this the minor also is needed, which gives the possibility for the particular case, because it brings it under the rule, and thereby it becomes at once actual. For example: _Maj._ All houses (consequently also my house) can be destroyed by fire.
_Min._ My house is on fire.
_Concl._ My house is being destroyed by fire.
For every general proposition, thus every major, always determines things with reference to actuality only under a presupposition, therefore hypothetically; for example, the capability of being burnt down has as a presupposition the catching fire. This presupposition is produced in the minor. The major always loads the cannon, but only if the minor brings the match does the shot, _i.e._, the conclusion, follow. This holds good throughout of the relation of possibility to actuality. Since now the conclusion, which is the assertion of actuality, always follows _necessarily_, it is evident from this that all that is actual is also necessary, which can also be seen from the fact that necessity only means being the consequent of a given reason: this is in the case of the actual a cause: thus everything actual is necessary. Accordingly, we see here the conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the necessary unite, and not merely the last presuppose the first, but also the converse. What keeps them apart is the limitation of our intellect through the form of time; for time is the mediator between possibility and actuality. The necessity of the particular event may be fully seen from the knowledge of all its causes; but the concurrence of the whole of these different and independent causes seems to us _contingent_; indeed their independence of each other is just the conception of contingency. Since, however, each of them was the necessary effect of _its_ causes, the chain of which has no beginning, it is evident that contingency is merely a subjective phenomenon, arising from the limitation of the horizon of our understanding, and just as subjective as the optical horizon at which the heavens touch the earth.
Since necessity is the same thing as following from given grounds, it must appear in a special way in the case of every form of the principle of sufficient reason, and also have its opposite in the possibility and impossibility which always arises only through the application of the abstract reflection of the reason to the object. Therefore the four kinds of necessity mentioned above stand opposed to as many kinds of impossibility, physical, logical, mathematical and practical. It may further be remarked that if one remains entirely within the province of abstract concepts, possibility is always connected with the more general, and necessity with the more limited concept; for example, “An animal _may_ be a bird, a fish, an amphibious creature, &c.” “A nightingale _must_ be a bird, a bird _must_ be an animal, an animal _must_ be an organism, an organism _must_ be a body.” This is because logical necessity, the expression of which is the syllogism, proceeds from the general to the particular, and never conversely. In the concrete world of nature (ideas of the first class), on the contrary, everything is really necessary through the law of causality; only added reflection can conceive it as also contingent, comparing it with that which is not its cause, and also as merely and purely actual, by disregarding all causal connection. Only in this class of ideas does the conception of the _actual_ properly occur, as is also shown by the derivation of the word from the conception of causality. In the third class of ideas, that of pure mathematical perception or intuition, if we confine ourselves strictly to it, there is only necessity. Possibility occurs here also only through relation to the concepts of reflection: for example, “A triangle _may_ be right-angled, obtuse-angled, or equiangular; its three angles _must_ be equal to two right-angles.” Thus here we only arrive at the possible through the transition from the perceptible to the abstract.
After this exposition, which presupposes the recollection of what was said both in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason and in the first book of the present work, there will, it is hoped, be no further doubt as to the true and very heterogeneous source of those forms which the table of judgments lays before us, nor as to the inadmissibility and utter groundlessness of the assumption of twelve special functions of the understanding for the explanation of them. The latter point is also supported by a number of special circumstances very easily noted. Thus, for example, it requires great love of symmetry and much trust in a clue derived from it, to lead one to assume that an affirmative, a categorical, and an assertatory judgment are three such different things that they justify the assumption of an entirely special function of the understanding for each of them.
Kant himself betrays his consciousness of the untenable nature of his doctrine of the categories by the fact that in the third chapter of the Analytic of Principles (_phænomena et noumena_) several long passages of the first edition (p. 241, 242, 244-246, 248-253) are omitted in the second—passages which displayed the weakness of that doctrine too openly.
So, for example, he says there (p. 241) that he has not defined the individual categories, because he could not define them even if he had wished to do so, inasmuch as they were susceptible of no definition. In saying this he forgot that at p. 82 of the same first edition he had said: “I purposely dispense with the definition of the categories although I may be in possession of it.” This then was, _sit venia verbo_, wind. But this last passage he has allowed to stand. And so all those passages wisely omitted afterwards betray the fact that nothing distinct can be thought in connection with the categories, and this whole doctrine stands upon a weak foundation.
