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CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

BOOK I.

OF THE CONCEPTIONS OF PURE REASON.

The conceptions of pure reason--we do not here speak of the
possibility of them--are not obtained by reflection, but by
inference or conclusion. The conceptions of understanding are also
cogitated a priori antecedently to experience, and render it possible;
but they contain nothing but the unity of reflection upon phenomena,
in so far as these must necessarily belong to a possible empirical
consciousness. Through them alone are cognition and the
determination of an object possible. It is from them, accordingly,
that we receive material for reasoning, and antecedently to them we
possess no a priori conceptions of objects from which they might be
deduced, On the other hand, the sole basis of their objective
reality consists in the necessity imposed on them, as containing the
intellectual form of all experience, of restricting their
application and influence to the sphere of experience.

But the term, conception of reason, or rational conception, itself
indicates that it does not confine itself within the limits of
experience, because its object-matter is a cognition, of which every
empirical cognition is but a part--nay, the whole of possible
experience may be itself but a part of it--a cognition to which no
actual experience ever fully attains, although it does always
pertain to it. The aim of rational conceptions is the comprehension,
as that of the conceptions of understanding is the understanding of
perceptions. If they contain the unconditioned, they relate to that
to which all experience is subordinate, but which is never itself an
object of experience--that towards which reason tends in all its
conclusions from experience, and by the standard of which it estimates
the degree of their empirical use, but which is never itself an
element in an empirical synthesis. If, notwithstanding, such
conceptions possess objective validity, they may be called conceptus
ratiocinati (conceptions legitimately concluded); in cases where
they do not, they have been admitted on account of having the
appearance of being correctly concluded, and may be called conceptus
ratiocinantes (sophistical conceptions). But as this can only be
sufficiently demonstrated in that part of our treatise which relates
to the dialectical conclusions of reason, we shall omit any
consideration of it in this place. As we called the pure conceptions
of the understanding categories, we shall also distinguish those of
pure reason by a new name and call them transcendental ideas. These
terms, however, we must in the first place explain and justify.

SECTION I.  Of Ideas in General.

Despite the great wealth of words which European languages
possess, the thinker finds himself often at a loss for an expression
exactly suited to his conception, for want of which he is unable to
make himself intelligible either to others or to himself. To coin
new words is a pretension to legislation in language which is seldom
successful; and, before recourse is taken to so desperate an
expedient, it is advisable to examine the dead and learned
languages, with the hope and the probability that we may there meet
with some adequate expression of the notion we have in our minds. In
this case, even if the original meaning of the word has become
somewhat uncertain, from carelessness or want of caution on the part
of the authors of it, it is always better to adhere to and confirm
its proper meaning--even although it may be doubtful whether it was
formerly used in exactly this sense--than to make our labour vain by
want of sufficient care to render ourselves intelligible.

For this reason, when it happens that there exists only a single
word to express a certain conception, and this word, in its usual
acceptation, is thoroughly adequate to the conception, the accurate
distinction of which from related conceptions is of great
importance, we ought not to employ the expression improvidently, or,
for the sake of variety and elegance of style, use it as a synonym
for other cognate words. It is our duty, on the contrary, carefully
to preserve its peculiar signification, as otherwise it easily happens
that when the attention of the reader is no longer particularly
attracted to the expression, and it is lost amid the multitude of
other words of very different import, the thought which it conveyed,
and which it alone conveyed, is lost with it.

Plato employed the expression idea in a way that plainly showed he
meant by it something which is never derived from the senses, but
which far transcends even the conceptions of the understanding (with
which Aristotle occupied himself), inasmuch as in experience nothing
perfectly corresponding to them could be found. Ideas are, according
to him, archetypes of things themselves, and not merely keys to
possible experiences, like the categories. In his view they flow
from the highest reason, by which they have been imparted to human
reason, which, however, exists no longer in its original state, but
is obliged with great labour to recall by reminiscence--which is called
philosophy--the old but now sadly obscured ideas. I will not here
enter upon any literary investigation of the sense which this
sublime philosopher attached to this expression. I shall content
myself with remarking that it is nothing unusual, in common
conversation as well as in written works, by comparing the thoughts
which an author has delivered upon a subject, to understand him better
than he understood himself inasmuch as he may not have sufficiently
determined his conception, and thus have sometimes spoken, nay even
thought, in opposition to his own opinions.

Plato perceived very clearly that our faculty of cognition has the
feeling of a much higher vocation than that of merely spelling out
phenomena according to synthetical unity, for the purpose of being
able to read them as experience, and that our reason naturally
raises itself to cognitions far too elevated to admit of the
possibility of an object given by experience corresponding to them-
cognitions which are nevertheless real, and are not mere phantoms of
the brain.

This philosopher found his ideas especially in all that is
practical,* that is, which rests upon freedom, which in its turn ranks
under cognitions that are the peculiar product of reason. He who would
derive from experience the conceptions of virtue, who would make (as
many have really done) that, which at best can but serve as an
imperfectly illustrative example, a model for or the formation of a
perfectly adequate idea on the subject, would in fact transform virtue
into a nonentity changeable according to time and circumstance and
utterly incapable of being employed as a rule. On the contrary,
every one is conscious that, when any one is held up to him as a model
of virtue, he compares this so-called model with the true original
which he possesses in his own mind and values him according to this
standard. But this standard is the idea of virtue, in relation to
which all possible objects of experience are indeed serviceable as
examples--proofs of the practicability in a certain degree of that
which the conception of virtue demands--but certainly not as
archetypes. That the actions of man will never be in perfect
accordance with all the requirements of the pure ideas of reason, does
not prove the thought to be chimerical. For only through this idea
are all judgements as to moral merit or demerit possible; it
consequently lies at the foundation of every approach to moral
perfection, however far removed from it the obstacles in human nature-
indeterminable as to degree--may keep us.

[*Footnote: He certainly extended the application of his conception
to speculative cognitions also, provided they were given pure and
completely a priori, nay, even to mathematics, although this science
cannot possess an object otherwhere than in Possible experience. I
cannot follow him in this, and as little can I follow him in his
mystical deduction of these ideas, or in his hypostatization of
them; although, in truth, the elevated and exaggerated language
which he employed in describing them is quite capable of an
interpretation more subdued and more in accordance with fact and the
nature of things.]

The Platonic Republic has become proverbial as an example--and a
striking one--of imaginary perfection, such as can exist only in the
brain of the idle thinker; and Brucker ridicules the philosopher for
maintaining that a prince can never govern well, unless he is
participant in the ideas. But we should do better to follow up this
thought and, where this admirable thinker leaves us without
assistance, employ new efforts to place it in clearer light, rather
than carelessly fling it aside as useless, under the very miserable
and pernicious pretext of impracticability. A constitution of the
greatest possible human freedom according to laws, by which the
liberty of every individual can consist with the liberty of every
other (not of the greatest possible happiness, for this follows
necessarily from the former), is, to say the least, a necessary
idea, which must be placed at the foundation not only of the first
plan of the constitution of a state, but of all its laws. And, in
this, it not necessary at the outset to take account of the
obstacles which lie in our way--obstacles which perhaps do not
necessarily arise from the character of human nature, but rather
from the previous neglect of true ideas in legislation. For there is
nothing more pernicious and more unworthy of a philosopher, than the
vulgar appeal to a so-called adverse experience, which indeed would
not have existed, if those institutions had been established at the
proper time and in accordance with ideas; while, instead of this,
conceptions, crude for the very reason that they have been drawn
from experience, have marred and frustrated all our better views and
intentions. The more legislation and government are in harmony with
this idea, the more rare do punishments become and thus it is quite
reasonable to maintain, as Plato did, that in a perfect state no
punishments at all would be necessary. Now although a perfect state
may never exist, the idea is not on that account the less just,
which holds up this maximum as the archetype or standard of a
constitution, in order to bring legislative government always nearer
and nearer to the greatest possible perfection. For at what precise
degree human nature must stop in its progress, and how wide must be
the chasm which must necessarily exist between the idea and its
realization, are problems which no one can or ought to determine-
and for this reason, that it is the destination of freedom to overstep
all assigned limits between itself and the idea.

But not only in that wherein human reason is a real causal agent and
where ideas are operative causes (of actions and their objects),
that is to say, in the region of ethics, but also in regard to
nature herself, Plato saw clear proofs of an origin from ideas. A
plant, and animal, the regular order of nature--probably also the
disposition of the whole universe--give manifest evidence that they
are possible only by means of and according to ideas; that, indeed,
no one creature, under the individual conditions of its existence,
perfectly harmonizes with the idea of the most perfect of its kind-
just as little as man with the idea of humanity, which nevertheless
he bears in his soul as the archetypal standard of his actions; that,
notwithstanding, these ideas are in the highest sense individually,
unchangeably, and completely determined, and are the original causes
of things; and that the totality of connected objects in the
universe is alone fully adequate to that idea. Setting aside the
exaggerations of expression in the writings of this philosopher, the
mental power exhibited in this ascent from the ectypal mode of
regarding the physical world to the architectonic connection thereof
according to ends, that is, ideas, is an effort which deserves
imitation and claims respect. But as regards the principles of ethics,
of legislation, and of religion, spheres in which ideas alone render
experience possible, although they never attain to full expression
therein, he has vindicated for himself a position of peculiar merit,
which is not appreciated only because it is judged by the very
empirical rules, the validity of which as principles is destroyed by
ideas. For as regards nature, experience presents us with rules and
is the source of truth, but in relation to ethical laws experience
is the parent of illusion, and it is in the highest degree reprehensible
to limit or to deduce the laws which dictate what I ought to do, from
what is done.

We must, however, omit the consideration of these important
subjects, the development of which is in reality the peculiar duty
and dignity of philosophy, and confine ourselves for the present to
the more humble but not less useful task of preparing a firm foundation
for those majestic edifices of moral science. For this foundation
has been hitherto insecure from the many subterranean passages which
reason in its confident but vain search for treasures has made in
all directions. Our present duty is to make ourselves perfectly
acquainted with the transcendental use made of pure reason, its
principles and ideas, that we may be able properly to determine and
value its influence and real worth. But before bringing these
introductory remarks to a close, I beg those who really have
philosophy at heart--and their number is but small--if they shall find
themselves convinced by the considerations following as well as by
those above, to exert themselves to preserve to the expression idea
its original signification, and to take care that it be not lost among
those other expressions by which all sorts of representations are
loosely designated--that the interests of science may not thereby
suffer. We are in no want of words to denominate adequately every mode
of representation, without the necessity of encroaching upon terms
which are proper to others. The following is a graduated list of them.
The genus is representation in general (representatio). Under it
stands representation with consciousness (perceptio). A perception
which relates solely to the subject as a modification of its state,
is a sensation (sensatio), an objective perception is a cognition
(cognitio). A cognition is either an intuition or a conception
(intuitus vel conceptus). The former has an immediate relation to
the object and is singular and individual; the latter has but a
mediate relation, by means of a characteristic mark which may be
common to several things. A conception is either empirical or pure.
A pure conception, in so far as it has its origin in the understanding
alone, and is not the conception of a pure sensuous image, is called
notio. A conception formed from notions, which transcends the
possibility of experience, is an idea, or a conception of reason. To
one who has accustomed himself to these distinctions, it must be quite
intolerable to hear the representation of the colour red called an
idea. It ought not even to be called a notion or conception of
understanding.

SECTION II. Of Transcendental Ideas.

Transcendental analytic showed us how the mere logical form of our
cognition can contain the origin of pure conceptions a priori,
conceptions which represent objects antecedently to all experience,
or rather, indicate the synthetical unity which alone renders possible
an empirical cognition of objects. The form of judgements--converted
into a conception of the synthesis of intuitions--produced the categories
which direct the employment of the understanding in experience. This
consideration warrants us to expect that the form of syllogisms,
when applied to synthetical unity of intuitions, following the rule
of the categories, will contain the origin of particular a priori
conceptions, which we may call pure conceptions of reason or
transcendental ideas, and which will determine the use of the
understanding in the totality of experience according to principles.

The function of reason in arguments consists in the universality
of a cognition according to conceptions, and the syllogism itself is
a judgement which is determined a priori in the whole extent of its
condition. The proposition: "Caius is mortal," is one which may be
obtained from experience by the aid of the understanding alone; but
my wish is to find a conception which contains the condition under
which the predicate of this judgement is given--in this case, the
conception of man--and after subsuming under this condition, taken
in its whole extent (all men are mortal), I determine according to
it the cognition of the object thought, and say: "Caius is mortal."

Hence, in the conclusion of a syllogism we restrict a predicate to
a certain object, after having thought it in the major in its whole
extent under a certain condition. This complete quantity of the extent
in relation to such a condition is called universality
(universalitas). To this corresponds totality (universitas) of
conditions in the synthesis of intuitions. The transcendental
conception of reason is therefore nothing else than the conception
of the totality of the conditions of a given conditioned. Now as the
unconditioned alone renders possible totality of conditions, and,
conversely, the totality of conditions is itself always unconditioned;
a pure rational conception in general can be defined and explained
by means of the conception of the unconditioned, in so far as it
contains a basis for the synthesis of the conditioned.

To the number of modes of relation which the understanding cogitates
by means of the categories, the number of pure rational conceptions
will correspond. We must therefore seek for, first, an unconditioned
of the categorical synthesis in a subject; secondly, of the
hypothetical synthesis of the members of a series; thirdly, of the
disjunctive synthesis of parts in a system.

There are exactly the same number of modes of syllogisms, each of
which proceeds through prosyllogisms to the unconditioned--one to
the subject which cannot be employed as predicate, another to the
presupposition which supposes nothing higher than itself, and the
third to an aggregate of the members of the complete division of a
conception. Hence the pure rational conceptions of totality in the
synthesis of conditions have a necessary foundation in the nature of
human reason--at least as modes of elevating the unity of the
understanding to the unconditioned. They may have no valid
application, corresponding to their transcendental employment, in
concreto, and be thus of no greater utility than to direct the
understanding how, while extending them as widely as possible, to
maintain its exercise and application in perfect consistence and
harmony.

