Virtue and wisdom in their perfect purity are ideas.But the wise man of the Stoics is an ideal, that is to say, a human being existing only in thought and in complete conformity with the idea of wisdom.As the idea provides a rule, so the ideal serves as an archetype for the perfect and complete determination of the copy.Thus the conduct of this wise and divine man serves us as a standard of action, with which we may compare and judge ourselves, which may help us to reform ourselves, although the perfection it demands can never be attained by us.Although we cannot concede objective reality to these ideals, they are not to be considered as chimeras; on the contrary, they provide reason with a standard, which enables it to estimate, by comparison, the degree of incompleteness in the objects presented to it.But to aim at realizing the ideal in an example in the world of experience- to describe, for instance, the character of the perfectly wise man in a romance- is impracticable.Nay more, there is something absurd in the attempt; and the result must be little edifying, as the natural limitations, which are continually breaking in upon the perfection and completeness of the idea, destroy the illusion in the story and throw an air of suspicion even on what is good in the idea, which hence appears fictitious and unreal.
Such is the constitution of the ideal of reason, which is always based upon determinate conceptions, and serves as a rule and a model for limitation or of criticism.Very different is the nature of the ideals of the imagination.Of these it is impossible to present an intelligible conception; they are a kind of monogram, drawn according to no determinate rule, and forming rather a vague picture- the production of many diverse experiences- than a determinate image.Such are the ideals which painters and physiognomists profess to have in their minds, and which can serve neither as a model for production nor as a standard for appreciation.They may be termed, though improperly, sensuous ideals, as they are declared to be models of certain possible empirical intuitions.They cannot, however, furnish rules or standards for explanation or examination with In its ideals, reason aims at complete and perfect determination according to a priori rules; and hence it cogitates an object, which must be completely determinable in conformity with principles, although all empirical conditions are absent, and the conception of the object is on this account transcendent.
SECTION II.Of the Transcendental Ideal (Prototypon Trancendentale).
Every conception is, in relation to that which is not contained in it, undetermined and subject to the principle of determinability.This principle is that, of every two contradictorily opposed predicates, only one can belong to a conception.It is a purely logical principle, itself based upon the principle of contradiction; inasmuch as it makes complete abstraction of the content and attends merely to the logical form of the cognition.
But again, everything, as regards its possibility, is also subject to the principle of complete determination, according to which one of all the possible contradictory predicates of things must belong to it.This principle is not based merely upon that of contradiction; for, in addition to the relation between two contradictory predicates, it regards everything as standing in a relation to the sum of possibilities, as the sum total of all predicates of things, and, while presupposing this sum as an a priori condition, presents to the mind everything as receiving the possibility of its individual existence from the relation it bears to, and the share it possesses in, the aforesaid sum of possibilities.*The principle of complete determination relates the content and not to the logical form.It is the principle of the synthesis of all the predicates which are required to constitute the complete conception of a thing, and not a mere principle analytical representation, which enounces that one of two contradictory predicates must belong to a conception.It contains, moreover, a transcendental presupposition-that, namely, of the material for all possibility, which must contain a priori the data for this or that particular possibility.
*Thus this principle declares everything to possess a relation to a common correlate- the sum-total of possibility, which, if discovered to exist in the idea of one individual thing, would establish the affinity of all possible things, from the identity of the ground of their complete determination.The determinability of every conception is subordinate to the universality (Allgemeinheit, universalitas) of the principle of excluded middle; the determination of a thing to the totality (Allheit, universitas) of all possible predicates.