This table of the categories is now made the guiding clue according to which every metaphysical, and indeed every scientific inquiry is to be conducted (Prolegomena, § 39). And, in fact, it is not only the foundation of the whole Kantian philosophy and the type according to which its symmetry is everywhere carried out, as I have already shown above, but it has also really become the procrustean bed into which Kant forces every possible inquiry, by means of a violence which I shall now consider somewhat more closely. But with such an opportunity what must not the _imitatores servum pecus_ have done! We have seen. That violence then is applied in this way. The meaning of the expressions denoted by the titles, forms of judgment and categories, is entirely set aside and forgotten, and the expressions alone are retained. These have their source partly in Aristotle’s _Analyt. priora_, i. 23 (περι ποιοτητος και ποσοτητος των του συλλογισμου ὁρων: _de qualitate et quantitate terminorum syllogismi_), but are arbitrarily chosen; for the extent of the concepts might certainly have been otherwise expressed than through the word _quantity_, though this word is more suited to its object than the rest of the titles of the categories. Even the word _quality_ has obviously been chosen on account of the custom of opposing quality to quantity; for the name quality is certainly taken arbitrarily enough for affirmation and negation. But now in every inquiry instituted by Kant, every quantity in time and space, and every possible quality of things, physical, moral, &c., is brought by him under those category titles, although between these things and those titles of the forms of judgment and of thought there is absolutely nothing in common except the accidental and arbitrary nomenclature. It is needful to keep in mind all the respect which in other regards is due to Kant to enable one to refrain from expressing in hard terms one’s repugnance to this procedure. The nearest example is afforded us at once by the pure physiological table of the general principles of natural science. What in all the world has the quantity of judgments to do with the fact that every perception has an extensive magnitude? What has the quality of judgments to do with the fact that every sensation has a degree? The former rests rather on the fact that space is the form of our external perception, and the latter is nothing more than an empirical, and, moreover, entirely subjective feeling, drawn merely from the consideration of the nature of our organs of sense. Further, in the table which gives the basis of rational psychology (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 344; V. 402), the _simplicity_ of the soul is cited under quality; but this is just a quantitative property, and has absolutely no relation to the affirmation or negation in the judgment. But quantity had to be completed by the _unity_ of the soul, which is, however, already included in its simplicity. Then modality is forced in in an absurd way; the soul stands in connection with _possible_ objects; but connection belongs to relation, only this is already taken possession of by substance. Then the four cosmological Ideas, which are the material of the antinomies, are referred to the titles of the categories; but of this we shall speak more fully further on, when we come to the examination of these antinomies. Several, if possible, still more glaring examples are to be found in the table of the _Categories of Freedom!_ in the “Critique of Practical Reason;” also in the first book of the “Critique of Judgment,” which goes through the judgment of taste according to the four titles of the categories; and, finally, in the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science,” which are entirely adapted to the table of the categories, whereby the false that is mingled here and there with what is true and excellent in this important work is for the most part introduced. See, for example, at the end of the first chapter how the unity, the multiplicity, and the totality of the directions of lines are supposed to correspond to the categories, which are so named according to the quantity of judgments.
The principle of the _Permanence of Substance_ is deduced from the category of subsistence and inherence. This, however, we know only from the form of the categorical judgment, _i.e._, from the connection of two concepts as subject and predicate. With what violence then is that great metaphysical principle made dependent upon this simple, purely logical form! Yet this is only done _pro forma_, and for the sake of symmetry. The proof of this principle, which is given here, sets entirely aside its supposed origin in the understanding and in the category, and is based upon the pure intuition or perception of time. But this proof also is quite incorrect. It is false that in mere time there is _simultaneity_ and _duration_; these ideas only arise from the union of _space_ with time, as I have already shown in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 18, and worked out more fully in § 4 of the present work. I must assume a knowledge of both these expositions for the understanding of what follows.
It is false that time _remains_ the same through all change; on the contrary, it is just time itself that is fleeting; a permanent time is a contradiction. Kant’s proof is untenable, strenuously as he has supported it with sophisms; indeed, he falls into the most palpable contradictions.