But, while speaking here of the totality of conditions and of the
unconditioned as the common title of all conceptions of reason, we
again light upon an expression which we find it impossible to dispense
with, and which nevertheless, owing to the ambiguity attaching to it
from long abuse, we cannot employ with safety. The word absolute is
one of the few words which, in its original signification, was
perfectly adequate to the conception it was intended to convey--a
conception which no other word in the same language exactly suits,
and the loss--or, which is the same thing, the incautious and loose
employment--of which must be followed by the loss of the conception
itself. And, as it is a conception which occupies much of the
attention of reason, its loss would be greatly to the detriment of
all transcendental philosophy. The word absolute is at present
frequently used to denote that something can be predicated of a
thing considered in itself and intrinsically. In this sense absolutely
possible would signify that which is possible in itself (interne)-
which is, in fact, the least that one can predicate of an object. On
the other hand, it is sometimes employed to indicate that a thing is
valid in all respects--for example, absolute sovereignty. Absolutely
possible would in this sense signify that which is possible in all
relations and in every respect; and this is the most that can be
predicated of the possibility of a thing. Now these significations
do in truth frequently coincide. Thus, for example, that which is
intrinsically impossible, is also impossible in all relations, that
is, absolutely impossible. But in most cases they differ from each
other toto caelo, and I can by no means conclude that, because a thing
is in itself possible, it is also possible in all relations, and
therefore absolutely. Nay, more, I shall in the sequel show that
absolute necessity does not by any means depend on internal necessity,
and that, therefore, it must not be considered as synonymous with
it. Of an opposite which is intrinsically impossible, we may affirm
that it is in all respects impossible, and that, consequently, the
thing itself, of which this is the opposite, is absolutely
necessary; but I cannot reason conversely and say, the opposite of
that which is absolutely necessary is intrinsically impossible, that
is, that the absolute necessity of things is an internal necessity.
For this internal necessity is in certain cases a mere empty word with
which the least conception cannot be connected, while the conception
of the necessity of a thing in all relations possesses very peculiar
determinations. Now as the loss of a conception of great utility in
speculative science cannot be a matter of indifference to the
philosopher, I trust that the proper determination and careful
preservation of the expression on which the conception depends will
likewise be not indifferent to him.

In this enlarged signification, then, shall I employ the word
absolute, in opposition to that which is valid only in some particular
respect; for the latter is restricted by conditions, the former is
valid without any restriction whatever.

Now the transcendental conception of reason has for its object
nothing else than absolute totality in the synthesis of conditions
and does not rest satisfied till it has attained to the absolutely,
that is, in all respects and relations, unconditioned. For pure reason
leaves to the understanding everything that immediately relates to
the object of intuition or rather to their synthesis in imagination.
The former restricts itself to the absolute totality in the employment
of the conceptions of the understanding and aims at carrying out the
synthetical unity which is cogitated in the category, even to the
unconditioned. This unity may hence be called the rational unity of
phenomena, as the other, which the category expresses, may be termed
the unity of the understanding. Reason, therefore, has an immediate
relation to the use of the understanding, not indeed in so far as
the latter contains the ground of possible experience (for the
conception of the absolute totality of conditions is not a
conception that can be employed in experience, because no experience
is unconditioned), but solely for the purpose of directing it to a
certain unity, of which the understanding has no conception, and the
aim of which is to collect into an absolute whole all acts of the
understanding. Hence the objective employment of the pure
conceptions of reason is always transcendent, while that of the pure
conceptions of the understanding must, according to their nature, be
always immanent, inasmuch as they are limited to possible experience.

I understand by idea a necessary conception of reason, to which no
corresponding object can be discovered in the world of sense.
Accordingly, the pure conceptions of reason at present under
consideration are transcendental ideas. They are conceptions of pure
reason, for they regard all empirical cognition as determined by means
of an absolute totality of conditions. They are not mere fictions,
but natural and necessary products of reason, and have hence a necessary
relation to the whole sphere of the exercise of the understanding.
And, finally, they are transcendent, and overstep the limits of all
experiences, in which, consequently, no object can ever be presented
that would be perfectly adequate to a transcendental idea. When we
use the word idea, we say, as regards its object (an object of the
pure understanding), a great deal, but as regards its subject (that
is, in respect of its reality under conditions of experience), exceedingly
little, because the idea, as the conception of a maximum, can never
be completely and adequately presented in concreto. Now, as in the
merely speculative employment of reason the latter is properly the
sole aim, and as in this case the approximation to a conception, which
is never attained in practice, is the same thing as if the conception
were non-existent--it is commonly said of the conception of this kind,
"it is only an idea." So we might very well say, "the absolute
totality of all phenomena is only an idea," for, as we never can
present an adequate representation of it, it remains for us a
problem incapable of solution. On the other hand, as in the
practical use of the understanding we have only to do with action
and practice according to rules, an idea of pure reason can always
be given really in concreto, although only partially, nay, it is the
indispensable condition of all practical employment of reason. The
practice or execution of the idea is always limited and defective,
but nevertheless within indeterminable boundaries, consequently always
under the influence of the conception of an absolute perfection. And
thus the practical idea is always in the highest degree fruitful,
and in relation to real actions indispensably necessary. In the
idea, pure reason possesses even causality and the power of
producing that which its conception contains. Hence we cannot say of
wisdom, in a disparaging way, "it is only an idea." For, for the
very reason that it is the idea of the necessary unity of all possible
aims, it must be for all practical exertions and endeavours the
primitive condition and rule--a rule which, if not constitutive, is
at least limitative.

Now, although we must say of the transcendental conceptions of
reason, "they are only ideas," we must not, on this account, look upon
them as superfluous and nugatory. For, although no object can be
determined by them, they can be of great utility, unobserved and at
the basis of the edifice of the understanding, as the canon for its
extended and self-consistent exercise--a canon which, indeed, does
not enable it to cognize more in an object than it would cognize by
the help of its own conceptions, but which guides it more securely
in its cognition. Not to mention that they perhaps render possible
a transition from our conceptions of nature and the non-ego to the
practical conceptions, and thus produce for even ethical ideas
keeping, so to speak, and connection with the speculative cognitions
of reason. The explication of all this must be looked for in the
sequel.

But setting aside, in conformity with our original purpose, the
consideration of the practical ideas, we proceed to contemplate reason
in its speculative use alone, nay, in a still more restricted
sphere, to wit, in the transcendental use; and here must strike into
the same path which we followed in our deduction of the categories.
That is to say, we shall consider the logical form of the cognition
of reason, that we may see whether reason may not be thereby a source
of conceptions which enables us to regard objects in themselves as
determined synthetically a priori, in relation to one or other of
the functions of reason.

Reason, considered as the faculty of a certain logical form of
cognition, is the faculty of conclusion, that is, of mediate
judgement--by means of the subsumption of the condition of a possible
judgement under the condition of a given judgement. The given judgement
is the general rule (major). The subsumption of the condition of
another possible judgement under the condition of the rule is the
minor. The actual judgement, which enounces the assertion of the rule
in the subsumed case, is the conclusion (conclusio). The rule
predicates something generally under a certain condition. The condition
of the rule is satisfied in some particular case. It follows that what
was valid in general under that condition must also be considered as
valid in the particular case which satisfies this condition. It is very
plain that reason attains to a cognition, by means of acts of the
understanding which constitute a series of conditions. When I arrive at
the proposition, "All bodies are changeable," by beginning with the
more remote cognition (in which the conception of body does not appear,
but which nevertheless contains the condition of that conception), "All
compound is changeable," by proceeding from this to a less remote
cognition, which stands under the condition of the former, "Bodies are
compound," and hence to a third, which at length connects for me the
remote cognition (changeable) with the one before me, "Consequently,
bodies are changeable"--I have arrived at a cognition (conclusion)
through a series of conditions (premisses). Now every series, whose
exponent (of the categorical or hypothetical judgement) is given, can
be continued; consequently the same procedure of reason conducts us to
the ratiocinatio polysyllogistica, which is a series of syllogisms,
that can be continued either on the side of the conditions (per
prosyllogismos) or of the conditioned (per episyllogismos) to an
indefinite extent.

But we very soon perceive that the chain or series of prosyllogisms,
that is, of deduced cognitions on the side of the grounds or
conditions of a given cognition, in other words, the ascending
series of syllogisms must have a very different relation to the
faculty of reason from that of the descending series, that is, the
progressive procedure of reason on the side of the conditioned by
means of episyllogisms. For, as in the former case the cognition
(conclusio) is given only as conditioned, reason can attain to this
cognition only under the presupposition that all the members of the
series on the side of the conditions are given (totality in the series
of premisses), because only under this supposition is the judgement
we may be considering possible a priori; while on the side of the
conditioned or the inferences, only an incomplete and becoming, and
not a presupposed or given series, consequently only a potential
progression, is cogitated. Hence, when a cognition is contemplated
as conditioned, reason is compelled to consider the series of
conditions in an ascending line as completed and given in their
totality. But if the very same condition is considered at the same
time as the condition of other cognitions, which together constitute
a series of inferences or consequences in a descending line, reason
may preserve a perfect indifference, as to how far this progression
may extend a parte posteriori, and whether the totality of this series
is possible, because it stands in no need of such a series for the
purpose of arriving at the conclusion before it, inasmuch as this
conclusion is sufficiently guaranteed and determined on grounds a
parte priori. It may be the case, that upon the side of the conditions
the series of premisses has a first or highest condition, or it may
not possess this, and so be a parte priori unlimited; but it must,
nevertheless, contain totality of conditions, even admitting that we
never could succeed in completely apprehending it; and the whole
series must be unconditionally true, if the conditioned, which is
considered as an inference resulting from it, is to be held as true.
This is a requirement of reason, which announces its cognition as
determined a priori and as necessary, either in itself--and in this
case it needs no grounds to rest upon--or, if it is deduced, as a
member of a series of grounds, which is itself unconditionally true.

SECTION III. System of Transcendental Ideas.

We are not at present engaged with a logical dialectic, which
makes complete abstraction of the content of cognition and aims only
at unveiling the illusory appearance in the form of syllogisms. Our
subject is transcendental dialectic, which must contain, completely
a priori, the origin of certain cognitions drawn from pure reason,
and the origin of certain deduced conceptions, the object of which
cannot be given empirically and which therefore lie beyond the
sphere of the faculty of understanding. We have observed, from the
natural relation which the transcendental use of our cognition, in
syllogisms as well as in judgements, must have to the logical, that
there are three kinds of dialectical arguments, corresponding to the
three modes of conclusion, by which reason attains to cognitions on
principles; and that in all it is the business of reason to ascend
from the conditioned synthesis, beyond which the understanding never
proceeds, to the unconditioned which the understanding never can
reach.

Now the most general relations which can exist in our
representations are: 1st, the relation to the subject; 2nd, the
relation to objects, either as phenomena, or as objects of thought
in general. If we connect this subdivision with the main division,
all the relations of our representations, of which we can form either
a conception or an idea, are threefold: 1. The relation to the
subject; 2. The relation to the manifold of the object as a
phenomenon; 3. The relation to all things in general.

Now all pure conceptions have to do in general with the
synthetical unity of representations; conceptions of pure reason
(transcendental ideas), on the other hand, with the unconditional
synthetical unity of all conditions. It follows that all
transcendental ideas arrange themselves in three classes, the first
of which contains the absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking
subject, the second the absolute unity of the series of the conditions
of a phenomenon, the third the absolute unity of the condition of
all objects of thought in general.

The thinking subject is the object-matter of Psychology; the sum
total of all phenomena (the world) is the object-matter of
Cosmology; and the thing which contains the highest condition of the
possibility of all that is cogitable (the being of all beings) is
the object-matter of all Theology. Thus pure reason presents us with
the idea of a transcendental doctrine of the soul (psychologia
rationalis), of a transcendental science of the world (cosmologia
rationalis), and finally of a transcendental doctrine of God
(theologia transcendentalis). Understanding cannot originate even
the outline of any of these sciences, even when connected with the
highest logical use of reason, that is, all cogitable syllogisms-
for the purpose of proceeding from one object (phenomenon) to all
others, even to the utmost limits of the empirical synthesis. They
are, on the contrary, pure and genuine products, or problems, of
pure reason.

What modi of the pure conceptions of reason these transcendental
ideas are will be fully exposed in the following chapter. They
follow the guiding thread of the categories. For pure reason never
relates immediately to objects, but to the conceptions of these
contained in the understanding. In like manner, it will be made
manifest in the detailed explanation of these ideas--how reason,
merely through the synthetical use of the same function which it
employs in a categorical syllogism, necessarily attains to the
conception of the absolute unity of the thinking subject--how the
logical procedure in hypothetical ideas necessarily produces the
idea of the absolutely unconditioned in a series of given
conditions, and finally--how the mere form of the disjunctive
syllogism involves the highest conception of a being of all beings:
a thought which at first sight seems in the highest degree
paradoxical.

An objective deduction, such as we were able to present in the
case of the categories, is impossible as regards these
transcendental ideas. For they have, in truth, no relation to any
object, in experience, for the very reason that they are only ideas.
But a subjective deduction of them from the nature of our reason is
possible, and has been given in the present chapter.

It is easy to perceive that the sole aim of pure reason is the
absolute totality of the synthesis on the side of the conditions,
and that it does not concern itself with the absolute completeness
on the Part of the conditioned. For of the former alone does she stand
in need, in order to preposit the whole series of conditions, and thus
present them to the understanding a priori. But if we once have a
completely (and unconditionally) given condition, there is no
further necessity, in proceeding with the series, for a conception
of reason; for the understanding takes of itself every step
downward, from the condition to the conditioned. Thus the
transcendental ideas are available only for ascending in the series
of conditions, till we reach the unconditioned, that is, principles.
As regards descending to the conditioned, on the other hand, we find
that there is a widely extensive logical use which reason makes of
the laws of the understanding, but that a transcendental use thereof
is impossible; and that when we form an idea of the absolute totality
of such a synthesis, for example, of the whole series of all future
changes in the world, this idea is a mere ens rationis, an arbitrary
fiction of thought, and not a necessary presupposition of reason.
For the possibility of the conditioned presupposes the totality of
its conditions, but not of its consequences. Consequently, this conception
is not a transcendental idea--and it is with these alone that we are
at present occupied.

Finally, it is obvious that there exists among the transcendental
ideas a certain connection and unity, and that pure reason, by means
of them, collects all its cognitions into one system. From the
cognition of self to the cognition of the world, and through these
to the supreme being, the progression is so natural, that it seems
to resemble the logical march of reason from the premisses to the
conclusion.* Now whether there lies unobserved at the foundation of
these ideas an analogy of the same kind as exists between the
logical and transcendental procedure of reason, is another of those
questions, the answer to which we must not expect till we arrive at
a more advanced stage in our inquiries. In this cursory and
preliminary view, we have, meanwhile, reached our aim. For we have
dispelled the ambiguity which attached to the transcendental
conceptions of reason, from their being commonly mixed up with other
conceptions in the systems of philosophers, and not properly
distinguished from the conceptions of the understanding; we have
exposed their origin and, thereby, at the same time their
determinate number, and presented them in a systematic connection,
and have thus marked out and enclosed a definite sphere for pure reason.

[*Footnote: The science of Metaphysics has for the proper object of
its inquiries only three grand ideas: GOD, FREEDOM, and IMMORTALITY,
and it aims at showing, that the second conception, conjoined with
the first, must lead to the third, as a necessary conclusion. All the
other subjects with which it occupies itself, are merely means for
the attainment and realization of these ideas. It does not require
these ideas for the construction of a science of nature, but, on the
contrary, for the purpose of passing beyond the sphere of nature. A
complete insight into and comprehension of them would render Theology,
Ethics, and, through the conjunction of both, Religion, solely
dependent on the speculative faculty of reason. In a systematic
representation of these ideas the above-mentioned arrangement--the
synthetical one--would be the most suitable; but in the
investigation which must necessarily precede it, the analytical, which
reverses this arrangement, would be better adapted to our purpose,
as in it we should proceed from that which experience immediately
presents to us--psychology, to cosmology, and thence to theology.]

