We must first of all observe then, that, although all the judgments of experience are empirical, i.e., have their ground in the immediate perception of sense, yet on the other hand all empirical judgments are not judgments of experience, but that beyond the empirical, and beyond the given sensuous intuition generally, special conceptions must be superadded, having their origin entirely aprioriin the pure understanding, under which every perception is primarily subsumed, and by means of which only it can be transformed into experience.
Empirical judgments, in so far as they have objective validity,are judgments of experience; but those which are merely subjectively valid I call judgments of perception. The last require no pure conception of the understanding; but only the logical connection of perception in a thinking subject. But the first demand, above the presentations of sensuous intuition, special conceptions originally generated in the understanding , which make the judgment of experience objectively valid.
All our judgments are at first mere judgments of perception; they are valid simply for us, namely, for our subject. It is only subsequently that we give them a new reference, namely, to an object, and insist that they shall be valid for us always, as well as for every one else. For when a judgment coincides with an object, all judgments must both coin- cide with the same object and with one another, and thus the objective validity of the judgment of experience implies nothing more than the necessary universal validity of the same. But, on the other hand, when we see reason to hold a judgment of necessity universally valid (which never hinges on the perception itself, but on the pure conception of the understanding under which the perception is subsumed), we are obliged to regard it as objective, i.e., as expressing not merely the reference of the perception to a subject but a quality of the object; for there would be no reason why the judgments of other persons must necessarily coincide with mine, if it were not that the unity of the object to which they all refer, and with which they coincide, necessitates them all agreeing with one another.
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