Thus, after he has falsely set up co-existence as a mode of time (p. 177; mode of time, for in time there are absolutely no parts together, but all in succession.” In truth, space is quite as much implicated in co-existence as time. For if two things are co-existent and yet not one, they are different in respect of space; if two states of one thing are co-existent (_e.g._, the glow and the heat of iron), then they are two contemporaneous effects of _one_ thing, therefore presuppose matter, and matter presupposes space. Strictly speaking, co-existence is a negative determination, which merely signifies that two things or states are not different in respect of time; thus their difference is to be sought for elsewhere. But in any case, our knowledge of the permanence of substance, _i.e._, of matter, must be based upon insight _a priori_; for it is raised above all doubt, and therefore cannot be drawn from experience. I deduce it from the fact that the principle of all becoming and passing away, the law of causality, of which we are conscious _a priori_, is essentially concerned only with the _changes_, _i.e._, the successive _states_ of matter, is thus limited to the form, and leaves the matter untouched, which therefore exists in our consciousness as the foundation of all things, which is not subject to becoming or passing away, which has therefore always been and will always continue to be. A deeper proof of the permanence of substance, drawn from the analysis of our perception of the empirical world in general, is to be found in the first book of this work, § 4, where it is shown that the nature of matter consists in the absolute _union of space and time_, a union which is only possible by means of the idea of causality, consequently only for the understanding, which is nothing but the subjective correlative of causality. Hence, also, matter is never known otherwise than as producing effects, _i.e._, as through and through causality; to be and to act are with it one, which is indeed signified by the word _actuality_. Intimate union of space and time—causality, matter, actuality—are thus one, and the subjective correlative of this one is the understanding. Matter must bear in itself the conflicting properties of both factors from which it proceeds, and it is the idea of causality which abolishes what is contradictory in both, and makes their co-existence conceivable by the understanding, through which and for which alone matter is, and whose whole faculty consists in the knowledge of cause and effect. Thus for the understanding there is united in matter the inconstant flux of time, appearing as change of the accidents, with the rigid immobility of space, which exhibits itself as the permanence of substance. For if the substance passed away like the accidents, the phenomenon would be torn away from space altogether, and would only belong to time; the world of experience would be destroyed by the abolition of matter, annihilation. Thus from the share which space has in matter, _i.e._, in all phenomena of the actual—in that it is the opposite and counterpart of time, and therefore in itself and apart from the union with the latter knows absolutely no change—the principle of the permanence of substance, which recognises everything as _a priori_ certain, had to be deduced and explained; but not from mere time, to which for this purpose and quite erroneously Kant has attributed _permanence_.
In the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23, I have fully explained the incorrectness of the following proof of the _a priori_ nature and of the necessity of the law of causality from the mere succession of events in time; I must, therefore, content myself here by referring to that passage.(6) This is precisely the case with the proof of reciprocity also, the concept of which I was obliged to explain above as invalid. What is necessary has also been said of modality, the working out of the principles of which now follows.
There are still a few points in the further course of the transcendental analytic which I should have to refute were it not that I am afraid of trying the patience of the reader; I therefore leave them to his own reflection. But ever anew in the “Critique of Pure Reason” we meet that principal and fundamental error of Kant’s, which I have copiously denounced above, the complete failure to distinguish abstract, discursive knowledge from intuitive. It is this that throws a constant obscurity over Kant’s whole theory of the faculty of knowledge, and never allows the reader to know what he is really speaking about at any time, so that instead of understanding, he always merely conjectures, for he alternately tries to understand what is said as referring to thought and to perception, and remains always in suspense. In the chapter “On the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena,” Kant carries that incredible want of reflection as to the nature of the idea of perception and the abstract idea, as I shall explain more fully immediately, so far as to make the monstrous assertion that without thought, that is, without abstract conceptions, there is no knowledge of an object; and that perception, because it is not thought, is also not knowledge, and, in general, is nothing but a mere affection of sensibility, mere sensation!
Nay, more, that perception without conception is absolutely void; but conception without perception is yet always something (p. 253; V. 309).