BOOK II.

OF THE DIALECTICAL PROCEDURE OF PURE REASON.

It may be said that the object of a merely transcendental idea is
something of which we have no conception, although the idea may be
a necessary product of reason according to its original laws. For,
in fact, a conception of an object that is adequate to the idea given
by reason, is impossible. For such an object must be capable of
being presented and intuited in a Possible experience. But we should
express our meaning better, and with less risk of being misunderstood,
if we said that we can have no knowledge of an object, which perfectly
corresponds to an idea, although we may possess a problematical
conception thereof.

Now the transcendental (subjective) reality at least of the pure
conceptions of reason rests upon the fact that we are led to such
ideas by a necessary procedure of reason. There must therefore be
syllogisms which contain no empirical premisses, and by means of which
we conclude from something that we do know, to something of which we
do not even possess a conception, to which we, nevertheless, by an
unavoidable illusion, ascribe objective reality. Such arguments are,
as regards their result, rather to be termed sophisms than syllogisms,
although indeed, as regards their origin, they are very well
entitled to the latter name, inasmuch as they are not fictions or
accidental products of reason, but are necessitated by its very
nature. They are sophisms, not of men, but of pure reason herself,
from which the Wisest cannot free himself. After long labour he may
be able to guard against the error, but he can never be thoroughly
rid of the illusion which continually mocks and misleads him.

Of these dialectical arguments there are three kinds,
corresponding to the number of the ideas which their conclusions
present. In the argument or syllogism of the first class, I
conclude, from the transcendental conception of the subject contains
no manifold, the absolute unity of the subject itself, of which I
cannot in this manner attain to a conception. This dialectical
argument I shall call the transcendental paralogism. The second
class of sophistical arguments is occupied with the transcendental
conception of the absolute totality of the series of conditions for
a given phenomenon, and I conclude, from the fact that I have always
a self-contradictory conception of the unconditioned synthetical unity
of the series upon one side, the truth of the opposite unity, of which
I have nevertheless no conception. The condition of reason in these
dialectical arguments, I shall term the antinomy of pure reason.
Finally, according to the third kind of sophistical argument, I
conclude, from the totality of the conditions of thinking objects in
general, in so far as they can be given, the absolute synthetical
unity of all conditions of the possibility of things in general;
that is, from things which I do not know in their mere
transcendental conception, I conclude a being of all beings which I
know still less by means of a transcendental conception, and of
whose unconditioned necessity I can form no conception whatever.
This dialectical argument I shall call the ideal of pure reason.

CHAPTER I. Of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason.

The logical paralogism consists in the falsity of an argument in
respect of its form, be the content what it may. But a
transcendental paralogism has a transcendental foundation, and
concludes falsely, while the form is correct and unexceptionable. In
this manner the paralogism has its foundation in the nature of human
reason, and is the parent of an unavoidable, though not insoluble,
mental illusion.

We now come to a conception which was not inserted in the general
list of transcendental conceptions, and yet must be reckoned with
them, but at the same time without in the least altering, or
indicating a deficiency in that table. This is the conception, or,
if the term is preferred, the judgement, "I think." But it is
readily perceived that this thought is as it were the vehicle of all
conceptions in general, and consequently of transcendental conceptions
also, and that it is therefore regarded as a transcendental
conception, although it can have no peculiar claim to be so ranked,
inasmuch as its only use is to indicate that all thought is
accompanied by consciousness. At the same time, pure as this
conception is from empirical content (impressions of the senses), it
enables us to distinguish two different kinds of objects. "I," as
thinking, am an object of the internal sense, and am called soul. That
which is an object of the external senses is called body. Thus the
expression, "I," as a thinking being, designates the object-matter
of psychology, which may be called "the rational doctrine of the
soul," inasmuch as in this science I desire to know nothing of the
soul but what, independently of all experience (which determines me
in concreto), may be concluded from this conception "I," in so far
as it appears in all thought.

Now, the rational doctrine of the soul is really an undertaking of
this kind. For if the smallest empirical element of thought, if any
particular perception of my internal state, were to be introduced
among the grounds of cognition of this science, it would not be a
rational, but an empirical doctrine of the soul. We have thus before
us a pretended science, raised upon the single proposition, "I think,"
whose foundation or want of foundation we may very properly, and
agreeably with the nature of a transcendental philosophy, here
examine. It ought not to be objected that in this proposition, which
expresses the perception of one's self, an internal experience is
asserted, and that consequently the rational doctrine of the soul
which is founded upon it, is not pure, but partly founded upon an
empirical principle. For this internal perception is nothing more than
the mere apperception, "I think," which in fact renders all
transcendental conceptions possible, in which we say, "I think
substance, cause, etc." For internal experience in general and its
possibility, or perception in general, and its relation to other
perceptions, unless some particular distinction or determination
thereof is empirically given, cannot be regarded as empirical
cognition, but as cognition of the empirical, and belongs to the
investigation of the possibility of every experience, which is
certainly transcendental. The smallest object of experience (for
example, only pleasure or pain), that should be included in the
general representation of self-consciousness, would immediately change
the rational into an empirical psychology.

"I think" is therefore the only text of rational psychology, from
which it must develop its whole system. It is manifest that this
thought, when applied to an object (myself), can contain nothing but
transcendental predicates thereof; because the least empirical
predicate would destroy the purity of the science and its independence
of all experience.

But we shall have to follow here the guidance of the categories-
only, as in the present case a thing, "I," as thinking being, is at
first given, we shall--not indeed change the order of the categories
as it stands in the table--but begin at the category of substance,
by which at the a thing in itself is represented and proceeds
backwards through the series. The topic of the rational doctrine of
the soul, from which everything else it may contain must be deduced,
is accordingly as follows:

1. The Soul is Substance
2. As regards its quality it is SIMPLE
3. As regards the different times in which it exists, it is numerically identical, that is UNITY, not Plurality.
4. It is in relation to possible objects in space *

[*Footnote: The reader, who may not so easily perceive the
psychological sense of these expressions, taken here in their
transcendental abstraction, and cannot guess why the latter attribute
of the soul belongs to the category of existence, will find the
expressions sufficiently explained and justified in the sequel. I have,
moreover, to apologize for the Latin terms which have been employed,
instead of their German synonyms, contrary to the rules of correct
writing. But I judged it better to sacrifice elegance to perspicuity.]

From these elements originate all the conceptions of pure
psychology, by combination alone, without the aid of any other
principle. This substance, merely as an object of the internal
sense, gives the conception of Immateriality; as simple substance,
that of Incorruptibility; its identity, as intellectual substance,
gives the conception of Personality; all these three together,
Spirituality. Its relation to objects in space gives us the conception
of connection (commercium) with bodies. Thus it represents thinking
substance as the principle of life in matter, that is, as a soul
(anima), and as the ground of Animality; and this, limited and
determined by the conception of spirituality, gives us that of
Immortality.

Now to these conceptions relate four paralogisms of a transcendental
psychology, which is falsely held to be a science of pure reason,
touching the nature of our thinking being. We can, however, lay at
the foundation of this science nothing but the simple and in itself
perfectly contentless representation "I" which cannot even be called
a conception, but merely a consciousness which accompanies all
conceptions. By this "I," or "He," or "It," who or which thinks,
nothing more is represented than a transcendental subject of thought
= x, which is cognized only by means of the thoughts that are its
predicates, and of which, apart from these, we cannot form the least
conception. Hence in a perpetual circle, inasmuch as we must always
employ it, in order to frame any judgement respecting it. And this
inconvenience we find it impossible to rid ourselves of, because
consciousness in itself is not so much a representation distinguishing
a particular object, as a form of representation in general, in so
far as it may be termed cognition; for in and by cognition alone do
I think anything.

It must, however, appear extraordinary at first sight that the
condition under which I think, and which is consequently a property
of my subject, should be held to be likewise valid for every existence
which thinks, and that we can presume to base upon a seemingly
empirical proposition a judgement which is apodeictic and universal,
to wit, that everything which thinks is constituted as the voice of
my consciousness declares it to be, that is, as a self-conscious being.
The cause of this belief is to be found in the fact that we
necessarily attribute to things a priori all the properties which
constitute conditions under which alone we can cogitate them. Now I
cannot obtain the least representation of a thinking being by means
of external experience, but solely through self-consciousness. Such
objects are consequently nothing more than the transference of this
consciousness of mine to other things which can only thus be
represented as thinking beings. The proposition, "I think," is, in
the present case, understood in a problematical sense, not in so far
as it contains a perception of an existence (like the Cartesian "Cogito,
ergo sum"),[Footnote: "I think, therefore I am."] but in regard to
its mere possibility--for the purpose of discovering what properties
may be inferred from so simple a proposition and predicated of the
subject of it.

If at the foundation of our pure rational cognition of thinking
beings there lay more than the mere Cogito--if we could likewise
call in aid observations on the play of our thoughts, and the thence
derived natural laws of the thinking self, there would arise an
empirical psychology which would be a kind of physiology of the
internal sense and might possibly be capable of explaining the
phenomena of that sense. But it could never be available for
discovering those properties which do not belong to possible
experience (such as the quality of simplicity), nor could it make
any apodeictic enunciation on the nature of thinking beings: it
would therefore not be a rational psychology.

Now, as the proposition "I think" (in the problematical sense)
contains the form of every judgement in general and is the constant
accompaniment of all the categories, it is manifest that conclusions
are drawn from it only by a transcendental employment of the
understanding. This use of the understanding excludes all empirical
elements; and we cannot, as has been shown above, have any
favourable conception beforehand of its procedure. We shall
therefore follow with a critical eye this proposition through all
the predicaments of pure psychology; but we shall, for brevity's sake,
allow this examination to proceed in an uninterrupted connection.

Before entering on this task, however, the following general
remark may help to quicken our attention to this mode of argument.
It is not merely through my thinking that I cognize an object, but
only through my determining a given intuition in relation to the unity
of consciousness in which all thinking consists. It follows that I
cognize myself, not through my being conscious of myself as
thinking, but only when I am conscious of the intuition of myself as
determined in relation to the function of thought. All the modi of
self-consciousness in thought are hence not conceptions of objects
(conceptions of the understanding--categories); they are mere
logical functions, which do not present to thought an object to be
cognized, and cannot therefore present my Self as an object. Not the
consciousness of the determining, but only that of the determinable
self, that is, of my internal intuition (in so far as the manifold
contained in it can be connected conformably with the general
condition of the unity of apperception in thought), is the object.

1. In all judgements I am the determining subject of that relation
which constitutes a judgement. But that the I which thinks, must be
considered as in thought always a subject, and as a thing which cannot
be a predicate to thought, is an apodeictic and identical proposition.
But this proposition does not signify that I, as an object, am, for
myself, a self-subsistent being or substance. This latter statement-
an ambitious one--requires to be supported by data which are not to
be discovered in thought; and are perhaps (in so far as I consider
the thinking self merely as such) not to be discovered in the thinking
self at all.

2. That the I or Ego of apperception, and consequently in all
thought, is singular or simple, and cannot be resolved into a
plurality of subjects, and therefore indicates a logically simple
subject--this is self-evident from the very conception of an Ego,
and is consequently an analytical proposition. But this is not
tantamount to declaring that the thinking Ego is a simple substance-
for this would be a synthetical proposition. The conception of
substance always relates to intuitions, which with me cannot be
other than sensuous, and which consequently lie completely out of
the sphere of the understanding and its thought: but to this sphere
belongs the affirmation that the Ego is simple in thought. It would
indeed be surprising, if the conception of "substance," which in other
cases requires so much labour to distinguish from the other elements
presented by intuition--so much trouble, too, to discover whether it
can be simple (as in the case of the parts of matter)--should be
presented immediately to me, as if by revelation, in the poorest
mental representation of all.

3. The proposition of the identity of my Self amidst all the
manifold representations of which I am conscious, is likewise a
proposition lying in the conceptions themselves, and is consequently
analytical. But this identity of the subject, of which I am
conscious in all its representations, does not relate to or concern
the intuition of the subject, by which it is given as an object.
This proposition cannot therefore enounce the identity of the
person, by which is understood the consciousness of the identity of
its own substance as a thinking being in all change and variation of
circumstances. To prove this, we should require not a mere analysis
of the proposition, but synthetical judgements based upon a given
intuition.

4. I distinguish my own existence, as that of a thinking being, from
that of other things external to me--among which my body also is
reckoned. This is also an analytical proposition, for other things
are exactly those which I think as different or distinguished from
myself. But whether this consciousness of myself is possible without
things external to me; and whether therefore I can exist merely as
a thinking being (without being man)--cannot be known or inferred from
this proposition.

Thus we have gained nothing as regards the cognition of myself as
object, by the analysis of the consciousness of my Self in thought.
The logical exposition of thought in general is mistaken for a
metaphysical determination of the object.

Our Critique would be an investigation utterly superfluous, if there
existed a possibility of proving a priori, that all thinking beings
are in themselves simple substances, as such, therefore, possess the
inseparable attribute of personality, and are conscious of their
existence apart from and unconnected with matter. For we should thus
have taken a step beyond the world of sense, and have penetrated
into the sphere of noumena; and in this case the right could not be
denied us of extending our knowledge in this sphere, of establishing
ourselves, and, under a favouring star, appropriating to ourselves
possessions in it. For the proposition: "Every thinking being, as
such, is simple substance," is an a priori synthetical proposition;
because in the first place it goes beyond the conception which is
the subject of it, and adds to the mere notion of a thinking being
the mode of its existence, and in the second place annexes a predicate
(that of simplicity) to the latter conception--a predicate which it
could not have discovered in the sphere of experience. It would follow
that a priori synthetical propositions are possible and legitimate,
not only, as we have maintained, in relation to objects of possible
experience, and as principles of the possibility of this experience
itself, but are applicable to things in themselves--an inference which
makes an end of the whole of this Critique, and obliges us to fall
back on the old mode of metaphysical procedure. But indeed the
danger is not so great, if we look a little closer into the question.

There lurks in the procedure of rational Psychology a paralogism,
which is represented in the following syllogism:

That which cannot be cogitated otherwise than as subject, does not
exist otherwise than as subject, and is therefore substance.

A thinking being, considered merely as such, cannot be cogitated
otherwise than as subject.

Therefore it exists also as such, that is, as substance.

