The first side, the cognition of the case in its immediate singularity, and its qualification, contains, in itself, no adjudication. It is a cognition such as belongs to every cultivated human being. Insofar as, for the qualification of the act, the subjective moment of the insight and intention of the agent (see Part II) is essential, and the proof concerns, in any case, not objects of reason or of abstract understanding, but only particulars, circumstances, and objects of sensuous intuition and subjective certainty, and thus contains within itself no absolutely objective determination, the ultimate factor in the decision is subjective conviction and conscience (animi sententia), just as, with respect to proof resting on the statements and assurances of others, the oath is the, admittedly subjective, but final, verification.

With regard to the subject under discussion, it is a chief matter to keep in view the nature of the proof at issue here, and to distinguish it from cognition and proof of another kind. To prove a determination of reason, such as the concept of right itself is — that is, to cognize its necessity — requires a different method than the proof of a geometrical theorem. Further, in the latter case, the figure is determined by the understanding, and already made abstract in accordance with a law; but with an empirical content, such as a fact is, the material of cognition is the given sensuous intuition, and sensuous subjective certainty, and the stating and assuring of such — upon which, then, the inferring and combining from such statements, testimonies, circumstances, and the like, is active. The objective truth that emerges from such material, and from the method appropriate to it — a method which, in the attempt to determine it objectively for itself, leads to half-proofs, and, in a further, truly consistent development which at the same time contains within it a formal inconsistency, to extraordinary punishments — has a quite different sense from the truth of a determination of reason, or of a proposition whose material the understanding has already determined abstractly. To show that the cognition of such empirical truth of an occurrence lies within the properly juridical determination of a court — that there lies in this a peculiar qualification for it, and thus an exclusive right in itself, and necessity — constituted a chief point of view in the question of the extent to which the judgment both on the fact and on the point of law is to be ascribed to the formal juridical courts.