Now this is exactly the opposite of the truth; for concepts obtain all significance, all content, only from their relation to ideas of perception, from which they have been abstracted, derived, that is, constructed through the omission of all that is unessential: therefore if the foundation of perception is taken away from them, they are empty and void. Perceptions, on the contrary, have in themselves immediate and very great significance (in them, indeed, the thing in itself objectifies itself); they represent themselves, express themselves, have no mere borrowed content like concepts. For the principle of sufficient reason governs them only as the law of causality, and determines as such only their position in space and time; it does not, however, condition their content and their significance, as is the case with concepts, in which it appears as the principle of the ground of knowing. For the rest, it looks as if Kant really wished here to set about distinguishing the idea of perception and the abstract idea. He objects to Leibnitz and Locke that the former reduced everything to abstract ideas, and the latter everything to ideas of perception. But yet he arrives at no distinction; and although Locke and Leibnitz really committed these errors, Kant himself is burdened with a third error which includes them both—the error of having so mixed up knowledge of perception and abstract knowledge that a monstrous hybrid of the two resulted, a chimera of which no distinct idea is possible, and which therefore necessarily only confused and stupefied students, and set them at variance.
Certainly thought and perception are separated more in the chapter referred to “On the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena” than anywhere else, but the nature of this distinction is here a fundamentally false one. On p. 253; V. 309, it is said: “If I take away all thought (through the categories) from empirical knowledge, there remains absolutely no knowledge of an object, for through mere perception nothing at all is thought, and that this affection of sensibility is in me establishes really no relation of such ideas to any object.” This sentence contains, in some degree, all the errors of Kant in a nutshell; for it brings out clearly that he has falsely conceived the relation between sensation, perception, and thought, and accordingly identifies the perception, whose form he yet supposes to be space, and indeed space in all its three dimensions, with the mere subjective sensation in the organs of sense, but only allows the knowledge of an object to be given through thought, which is different from perception. I, on the contrary, say: Objects are first of all objects of perception, not of thought, and all knowledge of _objects_ is originally and in itself perception. Perception, however, is by no means mere sensation, but the understanding is already active in it. The thought, which is added only in the case of men, not in the case of the brutes, is mere abstraction from perception, gives no fundamentally new knowledge, does not itself establish objects which were not before, but merely changes the form of the knowledge already won through perception, makes it abstract knowledge in concepts, whereby its concrete or perceptible character is lost, but, on the other hand, combination of it becomes possible, which immeasurably extends the range of its applicability. The material of our thought is, on the other hand, nothing else than our perceptions themselves, and not something which the perceptions did not contain, and which was added by the thought; therefore the material of everything that appears in our thought must be capable of verification in our perception, for otherwise it would be an empty thought. Although this material is variously manipulated and transformed by thought, it must yet be capable of being reduced to perception, and the thought traced back to this—just as a piece of gold can be reduced from all its solutions, oxides, sublimates, and combinations, and presented pure and undiminished. This could not happen if thought itself had added something, and, indeed, the principal thing, to the object.
The whole of the chapter on the Amphiboly, which follows this, is merely a criticism of the Leibnitzian philosophy, and as such is on the whole correct, though the form or pattern on which it is constructed is chosen merely for the sake of architectonic symmetry, which here also is the guiding clue. Thus, to carry out the analogy with the Aristotelian Organon, a transcendental Topic is set up, which consists in this, that every conception is to be considered from four points of view, in order to make out to which faculty of knowledge it belongs. But these four points of view are quite arbitrarily selected, and ten others might be added to them with just as much right; but their fourfold number corresponds to the titles of the categories, and therefore the chief doctrine of Leibnitz is divided among them as best it may be. By this critique, also, to some extent, certain errors are stamped as natural to the reason, whereas they were merely false abstractions of Leibnitz’s, who, rather than learn from his great philosophical contemporaries, Spinoza and Locke, preferred to serve up his own strange inventions. In the chapter on the Amphiboly of Reflection it is finally said that there may possibly be a kind of perception entirely different from ours, to which, however, our categories are applicable; therefore the objects of that supposed perception would be _noumena_, things which can only be _thought_ by us; but since the perception which would give that thought meaning is wanting to us, and indeed is altogether quite problematical, the object of that thought would also merely be a wholly indefinite possibility. I have shown above by quotations that Kant, in utter contradiction with himself, sets up the categories now as the condition of knowledge of perception, now as the function of merely abstract thought. Here they appear exclusively in the latter sense, and it seems quite as if he wished to attribute them merely to discursive thought. But if this is really his opinion, then necessarily at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic, before specifying the different functions of thought at such length, he was necessarily bound to characterise thought in general, and consequently to distinguish it from perception; he ought to have shown what knowledge is given by mere perception, and what that is new is added by thought. Then we would have known what he was really speaking about; or rather, he would then have spoken quite differently, first of perception, and then of thought; instead of which, as it is, he is always dealing with something between the two, which is a mere delusion. There would not then be that great gap between the transcendental Æsthetic and the transcendental Logic, where, after the exposition of the mere form of perception, he simply dismisses its content, all that is empirically apprehended, with the phrase “It is given,” and does not ask how it came about, _whether with or without understanding_; but, with one spring, passes over to abstract thought; and not even to thought in general, but at once to certain forms of thought, and does not say a word about what thought is, what the concept is, what is the relation of abstract and discursive to concrete and intuitive, what is the difference between the knowledge of men and that of brutes, and what is reason.