In the major we speak of a being that can be cogitated generally and
in every relation, consequently as it may be given in intuition. But
in the minor we speak of the same being only in so far as it regards
itself as subject, relatively to thought and the unity of
consciousness, but not in relation to intuition, by which it is
presented as an object to thought. Thus the conclusion is here arrived
at by a Sophisma figurae dictionis.*

[*Footnote: Thought is taken in the two premisses in two totally
different senses. In the major it is considered as relating and applying
to objects in general, consequently to objects of intuition also. In the
minor, we understand it as relating merely to self-consciousness. In
this sense, we do not cogitate an object, but merely the relation to the
self-consciousness of the subject, as the form of thought. In the former
premiss we speak of things which cannot be cogitated otherwise than as
subjects. In the second, we do not speak of things, but of thought (all
objects being abstracted), in which the Ego is always the subject of
consciousness. Hence the conclusion cannot be, "I cannot exist otherwise
than as subject"; but only "I can, in cogitating my existence, employ my
Ego only as the subject of the judgement." But this is an identical
proposition, and throws no light on the mode of my existence.]

That this famous argument is a mere paralogism, will be plain to any
one who will consider the general remark which precedes our exposition
of the principles of the pure understanding, and the section on
noumena. For it was there proved that the conception of a thing, which
can exist per se--only as a subject and never as a predicate,
possesses no objective reality; that is to say, we can never know
whether there exists any object to correspond to the conception;
consequently, the conception is nothing more than a conception, and
from it we derive no proper knowledge. If this conception is to
indicate by the term substance, an object that can be given, if it
is to become a cognition, we must have at the foundation of the
cognition a permanent intuition, as the indispensable condition of
its objective reality. For through intuition alone can an object be
given. But in internal intuition there is nothing permanent, for the
Ego is but the consciousness of my thought. If then, we appeal merely
to thought, we cannot discover the necessary condition of the application
of the conception of substance--that is, of a subject existing per
se--to the subject as a thinking being. And thus the conception of
the simple nature of substance, which is connected with the objective
reality of this conception, is shown to be also invalid, and to be,
in fact, nothing more than the logical qualitative unity of
self-consciousness in thought; whilst we remain perfectly ignorant
whether the subject is composite or not.

Refutation of the Argument of Mendelssohn for the Substantiality or Permanence of the Soul.

This acute philosopher easily perceived the insufficiency of the
common argument which attempts to prove that the soul--it being
granted that it is a simple being--cannot perish by dissolution or
decomposition; he saw it is not impossible for it to cease to be by
extinction, or disappearance. He endeavoured to prove in his Phaedo,
that the soul cannot be annihilated, by showing that a simple being
cannot cease to exist. Inasmuch as, he said, a simple existence cannot
diminish, nor gradually lose portions of its being, and thus be by
degrees reduced to nothing (for it possesses no parts, and therefore
no multiplicity), between the moment in which it is, and the moment
in which it is not, no time can be discovered--which is impossible.
But this philosopher did not consider that, granting the soul to possess
this simple nature, which contains no parts external to each other
and consequently no extensive quantity, we cannot refuse to it any
less than to any other being, intensive quantity, that is, a degree
of reality in regard to all its faculties, nay, to all that constitutes
its existence. But this degree of reality can become less and less
through an infinite series of smaller degrees. It follows,
therefore, that this supposed substance--this thing, the permanence
of which is not assured in any other way, may, if not by decomposition,
by gradual loss (remissio) of its powers (consequently by
elanguescence, if I may employ this expression), be changed into
nothing. For consciousness itself has always a degree, which may be
lessened.* Consequently the faculty of being conscious may be
diminished; and so with all other faculties. The permanence of the
soul, therefore, as an object of the internal sense, remains
undemonstrated, nay, even indemonstrable. Its permanence in life is
evident, per se, inasmuch as the thinking being (as man) is to itself,
at the same time, an object of the external senses. But this does
not authorize the rational psychologist to affirm, from mere
conceptions, its permanence beyond life.*[2]

[*Footnote: Clearness is not, as logicians maintain, the consciousness
of a representation. For a certain degree of consciousness, which may
not, however, be sufficient for recollection, is to be met with in
many dim representations. For without any consciousness at all, we
should not be able to recognize any difference in the obscure
representations we connect; as we really can do with many conceptions,
such as those of right and justice, and those of the musician, who
strikes at once several notes in improvising a piece of music. But
a representation is clear, in which our consciousness is sufficient
for the consciousness of the difference of this representation from
others. If we are only conscious that there is a difference, but are
not conscious of the difference--that is, what the difference is-
the representation must be termed obscure. There is, consequently,
an infinite series of degrees of consciousness down to its entire
disappearance.]

[*[2]Footnote: There are some who think they have done enough to establish
a new possibility in the mode of the existence of souls, when they
have shown that there is no contradiction in their hypotheses on
this subject. Such are those who affirm the possibility of thought--of
which they have no other knowledge than what they derive from its
use in connecting empirical intuitions presented in this our human
life--after this life has ceased. But it is very easy to embarrass
them by the introduction of counter-possibilities, which rest upon
quite as good a foundation. Such, for example, is the possibility of
the division of a simple substance into several substances; and
conversely, of the coalition of several into one simple substance.
For, although divisibility presupposes composition, it does not
necessarily require a composition of substances, but only of the
degrees (of the several faculties) of one and the same substance.
Now we can cogitate all the powers and faculties of the soul--even
that of consciousness--as diminished by one half, the substance
still remaining. In the same way we can represent to ourselves without
contradiction, this obliterated half as preserved, not in the soul,
but without it; and we can believe that, as in this case every
thing that is real in the soul, and has a degree--consequently its
entire existence--has been halved, a particular substance would
arise out of the soul. For the multiplicity, which has been divided,
formerly existed, but not as a multiplicity of substances, but of
every reality as the quantum of existence in it; and the unity of
substance was merely a mode of existence, which by this division alone
has been transformed into a plurality of subsistence. In the same
manner several simple substances might coalesce into one, without
anything being lost except the plurality of subsistence, inasmuch as
the one substance would contain the degree of reality of all the
former substances. Perhaps, indeed, the simple substances, which
appear under the form of matter, might (not indeed by a mechanical
or chemical influence upon each other, but by an unknown influence,
of which the former would be but the phenomenal appearance), by means
of such a dynamical division of the parent-souls, as intensive
quantities, produce other souls, while the former repaired the loss
thus sustained with new matter of the same sort. I am far from
allowing any value to such chimeras; and the principles of our
analytic have clearly proved that no other than an empirical use of
the categories--that of substance, for example--is possible. But if
the rationalist is bold enough to construct, on the mere authority
of the faculty of thought--without any intuition, whereby an object
is given--a self-subsistent being, merely because the unity of
apperception in thought cannot allow him to believe it a composite
being, instead of declaring, as he ought to do, that he is unable to
explain the possibility of a thinking nature; what ought to hinder
the materialist, with as complete an independence of experience, to
employ the principle of the rationalist in a directly opposite manner--
still preserving the formal unity required by his opponent?]

If, now, we take the above propositions--as they must be accepted as
valid for all thinking beings in the system of rational psychology--in
synthetical connection, and proceed, from the category of relation,
with the proposition: "All thinking beings are, as such, substances,"
backwards through the series, till the circle is completed; we come at
last to their existence, of which, in this system of rational
psychology, substances are held to be conscious, independently of
external things; nay, it is asserted that, in relation to the
permanence which is a necessary characteristic of substance, they can
of themselves determine external things. It follows that idealism--at
least problematical idealism, is perfectly unavoidable in this
rationalistic system. And, if the existence of outward things is not
held to be requisite to the determination of the existence of a
substance in time, the existence of these outward things at all, is a
gratuitous assumption which remains without the possibility of a proof.

But if we proceed analytically--the "I think" as a proposition
containing in itself an existence as given, consequently modality
being the principle--and dissect this proposition, in order to
ascertain its content, and discover whether and how this Ego
determines its existence in time and space without the aid of anything
external; the propositions of rationalistic psychology would not begin
with the conception of a thinking being, but with a reality, and the
properties of a thinking being in general would be deduced from the
mode in which this reality is cogitated, after everything empirical
had been abstracted; as is shown in the following table:

1. I think
2. as Subject
3. as Simple Subject,
4. as identical Subject, in every state of my thought.

Now, inasmuch as it is not determined in this second proposition,
whether I can exist and be cogitated only as subject, and not also
as a predicate of another being, the conception of a subject is here
taken in a merely logical sense; and it remains undetermined,
whether substance is to be cogitated under the conception or not.
But in the third proposition, the absolute unity of apperception-
the simple Ego in the representation to which all connection and
separation, which constitute thought, relate, is of itself
important; even although it presents us with no information about
the constitution or subsistence of the subject. Apperception is
something real, and the simplicity of its nature is given in the
very fact of its possibility. Now in space there is nothing real
that is at the same time simple; for points, which are the only simple
things in space, are merely limits, but not constituent parts of
space. From this follows the impossibility of a definition on the
basis of materialism of the constitution of my Ego as a merely
thinking subject. But, because my existence is considered in the first
proposition as given, for it does not mean, "Every thinking being
exists" (for this would be predicating of them absolute necessity),
but only, "I exist thinking"; the proposition is quite empirical,
and contains the determinability of my existence merely in relation
to my representations in time. But as I require for this purpose
something that is permanent, such as is not given in internal
intuition; the mode of my existence, whether as substance or as
accident, cannot be determined by means of this simple
self-consciousness. Thus, if materialism is inadequate to explain
the mode in which I exist, spiritualism is likewise as insufficient;
and the conclusion is that we are utterly unable to attain to any
knowledge of the constitution of the soul, in so far as relates to
the possibility of its existence apart from external objects.

And, indeed, how should it be possible, merely by the aid of the
unity of consciousness--which we cognize only for the reason that it
is indispensable to the possibility of experience--to pass the
bounds of experience (our existence in this life); and to extend our
cognition to the nature of all thinking beings by means of the
empirical--but in relation to every sort of intuition, perfectly
undetermined--proposition, "I think"?

There does not then exist any rational psychology as a doctrine
furnishing any addition to our knowledge of ourselves. It is nothing
more than a discipline, which sets impassable limits to speculative
reason in this region of thought, to prevent it, on the one hand, from
throwing itself into the arms of a soulless materialism, and, on the
other, from losing itself in the mazes of a baseless spiritualism.
It teaches us to consider this refusal of our reason to give any
satisfactory answer to questions which reach beyond the limits of this
our human life, as a hint to abandon fruitless speculation; and to
direct, to a practical use, our knowledge of ourselves--which,
although applicable only to objects of experience, receives its
principles from a higher source, and regulates its procedure as if
our destiny reached far beyond the boundaries of experience and life.

From all this it is evident that rational psychology has its
origin in a mere misunderstanding. The unity of consciousness, which
lies at the basis of the categories, is considered to be an
intuition of the subject as an object; and the category of substance
is applied to the intuition. But this unity is nothing more than the
unity in thought, by which no object is given; to which therefore
the category of substance--which always presupposes a given intuition-
cannot be applied. Consequently, the subject cannot be cognized. The
subject of the categories cannot, therefore, for the very reason
that it cogitates these, frame any conception of itself as an object
of the categories; for, to cogitate these, it must lay at the
foundation its own pure self-consciousness--the very thing that it
wishes to explain and describe. In like manner, the subject, in
which the representation of time has its basis, cannot determine,
for this very reason, its own existence in time. Now, if the latter
is impossible, the former, as an attempt to determine itself by means
of the categories as a thinking being in general, is no less so.*

[*Footnote: The "I think" is, as has been already stated, an empirical
proposition, and contains the proposition, "I exist." But I cannot say,
"Everything, which thinks, exists"; for in this case the property of
thought would constitute all beings possessing it, necessary beings. Hence
my existence cannot be considered as an inference from the proposition,
"I think," as Descartes maintained--because in this case the major
premiss, "Everything, which thinks, exists," must precede--but the two
propositions are identical. The proposition, "I think," expresses an
undetermined empirical intuition, that perception (proving consequently
that sensation, which must belong to sensibility, lies at the foundation
of this proposition); but it precedes experience, whose province it is
to determine an object of perception by means of the categories in
relation to time; and existence in this proposition is not a category,
as it does not apply to an undetermined given object, but only to one of
which we have a conception, and about which we wish to know whether it
does or does not exist, out of, and apart from this conception. An
undetermined perception signifies here merely something real that has
been given, only, however, to thought in general--but not as a
phenomenon, nor as a thing in itself (noumenon), but only as something
that really exists, and is designated as such in the proposition, "I
think." For it must be remarked that, when I call the proposition, "I
think," an empirical proposition, I do not thereby mean that the Ego in
the proposition is an empirical representation; on the contrary, it is
purely intellectual, because it belongs to thought in general. But
without some empirical representation, which presents to the mind
material for thought, the mental act, "I think," would not take place;
and the empirical is only the condition of the application or employment
of the pure intellectual faculty.]

Thus, then, appears the vanity of the hope of establishing a cognition
which is to extend its rule beyond the limits of experience--a
cognition which is one of the highest interests of humanity; and thus is
proved the futility of the attempt of speculative philosophy in this
region of thought. But, in this interest of thought, the severity of
criticism has rendered to reason a not unimportant service, by the
demonstration of the impossibility of making any dogmatical affirmation
concerning an object of experience beyond the boundaries of experience.
She has thus fortified reason against all affirmations of the contrary.
Now, this can be accomplished in only two ways. Either our proposition
must be proved apodeictically; or, if this is unsuccessful, the sources
of this inability must be sought for, and, if these are discovered to
exist in the natural and necessary limitation of our reason, our
opponents must submit to the same law of renunciation and refrain from
advancing claims to dogmatic assertion.

But the right, say rather the necessity to admit a future life, upon
principles of the practical conjoined with the speculative use of
reason, has lost nothing by this renunciation; for the merely
speculative proof has never had any influence upon the common reason of
men. It stands upon the point of a hair, so that even the schools have
been able to preserve it from falling only by incessantly discussing it
and spinning it like a top; and even in their eyes it has never been
able to present any safe foundation for the erection of a theory. The
proofs which have been current among men, preserve their value
undiminished; nay, rather gain in clearness and unsophisticated power,
by the rejection of the dogmatical assumptions of speculative reason.
For reason is thus confined within her own peculiar province--the
arrangement of ends or aims, which is at the same time the arrangement
of nature; and, as a practical faculty, without limiting itself to the
latter, it is justified in extending the former, and with it our own
existence, beyond the boundaries of experience and life. If we turn our
attention to the analogy of the nature of living beings in this world,
in the consideration of which reason is obliged to accept as a
principle that no organ, no faculty, no appetite is useless, and that
nothing is superfluous, nothing disproportionate to its use, nothing
unsuited to its end; but that, on the contrary, everything is perfectly
conformed to its destination in life--we shall find that man, who alone
is the final end and aim of this order, is still the only animal that
seems to be excepted from it. For his natural gifts--not merely as
regards the talents and motives that may incite him to employ them, but
especially the moral law in him--stretch so far beyond all mere earthly
utility and advantage, that he feels himself bound to prize the mere
consciousness of probity, apart from all advantageous consequences--
even the shadowy gift of posthumous fame--above everything; and he is
conscious of an inward call to constitute himself, by his conduct in
this world--without regard to mere sublunary interests--the citizen of
a better. This mighty, irresistible proof--accompanied by an
ever-increasing knowledge of the conformability to a purpose in
everything we see around us, by the conviction of the boundless
immensity of creation, by the consciousness of a certain
illimitableness in the possible extension of our knowledge, and by a
desire commensurate therewith--remains to humanity, even after the
theoretical cognition of ourselves has failed to establish the
necessity of an existence after death.

