particular science, which may be called the Critique of Pure Reason.
For reason is the faculty which furnishes us with the principles of
knowledge a priori. Hence, pure reason is the faculty which contains
the principles of cognizing anything absolutely a priori. An organon
of pure reason would be a compendium of those principles according
to which alone all pure cognitions a priori can be obtained. The
completely extended application of such an organon would afford us
a system of pure reason. As this, however, is demanding a great deal,
and it is yet doubtful whether any extension of our knowledge be
here possible, or, if so, in what cases; we can regard a science of
the mere criticism of pure reason, its sources and limits, as the
propaedeutic to a system of pure reason. Such a science must not be
called a doctrine, but only a critique of pure reason; and its use,
in regard to speculation, would be only negative, not to enlarge the
bounds of, but to purify, our reason, and to shield it against
error--which alone is no little gain. I apply the term
transcendental to all knowledge which is not so much occupied with
objects as with the mode of our cognition of these objects, so far
as this mode of cognition is possible a priori. A system of such
conceptions would be called transcendental philosophy. But this,
again, is still beyond the bounds of our present essay. For as such
a science must contain a complete exposition not only of our
synthetical a priori, but of our analytical a priori knowledge, it
is of too wide a range for our present purpose, because we do not
require to carry our analysis any farther than is necessary to
understand, in their full extent, the principles of synthesis a
priori, with which alone we have to do. This investigation, which we
cannot properly call a doctrine, but only a transcendental critique,
because it aims not at the enlargement, but at the correction and
guidance, of our knowledge, and is to serve as a touchstone of the