Yet it was just this distinction between abstract knowledge and knowledge of perception, entirely overlooked by Kant, which the ancients denoted by φαινομενα and νοουμενα,(7) and whose opposition and incommensurability occupied them so much in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later the Scholastics in the controversy between Nominalism and Realism, the seed of which, so late in developing, was already contained in the opposite mental tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who, in an inexcusable manner, entirely neglected the thing to denote which the words φαινομενα and νοουμενα had already been taken, took possession of the words, as if they were still unappropriated, in order to denote by them his thing in itself and his phenomenon.
Since I have been obliged to reject Kant’s doctrine of the categories, just as he rejected that of Aristotle, I wish here to indicate as a suggestion a third way of reaching what is aimed at. What both Kant and Aristotle sought for under the name of the categories were the most general conceptions under which all things, however different, must be subsumed, and through which therefore everything that exists would ultimately be thought. Just on this account Kant conceived them as the _forms_ of all thought.
Grammar is related to logic as clothes to the body. Should not, therefore, these primary conceptions, the ground-bass of the reason, which is the foundation of all special thought, without whose application, therefore, no thought can take place, ultimately lie in those conceptions which just on account of their exceeding generality (transcendentalism) have their expression not in single words, but in whole classes of words, because one of them is thought along with every word whatever it may be, whose designation would therefore have to be looked for, not in the lexicon but in the grammar? In fact, should they not be those distinctions of conceptions on account of which the word which expresses them is either a substantive or an adjective, a verb or an adverb, a pronoun, a preposition, or some other particle—in short, the parts of speech? For undoubtedly these denote the forms which all thought primarily assumes, and in which it directly moves; accordingly they are the essential forms of speech, the fundamental constituent elements of every language, so that we cannot imagine any language which would not consist of at least substantives, adjectives, and verbs. These fundamental forms would then have subordinated to them those forms of thought which are expressed through their inflections, that is, through declension and conjugation, and it is unessential to the chief concern whether in denoting them we call in the assistance of the article and the pronoun. We will examine the thing, however, somewhat more closely, and ask the question anew: What are the forms of thought?
(1.) Thought consists throughout of judging; judgments are the threads of its whole web, for without making use of a verb our thought does not move, and as often as we use a verb we judge.
(2.) Every judgment consists in the recognition of the relation between subject and predicate, which it separates or unites with various restrictions. It unites them from the recognition of the actual identity of the two, which can only happen in the case of synonyms; then in the recognition that the one is always thought along with the other, though the converse does not hold—in the universal affirmative proposition; up to the recognition that the one is sometimes thought along with the other, in the particular affirmative proposition. The negative propositions take the opposite course. Accordingly in every judgment the subject, the predicate, and the copula, the latter affirmative or negative, must be to be found; even although each of these is not denoted by a word of its own, as is however generally the case. The predicate and the copula are often denoted by _one_ word, as “Caius ages;” sometimes one word denotes all three, as _concurritur_, _i.e._, “the armies engage.” From this it is evident that the forms of thought are not to be sought for precisely and directly in words, nor even in the parts of speech, for even in the same language the same judgment may be expressed in different words, and indeed in different parts of speech, yet the thought remains the same, and consequently also its form; for the thought could not be the same if the form of thought itself were different. But with the same thought and the same form of thought the form of words may very well be different, for it is merely the outward clothing of the thought, which, on the other hand, is inseparable from _its_ form. Thus grammar only explains the clothing of the forms of thought. The parts of speech can therefore be deduced from the original forms of thought themselves which are independent of all language; their