Conclusion of the Solution of the Psychological Paralogism.

The dialectical illusion in rational psychology arises from our
confounding an idea of reason (of a pure intelligence) with the
conception--in every respect undetermined--of a thinking being in
general. I cogitate myself in behalf of a possible experience, at
the same time making abstraction of all actual experience; and infer
therefrom that I can be conscious of myself apart from experience
and its empirical conditions. I consequently confound the possible
abstraction of my empirically determined existence with the supposed
consciousness of a possible separate existence of my thinking self;
and I believe that I cognize what is substantial in myself as a
transcendental subject, when I have nothing more in thought than the
unity of consciousness, which lies at the basis of all determination
of cognition.

The task of explaining the community of the soul with the body
does not properly belong to the psychology of which we are here
speaking; because it proposes to prove the personality of the soul
apart from this communion (after death), and is therefore transcendent
in the proper sense of the word, although occupying itself with an
object of experience--only in so far, however, as it ceases to be an
object of experience. But a sufficient answer may be found to the
question in our system. The difficulty which lies in the execution
of this task consists, as is well known, in the presupposed
heterogeneity of the object of the internal sense (the soul) and the
objects of the external senses; inasmuch as the formal condition of
the intuition of the one is time, and of that of the other space also.
But if we consider that both kinds of objects do not differ
internally, but only in so far as the one appears externally to the
other--consequently, that what lies at the basis of phenomena, as a
thing in itself, may not be heterogeneous; this difficulty disappears.
There then remains no other difficulty than is to be found in the
question--how a community of substances is possible; a question
which lies out of the region of psychology, and which the reader,
after what in our analytic has been said of primitive forces and
faculties, will easily judge to be also beyond the region of human
cognition.

GENERAL REMARK

On the Transition from Rational Psychology to Cosmology.

The proposition, "I think," or, "I exist thinking," is an
empirical proposition. But such a proposition must be based on
empirical intuition, and the object cogitated as a phenomenon; and
thus our theory appears to maintain that the soul, even in thought,
is merely a phenomenon; and in this way our consciousness itself, in
fact, abuts upon nothing.

Thought, per se, is merely the purely spontaneous logical function
which operates to connect the manifold of a possible intuition; and
it does not represent the subject of consciousness as a phenomenon--for
this reason alone, that it pays no attention to the question whether
the mode of intuiting it is sensuous or intellectual. I therefore do
not represent myself in thought either as I am, or as I appear to
myself; I merely cogitate myself as an object in general, of the
mode of intuiting which I make abstraction. When I represent myself
as the subject of thought, or as the ground of thought, these modes
of representation are not related to the categories of substance or
of cause; for these are functions of thought applicable only to our
sensuous intuition. The application of these categories to the Ego
would, however, be necessary, if I wished to make myself an object
of knowledge. But I wish to be conscious of myself only as thinking;
in what mode my Self is given in intuition, I do not consider, and
it may be that I, who think, am a phenomenon--although not in so far
as I am a thinking being; but in the consciousness of myself in mere
thought I am a being, though this consciousness does not present to
me any property of this being as material for thought.

But the proposition, "I think," in so far as it declares, "I exist
thinking," is not the mere representation of a logical function. It
determines the subject (which is in this case an object also) in
relation to existence; and it cannot be given without the aid of the
internal sense, whose intuition presents to us an object, not as a
thing in itself, but always as a phenomenon. In this proposition there
is therefore something more to be found than the mere spontaneity of
thought; there is also the receptivity of intuition, that is, my
thought of myself applied to the empirical intuition of myself. Now,
in this intuition the thinking self must seek the conditions of the
employment of its logical functions as categories of substance, cause,
and so forth; not merely for the purpose of distinguishing itself as
an object in itself by means of the representation "I," but also for
the purpose of determining the mode of its existence, that is, of
cognizing itself as noumenon. But this is impossible, for the internal
empirical intuition is sensuous, and presents us with nothing but
phenomenal data, which do not assist the object of pure
consciousness in its attempt to cognize itself as a separate
existence, but are useful only as contributions to experience.

But, let it be granted that we could discover, not in experience, but
in certain firmly-established a priori laws of the use of pure reason--
laws relating to our existence, authority to consider ourselves as
legislating a priori in relation to our own existence and as
determining this existence; we should, on this supposition, find
ourselves possessed of a spontaneity, by which our actual existence
would be determinable, without the aid of the conditions of empirical
intuition. We should also become aware that in the consciousness of
our existence there was an a priori content, which would serve to
determine our own existence--an existence only sensuously
determinable--relatively, however, to a certain internal faculty
in relation to an intelligible world.

But this would not give the least help to the attempts of rational
psychology. For this wonderful faculty, which the consciousness of
the moral law in me reveals, would present me with a principle of the
determination of my own existence which is purely intellectual--but
by what predicates? By none other than those which are given in
sensuous intuition. Thus I should find myself in the same position
in rational psychology which I formerly occupied, that is to say, I
should find myself still in need of sensuous intuitions, in order to
give significance to my conceptions of substance and cause, by means
of which alone I can possess a knowledge of myself: but these
intuitions can never raise me above the sphere of experience. I should
be justified, however, in applying these conceptions, in regard to
their practical use, which is always directed to objects of
experience--in conformity with their analogical significance when
employed theoretically--to freedom and its subject. At the same
time, I should understand by them merely the logical functions of
subject and predicate, of principle and consequence, in conformity
with which all actions are so determined, that they are capable of
being explained along with the laws of nature, conformably to the
categories of substance and cause, although they originate from a very
different principle. We have made these observations for the purpose
of guarding against misunderstanding, to which the doctrine of our
intuition of self as a phenomenon is exposed. We shall have occasion
to perceive their utility in the sequel.

CHAPTER II. The Antinomy of Pure Reason.

We showed in the introduction to this part of our work, that all
transcendental illusion of pure reason arose from dialectical
arguments, the schema of which logic gives us in its three formal
species of syllogisms--just as the categories find their logical
schema in the four functions of all judgements. The first kind of
these sophistical arguments related to the unconditioned unity of
the subjective conditions of all representations in general (of the
subject or soul), in correspondence with the categorical syllogisms,
the major of which, as the principle, enounces the relation of a
predicate to a subject. The second kind of dialectical argument will
therefore be concerned, following the analogy with hypothetical
syllogisms, with the unconditioned unity of the objective conditions
in the phenomenon; and, in this way, the theme of the third kind to
be treated of in the following chapter will be the unconditioned unity
of the objective conditions of the possibility of objects in general.

But it is worthy of remark that the transcendental paralogism
produced in the mind only a one-third illusion, in regard to the
idea of the subject of our thought; and the conceptions of reason gave
no ground to maintain the contrary proposition. The advantage is
completely on the side of Pneumatism; although this theory itself
passes into naught, in the crucible of pure reason.

Very different is the case when we apply reason to the objective
synthesis of phenomena. Here, certainly, reason establishes, with much
plausibility, its principle of unconditioned unity; but it very soon
falls into such contradictions that it is compelled, in relation to
cosmology, to renounce its pretensions.

For here a new phenomenon of human reason meets us--a perfectly
natural antithetic, which does not require to be sought for by
subtle sophistry, but into which reason of itself unavoidably falls.
It is thereby preserved, to be sure, from the slumber of a fancied
conviction--which a merely one-sided illusion produces; but it is at
the same time compelled, either, on the one hand, to abandon itself
to a despairing scepticism, or, on the other, to assume a dogmatical
confidence and obstinate persistence in certain assertions, without
granting a fair hearing to the other side of the question. Either is
the death of a sound philosophy, although the former might perhaps
deserve the title of the euthanasia of pure reason.

Before entering this region of discord and confusion, which the
conflict of the laws of pure reason (antinomy) produces, we shall
present the reader with some considerations, in explanation and
justification of the method we intend to follow in our treatment of
this subject. I term all transcendental ideas, in so far as they
relate to the absolute totality in the synthesis of phenomena,
cosmical conceptions; partly on account of this unconditioned
totality, on which the conception of the world-whole is based--a
conception, which is itself an idea--partly because they relate solely
to the synthesis of phenomena--the empirical synthesis; while, on
the other hand, the absolute totality in the synthesis of the
conditions of all possible things gives rise to an ideal of pure
reason, which is quite distinct from the cosmical conception, although
it stands in relation with it. Hence, as the paralogisms of pure
reason laid the foundation for a dialectical psychology, the
antinomy of pure reason will present us with the transcendental
principles of a pretended pure (rational) cosmology--not, however,
to declare it valid and to appropriate it, but--as the very term of
a conflict of reason sufficiently indicates, to present it as an
idea which cannot be reconciled with phenomena and experience.

SECTION I. System of Cosmological Ideas.

That We may be able to enumerate with systematic precision these
ideas according to a principle, we must remark, in the first place,
that it is from the understanding alone that pure and transcendental
conceptions take their origin; that the reason does not properly
give birth to any conception, but only frees the conception of the
understanding from the unavoidable limitation of a possible
experience, and thus endeavours to raise it above the empirical,
though it must still be in connection with it. This happens from the
fact that, for a given conditioned, reason demands absolute totality
on the side of the conditions (to which the understanding submits
all phenomena), and thus makes of the category a transcendental
idea. This it does that it may be able to give absolute completeness
to the empirical synthesis, by continuing it to the unconditioned
(which is not to be found in experience, but only in the idea). Reason
requires this according to the principle: If the conditioned is
given the whole of the conditions, and consequently the absolutely
unconditioned, is also given, whereby alone the former was possible.
First, then, the transcendental ideas are properly nothing but
categories elevated to the unconditioned; and they may be arranged
in a table according to the titles of the latter. But, secondly, all
the categories are not available for this purpose, but only those in
which the synthesis constitutes a series--of conditions subordinated
to, not co-ordinated with, each other. Absolute totality is required
of reason only in so far as concerns the ascending series of the
conditions of a conditioned; not, consequently, when the question
relates to the descending series of consequences, or to the
aggregate of the co-ordinated conditions of these consequences. For,
in relation to a given conditioned, conditions are presupposed and
considered to be given along with it. On the other hand, as the
consequences do not render possible their conditions, but rather
presuppose them--in the consideration of the procession of
consequences (or in the descent from the given condition to the
conditioned), we may be quite unconcerned whether the series ceases
or not; and their totality is not a necessary demand of reason.

Thus we cogitate--and necessarily--a given time completely elapsed
up to a given moment, although that time is not determinable by us.
But as regards time future, which is not the condition of arriving
at the present, in order to conceive it; it is quite indifferent
whether we consider future time as ceasing at some point, or as
prolonging itself to infinity. Take, for example, the series m, n,
o, in which n is given as conditioned in relation to m, but at the
same time as the condition of o, and let the series proceed upwards
from the conditioned n to m (l, k, i, etc.), and also downwards from
the condition n to the conditioned o (p, q, r, etc.)--I must
presuppose the former series, to be able to consider n as given, and
n is according to reason (the totality of conditions) possible only
by means of that series. But its possibility does not rest on the
following series o, p, q, r, which for this reason cannot be
regarded as given, but only as capable of being given (dabilis).

I shall term the synthesis of the series on the side of the
conditions--from that nearest to the given phenomenon up to the more
remote--regressive; that which proceeds on the side of the
conditioned, from the immediate consequence to the more remote, I
shall call the progressive synthesis. The former proceeds in
antecedentia, the latter in consequentia. The cosmological ideas are
therefore occupied with the totality of the regressive synthesis,
and proceed in antecedentia, not in consequentia. When the latter
takes place, it is an arbitrary and not a necessary problem of pure
reason; for we require, for the complete understanding of what is
given in a phenomenon, not the consequences which succeed, but the
grounds or principles which precede.

In order to construct the table of ideas in correspondence with
the table of categories, we take first the two primitive quanta of
all our intuitions, time and space. Time is in itself a series (and
the formal condition of all series), and hence, in relation to a given
present, we must distinguish a priori in it the antecedentia as
conditions (time past) from the consequentia (time future).
Consequently, the transcendental idea of the absolute totality of
the series of the conditions of a given conditioned, relates merely
to all past time. According to the idea of reason, the whole past time,
as the condition of the given moment, is necessarily cogitated as
given. But, as regards space, there exists in it no distinction
between progressus and regressus; for it is an aggregate and not a
series--its parts existing together at the same time. I can consider
a given point of time in relation to past time only as conditioned,
because this given moment comes into existence only through the past
time rather through the passing of the preceding time. But as the
parts of space are not subordinated, but co-ordinated to each other,
one part cannot be the condition of the possibility of the other;
and space is not in itself, like time, a series. But the synthesis
of the manifold parts of space--(the syntheses whereby we apprehend
space)--is nevertheless successive; it takes place, therefore, in
time, and contains a series. And as in this series of aggregated
spaces (for example, the feet in a rood), beginning with a given
portion of space, those which continue to be annexed form the
condition of the limits of the former--the measurement of a space must
also be regarded as a synthesis of the series of the conditions of
a given conditioned. It differs, however, in this respect from that
of time, that the side of the conditioned is not in itself
distinguishable from the side of the condition; and, consequently,
regressus and progressus in space seem to be identical. But,
inasmuch as one part of space is not given, but only limited, by and
through another, we must also consider every limited space as
conditioned, in so far as it presupposes some other space as the
condition of its limitation, and so on. As regards limitation,
therefore, our procedure in space is also a regressus, and the
transcendental idea of the absolute totality of the synthesis in a
series of conditions applies to space also; and I am entitled to
demand the absolute totality of the phenomenal synthesis in space as
well as in time. Whether my demand can be satisfied is a question to
be answered in the sequel.

Secondly, the real in space--that is, matter--is conditioned. Its
internal conditions are its parts, and the parts of parts its remote
conditions; so that in this case we find a regressive synthesis, the
absolute totality of which is a demand of reason. But this cannot be
obtained otherwise than by a complete division of parts, whereby the
real in matter becomes either nothing or that which is not matter,
that is to say, the simple. Consequently we find here also a series
of conditions and a progress to the unconditioned.

