The Critique of Practical Reason | Page 5

from thence to get a view of all those parts as mutually related by
the aid of pure reason, and by means of their derivation from the
concept of the whole. This is only possible through the most intimate
acquaintance with the system; and those who find the first inquiry too
troublesome, and do not think it worth their while to attain such an
acquaintance, cannot reach the second stage, namely, the general view,
which is a synthetical return to that which had previously been given
analytically. It is no wonder then if they find inconsistencies
everywhere, although the gaps which these indicate are not in the
system itself, but in their own incoherent train of thought.
I have no fear, as regards this treatise, of the reproach that I wish to
introduce a new language, since the sort of knowledge here in question
has itself somewhat of an everyday character. Nor even in the case of
the former critique could this reproach occur to anyone who had
thought it through and not merely turned over the leaves. To invent
new words where the language has no lack of expressions for given
notions is a childish effort to distinguish oneself from the crowd, if not
by new and true thoughts, yet by new patches on the old garment. If,
therefore, the readers of that work know any more familiar expressions
which are as suitable to the thought as those seem to me to be, or if
they think they can show the futility of these thoughts themselves and
hence that of the expression, they would, in the first case, very much
oblige me, for I only desire to be understood: and, in the second case,
they would deserve well of philosophy. But, as long as these thoughts
stand, I very much doubt that suitable and yet more common
expressions for them can be found. *

{PREFACE ^paragraph 25}

* I am more afraid in the present treatise of occasional misconception
in respect of some expressions which I have chosen with the greatest
care in order that the notion to which they point may not be missed.
Thus, in the table of categories of the Practical reason under the title of
Modality, the Permitted, and forbidden (in a practical objective point of
view, possible and impossible) have almost the same meaning in
common language as the next category, duty and contrary to duty. Here,
however, the former means what coincides with, or contradicts, a
merely possible practical precept (for example, the solution of all
problems of geometry and mechanics); the latter, what is similarly
related to a law actually present in the reason; and this distinction is not
quite foreign even to common language, although somewhat unusual.
For example, it is forbidden to an orator, as such, to forge new words or
constructions; in a certain degree this is permitted to a poet; in neither
case is there any question of duty. For if anyone chooses to forfeit his
reputation as an orator, no one can prevent him. We have here only to
do with the distinction of imperatives into problematical, assertorial,
and apodeictic. Similarly in the note in which I have pared the moral
ideas of practical perfection in different philosophical schools, I have
distinguished the idea of wisdom from that of holiness, although I have
stated that essentially and objectively they are the same. But in that
place I understand by the former only that wisdom to which man (the
Stoic) lays claim; therefore I take it subjectively as an attribute alleged
to belong to man. (Perhaps the expression virtue, with which also the
made great show, would better mark the characteristic of his school.)
The expression of a postulate of pure practical reason might give most
occasion to misapprehension in case the reader confounded it with the
signification of the postulates in pure mathematics, which carry
apodeictic certainty with them. These, however, postulate the
possibility of an action, the object of which has been previously
recognized a priori in theory as possible, and that with perfect certainty.
But the former postulates the possibility of an object itself (God and the
immortality of the soul) from apodeictic practical laws, and therefore
only for the purposes of a practical reason. This certainty of the

postulated possibility then is not at all theoretic, and consequently not
apodeictic; that is to say, it is not a known necessity as regards the
object, but a necessary supposition as regards the subject, necessary for
the obedience to its objective but practical laws. It is, therefore, merely
a necessary hypothesis. I could find no better expression for this
rational necessity, which is subjective, but yet true and unconditional.

In this manner, then, the a priori principles of two faculties of the mind,
the faculty of