Institutes of Logic #262776

He further excludes Psychology from Logic on the ground that Logic seeks'to know not the contingent but the necessary, not how the understanding thinks, and has thought, but how it ought to think, the accord of the understanding with itself. This assumes that there can be no necessary exercise of the understanding in a given instance, — for example, no absolutely necessary implication in a given reasoning performed by the understanding, and consciously known to be necessary whereas, this necessary relation is given and consciously realised in a single instance Of valid reasoning. Kant thus confuses the particular or singular with the contingent. It assumes, further, that the understanding may think in experi ence in a way different from that in which it must think, if it thinks at all. This is not so. There is only one way of thinking by the understanding, that is, the legitimate way. Any other is a mere illusion, not a reality of thought at all. And there is no reason why the understanding may not naturally perform its process of thinking rightly rather than wrongly.