Thirdly, as regards the categories of a real relation between
phenomena, the category of substance and its accidents is not suitable
for the formation of a transcendental idea; that is to say, reason has
no ground, in regard to it, to proceed regressively with conditions.
For accidents (in so far as they inhere in a substance) are
co-ordinated with each other, and do not constitute a series. And, in
relation to substance, they are not properly subordinated to it, but
are the mode of existence of the substance itself. The conception of
the substantial might nevertheless seem to be an idea of the
transcendental reason. But, as this signifies nothing more than the
conception of an object in general, which subsists in so far as we
cogitate in it merely a transcendental subject without any predicates;
and as the question here is of an unconditioned in the series of
phenomena--it is clear that the substantial can form no member thereof.
The same holds good of substances in community, which are mere
aggregates and do not form a series. For they are not subordinated to
each other as conditions of the possibility of each other; which,
however, may be affirmed of spaces, the limits of which are never
determined in themselves, but always by some other space. It is,
therefore, only in the category of causality that we can find a series
of causes to a given effect, and in which we ascend from the latter, as
the conditioned, to the former as the conditions, and thus answer the
question of reason.

Fourthly, the conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the
necessary do not conduct us to any series--excepting only in so far
as the contingent in existence must always be regarded as conditioned,
and as indicating, according to a law of the understanding, a
condition, under which it is necessary to rise to a higher, till in
the totality of the series, reason arrives at unconditioned necessity.

There are, accordingly, only four cosmological ideas, corresponding
with the four titles of the categories. For we can select only such as
necessarily furnish us with a series in the synthesis of the manifold.

1. The absolute Completeness of the COMPOSITION of the given totality of all phenomena.
2. The absolute Completeness of the DIVISION of given totality in a phenomenon.
3. The absolute Completeness of the ORIGINATION of a phenomenon.
4. The absolute Completeness of the DEPENDENCE of the EXISTENCE of what is changeable in a phenomenon.

We must here remark, in the first place, that the idea of absolute
totality relates to nothing but the exposition of phenomena, and
therefore not to the pure conception of a totality of things.
Phenomena are here, therefore, regarded as given, and reason
requires the absolute completeness of the conditions of their
possibility, in so far as these conditions constitute a series-
consequently an absolutely (that is, in every respect) complete
synthesis, whereby a phenomenon can be explained according to the laws
of the understanding.

Secondly, it is properly the unconditioned alone that reason seeks
in this serially and regressively conducted synthesis of conditions.
It wishes, to speak in another way, to attain to completeness in the
series of premisses, so as to render it unnecessary to presuppose
others. This unconditioned is always contained in the absolute
totality of the series, when we endeavour to form a representation
of it in thought. But this absolutely complete synthesis is itself
but an idea; for it is impossible, at least before hand, to know whether
any such synthesis is possible in the case of phenomena. When we
represent all existence in thought by means of pure conceptions of
the understanding, without any conditions of sensuous intuition, we
may say with justice that for a given conditioned the whole series
of conditions subordinated to each other is also given; for the former
is only given through the latter. But we find in the case of phenomena
a particular limitation of the mode in which conditions are given,
that is, through the successive synthesis of the manifold of
intuition, which must be complete in the regress. Now whether this
completeness is sensuously possible, is a problem. But the idea of
it lies in the reason--be it possible or impossible to connect with
the idea adequate empirical conceptions. Therefore, as in the absolute
totality of the regressive synthesis of the manifold in a phenomenon
(following the guidance of the categories, which represent it as a
series of conditions to a given conditioned) the unconditioned is
necessarily contained--it being still left unascertained whether and
how this totality exists; reason sets out from the idea of totality,
although its proper and final aim is the unconditioned--of the whole
series, or of a part thereof.

This unconditioned may be cogitated--either as existing only in
the entire series, all the members of which therefore would be without
exception conditioned and only the totality absolutely
unconditioned--and in this case the regressus is called infinite; or
the absolutely unconditioned is only a part of the series, to which
the other members are subordinated, but which Is not itself
submitted to any other condition.* In the former case the series is
a parte priori unlimited (without beginning), that is, infinite, and
nevertheless completely given. But the regress in it is never
completed, and can only be called potentially infinite. In the
second case there exists a first in the series. This first is
called, in relation to past time, the beginning of the world; in
relation to space, the limit of the world; in relation to the parts
of a given limited whole, the simple; in relation to causes, absolute
spontaneity (liberty); and in relation to the existence of
changeable things, absolute physical necessity.

[*Footnote: The absolute totality of the series of conditions to a
given conditioned is always unconditioned; because beyond it there
exist no other conditions, on which it might depend. But the absolute
totality of such a series is only an idea, or rather a problematical
conception, the possibility of which must be investigated-
particularly in relation to the mode in which the unconditioned, as
the transcendental idea which is the real subject of inquiry, may be
contained therein.]

We possess two expressions, world and nature, which are generally
interchanged. The first denotes the mathematical total of all
phenomena and the totality of their synthesis--in its progress by
means of composition, as well as by division. And the world is
termed nature,* when it is regarded as a dynamical whole--when our
attention is not directed to the aggregation in space and time, for
the purpose of cogitating it as a quantity, but to the unity in the
existence of phenomena. In this case the condition of that which
happens is called a cause; the unconditioned causality of the cause
in a phenomenon is termed liberty; the conditioned cause is called
in a more limited sense a natural cause. The conditioned in existence
is termed contingent, and the unconditioned necessary. The
unconditioned necessity of phenomena may be called natural necessity.

[*Footnote: Nature, understood adjective (formaliter), signifies the
complex of the determinations of a thing, connected according to an
internal principle of causality. On the other hand, we understand by
nature, substantive (materialiter), the sum total of phenomena, in
so far as they, by virtue of an internal principle of causality, are
connected with each other throughout. In the former sense we speak
of the nature of liquid matter, of fire, etc., and employ the word
only adjective; while, if speaking of the objects of nature, we have
in our minds the idea of a subsisting whole.]

The ideas which we are at present engaged in discussing I have
called cosmological ideas; partly because by the term world is
understood the entire content of all phenomena, and our ideas are
directed solely to the unconditioned among phenomena; partly also,
because world, in the transcendental sense, signifies the absolute
totality of the content of existing things, and we are directing our
attention only to the completeness of the synthesis--although,
properly, only in regression. In regard to the fact that these ideas
are all transcendent, and, although they do not transcend phenomena
as regards their mode, but are concerned solely with the world of sense
(and not with noumena), nevertheless carry their synthesis to a degree
far above all possible experience--it still seems to me that we can,
with perfect propriety, designate them cosmical conceptions. As
regards the distinction between the mathematically and the dynamically
unconditioned which is the aim of the regression of the synthesis,
I should call the two former, in a more limited signification,
cosmical conceptions, the remaining two transcendent physical
conceptions. This distinction does not at present seem to be of
particular importance, but we shall afterwards find it to be of some
value.

SECTION II. Antithetic of Pure Reason.

Thetic is the term applied to every collection of dogmatical
propositions. By antithetic I do not understand dogmatical
assertions of the opposite, but the self-contradiction of seemingly
dogmatical cognitions (thesis cum antithesis), in none of which we
can discover any decided superiority. Antithetic is not, therefore,
occupied with one-sided statements, but is engaged in considering
the contradictory nature of the general cognitions of reason and its
causes. Transcendental antithetic is an investigation into the
antinomy of pure reason, its causes and result. If we employ our
reason not merely in the application of the principles of the
understanding to objects of experience, but venture with it beyond
these boundaries, there arise certain sophistical propositions or
theorems. These assertions have the following peculiarities: They
can find neither confirmation nor confutation in experience; and
each is in itself not only self-consistent, but possesses conditions
of its necessity in the very nature of reason--only that, unluckily,
there exist just as valid and necessary grounds for maintaining the
contrary proposition.

The questions which naturally arise in the consideration of this
dialectic of pure reason, are therefore: 1st. In what propositions
is pure reason unavoidably subject to an antinomy? 2nd. What are the
causes of this antinomy? 3rd. Whether and in what way can reason
free itself from this self-contradiction?

A dialectical proposition or theorem of pure reason must,
according to what has been said, be distinguishable from all
sophistical propositions, by the fact that it is not an answer to an
arbitrary question, which may be raised at the mere pleasure of any
person, but to one which human reason must necessarily encounter in
its progress. In the second place, a dialectical proposition, with
its opposite, does not carry the appearance of a merely artificial
illusion, which disappears as soon as it is investigated, but a
natural and unavoidable illusion, which, even when we are no longer
deceived by it, continues to mock us and, although rendered
harmless, can never be completely removed.

This dialectical doctrine will not relate to the unity of
understanding in empirical conceptions, but to the unity of reason
in pure ideas. The conditions of this doctrine are--inasmuch as it
must, as a synthesis according to rules, be conformable to the
understanding, and at the same time as the absolute unity of the
synthesis, to the reason--that, if it is adequate to the unity of
reason, it is too great for the understanding, if according with the
understanding, it is too small for the reason. Hence arises a mutual
opposition, which cannot be avoided, do what we will.

These sophistical assertions of dialectic open, as it were, a
battle-field, where that side obtains the victory which has been
permitted to make the attack, and he is compelled to yield who has
been unfortunately obliged to stand on the defensive. And hence,
champions of ability, whether on the right or on the wrong side, are
certain to carry away the crown of victory, if they only take care
to have the right to make the last attack, and are not obliged to
sustain another onset from their opponent. We can easily believe
that this arena has been often trampled by the feet of combatants,
that many victories have been obtained on both sides, but that the
last victory, decisive of the affair between the contending parties,
was won by him who fought for the right, only if his adversary was
forbidden to continue the tourney. As impartial umpires, we must lay
aside entirely the consideration whether the combatants are fighting
for the right or for the wrong side, for the true or for the false,
and allow the combat to be first decided. Perhaps, after they have
wearied more than injured each other, they will discover the
nothingness of their cause of quarrel and part good friends.

This method of watching, or rather of originating, a conflict of
assertions, not for the purpose of finally deciding in favour of
either side, but to discover whether the object of the struggle is
not a mere illusion, which each strives in vain to reach, but which
would be no gain even when reached--this procedure, I say, may be
termed the sceptical method. It is thoroughly distinct from
scepticism--the principle of a technical and scientific ignorance,
which undermines the foundations of all knowledge, in order, if
possible, to destroy our belief and confidence therein. For the
sceptical method aims at certainty, by endeavouring to discover in
a conflict of this kind, conducted honestly and intelligently on both
sides, the point of misunderstanding; just as wise legislators derive,
from the embarrassment of judges in lawsuits, information in regard
to the defective and ill-defined parts of their statutes. The antinomy
which reveals itself in the application of laws, is for our limited
wisdom the best criterion of legislation. For the attention of reason,
which in abstract speculation does not easily become conscious of
its errors, is thus roused to the momenta in the determination of
its principles.

But this sceptical method is essentially peculiar to
transcendental philosophy, and can perhaps be dispensed with in
every other field of investigation. In mathematics its use would be
absurd; because in it no false assertions can long remain hidden,
inasmuch as its demonstrations must always proceed under the
guidance of pure intuition, and by means of an always evident
synthesis. In experimental philosophy, doubt and delay may be very
useful; but no misunderstanding is possible, which cannot be easily
removed; and in experience means of solving the difficulty and putting
an end to the dissension must at last be found, whether sooner or
later. Moral philosophy can always exhibit its principles, with
their practical consequences, in concreto--at least in possible
experiences, and thus escape the mistakes and ambiguities of
abstraction. But transcendental propositions, which lay claim to
insight beyond the region of possible experience, cannot, on the one
hand, exhibit their abstract synthesis in any a priori intuition, nor,
on the other, expose a lurking error by the help of experience.
Transcendental reason, therefore, presents us with no other
criterion than that of an attempt to reconcile such assertions, and
for this purpose to permit a free and unrestrained conflict between
them. And this we now proceed to arrange.*

[*Footnote: The antinomies stand in the order of the four
transcendental ideas above detailed.]

FIRST CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS.

THESIS.

The world has a beginning in time, and is also limited in
regard to space.

PROOF.

Granted that the world has no beginning in time; up to every given
moment of time, an eternity must have elapsed, and therewith passed
away an infinite series of successive conditions or states of things
in the world. Now the infinity of a series consists in the fact that
it never can be completed by means of a successive synthesis. It
follows that an infinite series already elapsed is impossible and
that, consequently, a beginning of the world is a necessary
condition of its existence. And this was the first thing to be proved.

As regards the second, let us take the opposite for granted. In this
case, the world must be an infinite given total of coexistent
things. Now we cannot cogitate the dimensions of a quantity, which
is not given within certain limits of an intuition,* in any other
way than by means of the synthesis of its parts, and the total of such
a quantity only by means of a completed synthesis, or the repeated
addition of unity to itself. Accordingly, to cogitate the world, which
fills all spaces, as a whole, the successive synthesis of the parts
of an infinite world must be looked upon as completed, that is to say,
an infinite time must be regarded as having elapsed in the enumeration
of all co-existing things; which is impossible. For this reason an
infinite aggregate of actual things cannot be considered as a given
whole, consequently, not as a contemporaneously given whole. The world
is consequently, as regards extension in space, not infinite, but
enclosed in limits. And this was the second thing to be proved.

[*Footnote: We may consider an undetermined quantity as a whole, when
it is enclosed within limits, although we cannot construct or ascertain
its totality by measurement, that is, by the successive synthesis of
its parts. For its limits of themselves determine its completeness
as a whole.]

ANTITHESIS.

The world has no beginning, and no limits in space, but is, in
relation both to time and space, infinite.

PROOF.

For let it be granted that it has a beginning. A beginning is an
existence which is preceded by a time in which the thing does not
exist. On the above supposition, it follows that there must have
been a time in which the world did not exist, that is, a void time.
But in a void time the origination of a thing is impossible; because
no part of any such time contains a distinctive condition of being,
in preference to that of non-being (whether the supposed thing
originate of itself, or by means of some other cause). Consequently,
many series of things may have a beginning in the world, but the world
itself cannot have a beginning, and is, therefore, in relation to past
time, infinite.

As regards the second statement, let us first take the opposite
for granted--that the world is finite and limited in space; it follows
that it must exist in a void space, which is not limited. We should
therefore meet not only with a relation of things in space, but also
a relation of things to space. Now, as the world is an absolute whole,
out of and beyond which no object of intuition, and consequently no
correlate to which can be discovered, this relation of the world to
a void space is merely a relation to no object. But such a relation,
and consequently the limitation of the world by void space, is
nothing. Consequently, the world, as regards space, is not limited,
that is, it is infinite in regard to extension.*

[*Footnote: Space is merely the form of external intuition (formal
intuition), and not a real object which can be externally perceived.
Space, prior to all things which determine it (fill or limit it),
or, rather, which present an empirical intuition conformable to it,
is, under the title of absolute space, nothing but the mere
possibility of external phenomena, in so far as they either exist in
themselves, or can annex themselves to given intuitions. Empirical
intuition is therefore not a composition of phenomena and space (of
perception and empty intuition). The one is not the correlate of the
other in a synthesis, but they are vitally connected in the same
empirical intuition, as matter and form. If we wish to set one of
these two apart from the other--space from phenomena--there arise
all sorts of empty determinations of external intuition, which are
very far from being possible perceptions. For example, motion or
rest of the world in an infinite empty space, or a determination of
the mutual relation of both, cannot possibly be perceived, and is
therefore merely the predicate of a notional entity.]

