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GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS. 189
ciple of Sufficient Eeason is the common expression, by
their common character as well as by the fact that all
Objects for the Subject are divided amongst them, proclaim
themselves to be posited by one and the same primary
quality and inner peculiarity of our knowing faculty, which
faculty manifests itself as Sensibility, Understanding, and
Reason. Therefore, even if we imagined it to be possible
for a new Fifth Class of Objects to come about, we should
in that case likewise have to assume that the Principle of
Sufficient Reason would appear in this class also under a
different form. Notwithstanding all this, we still have no
right to talk of an absolute reason (ground), nor does a
reason in general, any more than a triangle in general, exist
otherwise than as a conception derived by means of discur
sive reflection, nor is this conception, as a representation
drawn from other representations, anything more than a
means of thinking several things in one. Now, just as
every triangle must be either acute-angled, right-angled,
or obtuse-angled, and either equilateral, isosceles or scalene,
so also must every reason belong to one or other of the
four possible kinds of reasons I have pointed out. More
over, since we have only four well-distinguished Classes o
Objects, every reason must also belong to one or other of
these four, and no further Class being possible, Reason
itself is forced to rank it within them ; for as soon as we
employ a reason, we presuppose the Four Classes as well
as the faculty of representing (i.e. the whole world), and
must hold ourselves within these bounds, never transcend
ing them. Should others, however, see this in a different
light and opine that a reason in general is anything but a
conception, derived from the four kinds of reasons, which
expresses what they all have in common, we might revive
the controversy of the Realists and Nominalists, and then
I should side with the latter.