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FIRST ANTINOMY.

ON THE THESIS.

In bringing forward these conflicting arguments, I have not been
on the search for sophisms, for the purpose of availing myself of
special pleading, which takes advantage of the carelessness of the
opposite party, appeals to a misunderstood statute, and erects its
unrighteous claims upon an unfair interpretation. Both proofs
originate fairly from the nature of the case, and the advantage
presented by the mistakes of the dogmatists of both parties has been
completely set aside.

The thesis might also have been unfairly demonstrated, by the
introduction of an erroneous conception of the infinity of a given
quantity. A quantity is infinite, if a greater than itself cannot
possibly exist. The quantity is measured by the number of given units-
which are taken as a standard--contained in it. Now no number can be
the greatest, because one or more units can always be added. It
follows that an infinite given quantity, consequently an infinite
world (both as regards time and extension) is impossible. It is,
therefore, limited in both respects. In this manner I might have
conducted my proof; but the conception given in it does not agree with
the true conception of an infinite whole. In this there is no
representation of its quantity, it is not said how large it is;
consequently its conception is not the conception of a maximum. We
cogitate in it merely its relation to an arbitrarily assumed unit,
in relation to which it is greater than any number. Now, just as the
unit which is taken is greater or smaller, the infinite will be
greater or smaller; but the infinity, which consists merely in the
relation to this given unit, must remain always the same, although
the absolute quantity of the whole is not thereby cognized.

The true (transcendental) conception of infinity is: that the
successive synthesis of unity in the measurement of a given quantum
can never be completed.* Hence it follows, without possibility of
mistake, that an eternity of actual successive states up to a given
(the present) moment cannot have elapsed, and that the world must
therefore have a beginning.

[*Footnote: The quantum in this sense contains a congeries of given
units, which is greater than any number--and this is the mathematical
conception of the infinite.]

In regard to the second part of the thesis, the difficulty as to
an infinite and yet elapsed series disappears; for the manifold of
a world infinite in extension is contemporaneously given. But, in
order to cogitate the total of this manifold, as we cannot have the
aid of limits constituting by themselves this total in intuition, we
are obliged to give some account of our conception, which in this case
cannot proceed from the whole to the determined quantity of the parts,
but must demonstrate the possibility of a whole by means of a
successive synthesis of the parts. But as this synthesis must
constitute a series that cannot be completed, it is impossible for
us to cogitate prior to it, and consequently not by means of it, a
totality. For the conception of totality itself is in the present case
the representation of a completed synthesis of the parts; and this
completion, and consequently its conception, is impossible.

ON THE ANTITHESIS.

The proof in favour of the infinity of the cosmical succession and
the cosmical content is based upon the consideration that, in the
opposite case, a void time and a void space must constitute the limits
of the world. Now I am not unaware, that there are some ways of
escaping this conclusion. It may, for example, be alleged, that a
limit to the world, as regards both space and time, is quite possible,
without at the same time holding the existence of an absolute time
before the beginning of the world, or an absolute space extending
beyond the actual world--which is impossible. I am quite well
satisfied with the latter part of this opinion of the philosophers
of the Leibnitzian school. Space is merely the form of external
intuition, but not a real object which can itself be externally
intuited; it is not a correlate of phenomena, it is the form of
phenomena itself. Space, therefore, cannot be regarded as absolutely
and in itself something determinative of the existence of things,
because it is not itself an object, but only the form of possible
objects. Consequently, things, as phenomena, determine space; that
is to say, they render it possible that, of all the possible
predicates of space (size and relation), certain may belong to
reality. But we cannot affirm the converse, that space, as something
self-subsistent, can determine real things in regard to size or shape,
for it is in itself not a real thing. Space (filled or void)* may
therefore be limited by phenomena, but phenomena cannot be limited
by an empty space without them. This is true of time also. All this
being granted, it is nevertheless indisputable, that we must assume
these two nonentities, void space without and void time before the
world, if we assume the existence of cosmical limits, relatively to
space or time.

[*Footnote: It is evident that what is meant here is, that empty space,
in so far as it is limited by phenomena--space, that is, within the
world--does not at least contradict transcendental principles, and
may therefore, as regards them, be admitted, although its possibility
cannot on that account be affirmed.]

For, as regards the subterfuge adopted by those who endeavour to
evade the consequence--that, if the world is limited as to space and
time, the infinite void must determine the existence of actual
things in regard to their dimensions--it arises solely from the fact
that instead of a sensuous world, an intelligible world--of which
nothing is known--is cogitated; instead of a real beginning (an
existence, which is preceded by a period in which nothing exists),
an existence which presupposes no other condition than that of time;
and, instead of limits of extension, boundaries of the universe. But
the question relates to the mundus phaenomenon, and its quantity;
and in this case we cannot make abstraction of the conditions of
sensibility, without doing away with the essential reality of this
world itself. The world of sense, if it is limited, must necessarily
lie in the infinite void. If this, and with it space as the a priori
condition of the possibility of phenomena, is left out of view, the
whole world of sense disappears. In our problem is this alone
considered as given. The mundus intelligibilis is nothing but the
general conception of a world, in which abstraction has been made of
all conditions of intuition, and in relation to which no synthetical
proposition--either affirmative or negative--is possible.

SECOND CONFLICT OF TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS.

THESIS.

Every composite substance in the world consists of simple parts; and
there exists nothing that is not either itself simple, or composed
of simple parts.

PROOF.

For, grant that composite substances do not consist of simple parts;
in this case, if all combination or composition were annihilated in
thought, no composite part, and (as, by the supposition, there do
not exist simple parts) no simple part would exist. Consequently, no
substance; consequently, nothing would exist. Either, then, it is
impossible to annihilate composition in thought; or, after such
annihilation, there must remain something that subsists without
composition, that is, something that is simple. But in the former case
the composite could not itself consist of substances, because with
substances composition is merely a contingent relation, apart from
which they must still exist as self-subsistent beings. Now, as this
case contradicts the supposition, the second must contain the truth-
that the substantial composite in the world consists of simple parts.

It follows, as an immediate inference, that the things in the
world are all, without exception, simple beings--that composition is
merely an external condition pertaining to them--and that, although
we never can separate and isolate the elementary substances from the
state of composition, reason must cogitate these as the primary
subjects of all composition, and consequently, as prior thereto--and
as simple substances.

ANTITHESIS.

No composite thing in the world consists of simple parts; and
there does not exist in the world any simple substance.

PROOF.

Let it be supposed that a composite thing (as substance) consists of
simple parts. Inasmuch as all external relation, consequently all
composition of substances, is possible only in space; the space,
occupied by that which is composite, must consist of the same number
of parts as is contained in the composite. But space does not
consist of simple parts, but of spaces. Therefore, every part of the
composite must occupy a space. But the absolutely primary parts of
what is composite are simple. It follows that what is simple
occupies a space. Now, as everything real that occupies a space,
contains a manifold the parts of which are external to each other,
and is consequently composite--and a real composite, not of accidents
(for these cannot exist external to each other apart from substance),
but of substances--it follows that the simple must be a substantial
composite, which is self-contradictory.

The second proposition of the antithesis--that there exists in the
world nothing that is simple--is here equivalent to the following:
The existence of the absolutely simple cannot be demonstrated from
any experience or perception either external or internal; and the
absolutely simple is a mere idea, the objective reality of which
cannot be demonstrated in any possible experience; it is consequently,
in the exposition of phenomena, without application and object. For,
let us take for granted that an object may be found in experience
for this transcendental idea; the empirical intuition of such an
object must then be recognized to contain absolutely no manifold
with its parts external to each other, and connected into unity.
Now, as we cannot reason from the non-consciousness of such a manifold
to the impossibility of its existence in the intuition of an object,
and as the proof of this impossibility is necessary for the
establishment and proof of absolute simplicity; it follows that this
simplicity cannot be inferred from any perception whatever. As,
therefore, an absolutely simple object cannot be given in any
experience, and the world of sense must be considered as the sum total
of all possible experiences: nothing simple exists in the world.

This second proposition in the antithesis has a more extended aim
than the first. The first merely banishes the simple from the
intuition of the composite; while the second drives it entirely out
of nature. Hence we were unable to demonstrate it from the conception
of a given object of external intuition (of the composite), but we
were obliged to prove it from the relation of a given object to a
possible experience in general.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE SECOND ANTINOMY.

THESIS.

When I speak of a whole, which necessarily consists of simple parts,
I understand thereby only a substantial whole, as the true
composite; that is to say, I understand that contingent unity of the
manifold which is given as perfectly isolated (at least in thought),
placed in reciprocal connection, and thus constituted a unity. Space
ought not to be called a compositum but a totum, for its parts are
possible in the whole, and not the whole by means of the parts. It
might perhaps be called a compositum ideale, but not a compositum
reale. But this is of no importance. As space is not a composite of
substances (and not even of real accidents), if I abstract all
composition therein--nothing, not even a point, remains; for a point
is possible only as the limit of a space--consequently of a composite.
Space and time, therefore, do not consist of simple parts. That
which belongs only to the condition or state of a substance, even
although it possesses a quantity (motion or change, for example),
likewise does not consist of simple parts. That is to say, a certain
degree of change does not originate from the addition of many simple
changes. Our inference of the simple from the composite is valid
only of self-subsisting things. But the accidents of a state are not
self-subsistent. The proof, then, for the necessity of the simple,
as the component part of all that is substantial and composite, may
prove a failure, and the whole case of this thesis be lost, if we
carry the proposition too far, and wish to make it valid of everything
that is composite without distinction--as indeed has really now and
then happened. Besides, I am here speaking only of the simple, in so
far as it is necessarily given in the composite--the latter being
capable of solution into the former as its component parts. The proper
signification of the word monas (as employed by Leibnitz) ought to
relate to the simple, given immediately as simple substance (for
example, in consciousness), and not as an element of the composite.
As an clement, the term atomus would be more appropriate. And as I
wish to prove the existence of simple substances, only in relation
to, and as the elements of, the composite, I might term the antithesis
of the second Antinomy, transcendental Atomistic. But as this word
has long been employed to designate a particular theory of corporeal
phenomena (moleculae), and thus presupposes a basis of empirical
conceptions, I prefer calling it the dialectical principle of
Monadology.

ANTITHESIS.

Against the assertion of the infinite subdivisibility of matter
whose ground of proof is purely mathematical, objections have been
alleged by the Monadists. These objections lay themselves open, at
first sight, to suspicion, from the fact that they do not recognize
the clearest mathematical proofs as propositions relating to the
constitution of space, in so far as it is really the formal
condition of the possibility of all matter, but regard them merely
as inferences from abstract but arbitrary conceptions, which cannot
have any application to real things. Just as if it were possible to
imagine another mode of intuition than that given in the primitive
intuition of space; and just as if its a priori determinations did
not apply to everything, the existence of which is possible, from the
fact alone of its filling space. If we listen to them, we shall find
ourselves required to cogitate, in addition to the mathematical point,
which is simple--not, however, a part, but a mere limit of space-
physical points, which are indeed likewise simple, but possess the
peculiar property, as parts of space, of filling it merely by their
aggregation. I shall not repeat here the common and clear
refutations of this absurdity, which are to be found everywhere in
numbers: every one knows that it is impossible to undermine the
evidence of mathematics by mere discursive conceptions; I shall only
remark that, if in this case philosophy endeavours to gain an
advantage over mathematics by sophistical artifices, it is because
it forgets that the discussion relates solely to Phenomena and their
conditions. It is not sufficient to find the conception of the
simple for the pure conception of the composite, but we must
discover for the intuition of the composite (matter), the intuition
of the simple. Now this, according to the laws of sensibility, and
consequently in the case of objects of sense, is utterly impossible.
In the case of a whole composed of substances, which is cogitated
solely by the pure understanding, it may be necessary to be in
possession of the simple before composition is possible. But this does
not hold good of the Totum substantiale phaenomenon, which, as an
empirical intuition in space, possesses the necessary property of
containing no simple part, for the very reason that no part of space
is simple. Meanwhile, the Monadists have been subtle enough to
escape from this difficulty, by presupposing intuition and the
dynamical relation of substances as the condition of the possibility
of space, instead of regarding space as the condition of the
possibility of the objects of external intuition, that is, of
bodies. Now we have a conception of bodies only as phenomena, and,
as such, they necessarily presuppose space as the condition of all
external phenomena. The evasion is therefore in vain; as, indeed, we
have sufficiently shown in our Aesthetic. If bodies were things in
themselves, the proof of the Monadists would be unexceptionable.

The second dialectical assertion possesses the peculiarity of having
opposed to it a dogmatical proposition, which, among all such
sophistical statements, is the only one that undertakes to prove in
the case of an object of experience, that which is properly a
transcendental idea--the absolute simplicity of substance. The
proposition is that the object of the internal sense, the thinking
Ego, is an absolute simple substance. Without at present entering upon
this subject--as it has been considered at length in a former chapter-
I shall merely remark that, if something is cogitated merely as an
object, without the addition of any synthetical determination of its
intuition--as happens in the case of the bare representation, I--it
is certain that no manifold and no composition can be perceived in
such a representation. As, moreover, the predicates whereby I cogitate
this object are merely intuitions of the internal sense, there cannot
be discovered in them anything to prove the existence of a manifold
whose parts are external to each other, and, consequently, nothing
to prove the existence of real composition. Consciousness, therefore,
is so constituted that, inasmuch as the thinking subject is at the
same time its own object, it cannot divide itself--although it can
divide its inhering determinations. For every object in relation to
itself is absolute unity. Nevertheless, if the subject is regarded
externally, as an object of intuition, it must, in its character of
phenomenon, possess the property of composition. And it must always
be regarded in this manner, if we wish to know whether there is or
is not contained in it a manifold whose parts are external to each
other.

THIRD CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS.

THESIS.

Causality according to the laws of nature, is not the only causality
operating to originate the phenomena of the world. A causality of
freedom is also necessary to account fully for these phenomena.

PROOF.

Let it be supposed, that there is no other kind of causality than
that according to the laws of nature. Consequently, everything that
happens presupposes a previous condition, which it follows with
absolute certainty, in conformity with a rule. But this previous
condition must itself be something that has happened (that has
arisen in time, as it did not exist before), for, if it has always
been in existence, its consequence or effect would not thus
originate for the first time, but would likewise have always
existed. The causality, therefore, of a cause, whereby something
happens, is itself a thing that has happened. Now this again
presupposes, in conformity with the law of nature, a previous
condition and its causality, and this another anterior to the
former, and so on. If, then, everything happens solely in accordance
with the laws of nature, there cannot be any real first beginning of
things, but only a subaltern or comparative beginning. There cannot,
therefore, be a completeness of series on the side of the causes which
originate the one from the other. But the law of nature is that
nothing can happen without a sufficient a priori determined cause.
The proposition therefore--if all causality is possible only in accordance
with the laws of nature--is, when stated in this unlimited and general
manner, self-contradictory. It follows that this cannot be the only
kind of causality.

From what has been said, it follows that a causality must be
admitted, by means of which something happens, without its cause being
determined according to necessary laws by some other cause
preceding. That is to say, there must exist an absolute spontaneity
of cause, which of itself originates a series of phenomena which proceeds
according to natural laws--consequently transcendental freedom,
without which even in the course of nature the succession of phenomena
on the side of causes is never complete.

ANTITHESIS.

There is no such thing as freedom, but everything in the world
happens solely according to the laws of nature.

PROOF.

Granted, that there does exist freedom in the transcendental
sense, as a peculiar kind of causality, operating to produce events
in the world--a faculty, that is to say, of originating a state, and
consequently a series of consequences from that state. In this case,
not only the series originated by this spontaneity, but the
determination of this spontaneity itself to the production of the
series, that is to say, the causality itself must have an absolute
commencement, such that nothing can precede to determine this action
according to unvarying laws. But every beginning of action presupposes
in the acting cause a state of inaction; and a dynamically primal
beginning of action presupposes a state, which has no connection--as
regards causality--with the preceding state of the cause--which does
not, that is, in any wise result from it. Transcendental freedom is
therefore opposed to the natural law of cause and effect, and such
a conjunction of successive states in effective causes is destructive
of the possibility of unity in experience and for that reason not to
be found in experience--is consequently a mere fiction of thought.

We have, therefore, nothing but nature to which we must look for
connection and order in cosmical events. Freedom--independence of
the laws of nature--is certainly a deliverance from restraint, but
it is also a relinquishing of the guidance of law and rule. For it
cannot be alleged that, instead of the laws of nature, laws of freedom
may be introduced into the causality of the course of nature. For,
if freedom were determined according to laws, it would be no longer
freedom, but merely nature. Nature, therefore, and transcendental
freedom are distinguishable as conformity to law and lawlessness.
The former imposes upon understanding the difficulty of seeking the
origin of events ever higher and higher in the series of causes,
inasmuch as causality is always conditioned thereby; while it
compensates this labour by the guarantee of a unity complete and in
conformity with law. The latter, on the contrary, holds out to the
understanding the promise of a point of rest in the chain of causes,
by conducting it to an unconditioned causality, which professes to
have the power of spontaneous origination, but which, in its own utter
blindness, deprives it of the guidance of rules, by which alone a
completely connected experience is possible.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE THIRD ANTINOMY.

ON THE THESIS.

The transcendental idea of freedom is far from constituting the
entire content of the psychological conception so termed, which is
for the most part empirical. It merely presents us with the conception
of spontaneity of action, as the proper ground for imputing freedom
to the cause of a certain class of objects. It is, however, the true
stumbling-stone to philosophy, which meets with unconquerable
difficulties in the way of its admitting this kind of unconditioned
causality. That element in the question of the freedom of the will,
which has for so long a time placed speculative reason in such
perplexity, is properly only transcendental, and concerns the
question, whether there must be held to exist a faculty of spontaneous
origination of a series of successive things or states. How such a
faculty is possible is not a necessary inquiry; for in the case of
natural causality itself, we are obliged to content ourselves with
the a priori knowledge that such a causality must be presupposed, although
we are quite incapable of comprehending how the being of one thing
is possible through the being of another, but must for this
information look entirely to experience. Now we have demonstrated this
necessity of a free first beginning of a series of phenomena, only
in so far as it is required for the comprehension of an origin of
the world, all following states being regarded as a succession
according to laws of nature alone. But, as there has thus been
proved the existence of a faculty which can of itself originate a
series in time--although we are unable to explain how it can exist--we
feel ourselves authorized to admit, even in the midst of the natural
course of events, a beginning, as regards causality, of different
successions of phenomena, and at the same time to attribute to all
substances a faculty of free action. But we ought in this case not
to allow ourselves to fall into a common misunderstanding, and to
suppose that, because a successive series in the world can only have
a comparatively first beginning--another state or condition of things
always preceding--an absolutely first beginning of a series in the
course of nature is impossible. For we are not speaking here of an
absolutely first beginning in relation to time, but as regards
causality alone. When, for example, I, completely of my own free will,
and independently of the necessarily determinative influence of
natural causes, rise from my chair, there commences with this event,
including its material consequences in infinitum, an absolutely new
series; although, in relation to time, this event is merely the
continuation of a preceding series. For this resolution and act of
mine do not form part of the succession of effects in nature, and
are not mere continuations of it; on the contrary, the determining
causes of nature cease to operate in reference to this event, which
certainly succeeds the acts of nature, but does not proceed from them.
For these reasons, the action of a free agent must be termed, in
regard to causality, if not in relation to time, an absolutely
primal beginning of a series of phenomena.

The justification of this need of reason to rest upon a free act
as the first beginning of the series of natural causes is evident from
the fact, that all philosophers of antiquity (with the exception of
the Epicurean school) felt themselves obliged, when constructing a
theory of the motions of the universe, to accept a prime mover, that
is, a freely acting cause, which spontaneously and prior to all
other causes evolved this series of states. They always felt the
need of going beyond mere nature, for the purpose of making a first
beginning comprehensible.

ON THE ANTITHESIS.

The assertor of the all-sufficiency of nature in regard to causality
(transcendental Physiocracy), in opposition to the doctrine of
freedom, would defend his view of the question somewhat in the
following manner. He would say, in answer to the sophistical arguments
of the opposite party: If you do not accept a mathematical first, in
relation to time, you have no need to seek a dynamical first, in
regard to causality. Who compelled you to imagine an absolutely primal
condition of the world, and therewith an absolute beginning of the
gradually progressing successions of phenomena--and, as some
foundation for this fancy of yours, to set bounds to unlimited nature?
Inasmuch as the substances in the world have always existed--at
least the unity of experience renders such a supposition quite
necessary--there is no difficulty in believing also, that the
changes in the conditions of these substances have always existed;
and, consequently, that a first beginning, mathematical or
dynamical, is by no means required. The possibility of such an
infinite derivation, without any initial member from which all the
others result, is certainly quite incomprehensible. But, if you are
rash enough to deny the enigmatical secrets of nature for this reason,
you will find yourselves obliged to deny also the existence of many
fundamental properties of natural objects (such as fundamental
forces), which you can just as little comprehend; and even the
possibility of so simple a conception as that of change must present
to you insuperable difficulties. For if experience did not teach you
that it was real, you never could conceive a priori the possibility
of this ceaseless sequence of being and non-being.

But if the existence of a transcendental faculty of freedom is
granted--a faculty of originating changes in the world--this faculty
must at least exist out of and apart from the world; although it is
certainly a bold assumption, that, over and above the complete content
of all possible intuitions, there still exists an object which
cannot be presented in any possible perception. But, to attribute to
substances in the world itself such a faculty, is quite
inadmissible; for, in this case; the connection of phenomena
reciprocally determining and determined according to general laws,
which is termed nature, and along with it the criteria of empirical
truth, which enable us to distinguish experience from mere visionary
dreaming, would almost entirely disappear. In proximity with such a
lawless faculty of freedom, a system of nature is hardly cogitable;
for the laws of the latter would be continually subject to the
intrusive influences of the former, and the course of phenomena, which
would otherwise proceed regularly and uniformly, would become
thereby confused and disconnected.

FOURTH CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS.

THESIS.

There exists either in, or in connection with the world--either as
a part of it, or as the cause of it--an absolutely necessary being.

PROOF.

The world of sense, as the sum total of all phenomena, contains a
series of changes. For, without such a series, the mental
representation of the series of time itself, as the condition of the
possibility of the sensuous world, could not be presented to us.*
But every change stands under its condition, which precedes it in time
and renders it necessary. Now the existence of a given condition
presupposes a complete series of conditions up to the absolutely
unconditioned, which alone is absolutely necessary. It follows that
something that is absolutely necessary must exist, if change exists
as its consequence. But this necessary thing itself belongs to the
sensuous world. For suppose it to exist out of and apart from it,
the series of cosmical changes would receive from it a beginning,
and yet this necessary cause would not itself belong to the world of
sense. But this is impossible. For, as the beginning of a series in
time is determined only by that which precedes it in time, the supreme
condition of the beginning of a series of changes must exist in the
time in which this series itself did not exist; for a beginning
supposes a time preceding, in which the thing that begins to be was
not in existence. The causality of the necessary cause of changes,
and consequently the cause itself, must for these reasons belong to
time--and to phenomena, time being possible only as the form of
phenomena. Consequently, it cannot be cogitated as separated from
the world of sense--the sum total of all phenomena. There is,
therefore, contained in the world, something that is absolutely
necessary--whether it be the whole cosmical series itself, or only
a part of it.

[*Footnote: Objectively, time, as the formal condition of the possibility
of change, precedes all changes; but subjectively, and in
consciousness, the representation of time, like every other, is
given solely by occasion of perception.]

ANTITHESIS.

An absolutely necessary being does not exist, either in the world,
or out of it--as its cause.

PROOF.

Grant that either the world itself is necessary, or that there is
contained in it a necessary existence. Two cases are possible.
First, there must either be in the series of cosmical changes a
beginning, which is unconditionally necessary, and therefore uncaused-
which is at variance with the dynamical law of the determination of
all phenomena in time; or, secondly, the series itself is without
beginning, and, although contingent and conditioned in all its
parts, is nevertheless absolutely necessary and unconditioned as a
whole--which is self-contradictory. For the existence of an
aggregate cannot be necessary, if no single part of it possesses
necessary existence.

Grant, on the other band, that an absolutely necessary cause
exists out of and apart from the world. This cause, as the highest
member in the series of the causes of cosmical changes, must originate
or begin* the existence of the latter and their series. In this case
it must also begin to act, and its causality would therefore belong
to time, and consequently to the sum total of phenomena, that is, to
the world. It follows that the cause cannot be out of the world; which
is contradictory to the hypothesis. Therefore, neither in the world,
nor out of it (but in causal connection with it), does there exist
any absolutely necessary being.

[*Footnote: The word begin is taken in two senses. The first is active--
the cause being regarded as beginning a series of conditions as its
effect (infit). The second is passive--the causality in the cause itself
beginning to operate (fit). I reason here from the first to the second.]

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FOURTH ANTINOMY.

ON THE THESIS.

To demonstrate the existence of a necessary being, I cannot be
permitted in this place to employ any other than the cosmological
argument, which ascends from the conditioned in phenomena to the
unconditioned in conception--the unconditioned being considered the
necessary condition of the absolute totality of the series. The proof,
from the mere idea of a supreme being, belongs to another principle
of reason and requires separate discussion.

The pure cosmological proof demonstrates the existence of a
necessary being, but at the same time leaves it quite unsettled,
whether this being is the world itself, or quite distinct from it.
To establish the truth of the latter view, principles are requisite,
which are not cosmological and do not proceed in the series of
phenomena. We should require to introduce into our proof conceptions
of contingent beings--regarded merely as objects of the understanding,
and also a principle which enables us to connect these, by means of
mere conceptions, with a necessary being. But the proper place for
all such arguments is a transcendent philosophy, which has unhappily
not yet been established.

But, if we begin our proof cosmologically, by laying at the
foundation of it the series of phenomena, and the regress in it
according to empirical laws of causality, we are not at liberty to
break off from this mode of demonstration and to pass over to
something which is not itself a member of the series. The condition
must be taken in exactly the same signification as the relation of
the conditioned to its condition in the series has been taken, for
the series must conduct us in an unbroken regress to this supreme
condition. But if this relation is sensuous, and belongs to the
possible empirical employment of understanding, the supreme
condition or cause must close the regressive series according to the
laws of sensibility and consequently, must belong to the series of
time. It follows that this necessary existence must be regarded as
the highest member of the cosmical series.

Certain philosophers have, nevertheless, allowed themselves the
liberty of making such a saltus (metabasis eis allo gonos). From the
changes in the world they have concluded their empirical
contingency, that is, their dependence on empirically-determined
causes, and they thus admitted an ascending series of empirical
conditions: and in this they are quite right. But as they could not
find in this series any primal beginning or any highest member, they
passed suddenly from the empirical conception of contingency to the
pure category, which presents us with a series--not sensuous, but
intellectual--whose completeness does certainly rest upon the
existence of an absolutely necessary cause. Nay, more, this
intellectual series is not tied to any sensuous conditions; and is
therefore free from the condition of time, which requires it
spontaneously to begin its causality in time. But such a procedure
is perfectly inadmissible, as will be made plain from what follows.

In the pure sense of the categories, that is contingent the
contradictory opposite of which is possible. Now we cannot reason from
empirical contingency to intellectual. The opposite of that which is
changed--the opposite of its state--is actual at another time, and
is therefore possible. Consequently, it is not the contradictory
opposite of the former state. To be that, it is necessary that, in
the same time in which the preceding state existed, its opposite could
have existed in its place; but such a cognition is not given us in
the mere phenomenon of change. A body that was in motion = A, comes
into a state of rest = non-A. Now it cannot be concluded from the fact
that a state opposite to the state A follows it, that the contradictory
opposite of A is possible; and that A is therefore contingent. To
prove this, we should require to know that the state of rest could
have existed in the very same time in which the motion took place.
Now we know nothing more than that the state of rest was actual in
the time that followed the state of motion; consequently, that it was
also possible. But motion at one time, and rest at another time, are
not contradictorily opposed to each other. It follows from what has
been said that the succession of opposite determinations, that is,
change, does not demonstrate the fact of contingency as represented
in the conceptions of the pure understanding; and that it cannot,
therefore, conduct us to the fact of the existence of a necessary
being. Change proves merely empirical contingency, that is to say,
that the new state could not have existed without a cause, which
belongs to the preceding time. This cause--even although it is
regarded as absolutely necessary--must be presented to us in time,
and must belong to the series of phenomena.

ON THE ANTITHESIS.

The difficulties which meet us, in our attempt to rise through the
series of phenomena to the existence of an absolutely necessary
supreme cause, must not originate from our inability to establish
the truth of our mere conceptions of the necessary existence of a
thing. That is to say, our objections not be ontological, but must
be directed against the causal connection with a series of phenomena
of a condition which is itself unconditioned. In one word, they must
be cosmological and relate to empirical laws. We must show that the
regress in the series of causes (in the world of sense) cannot
conclude with an empirically unconditioned condition, and that the
cosmological argument from the contingency of the cosmical state--a
contingency alleged to arise from change--does not justify us in
accepting a first cause, that is, a prime originator of the cosmical
series.

The reader will observe in this antinomy a very remarkable contrast.
The very same grounds of proof which established in the thesis the
existence of a supreme being, demonstrated in the antithesis--and with
equal strictness--the non-existence of such a being. We found,
first, that a necessary being exists, because the whole time past
contains the series of all conditions, and with it, therefore, the
unconditioned (the necessary); secondly, that there does not exist
any necessary being, for the same reason, that the whole time past
contains the series of all conditions--which are themselves,
therefore, in the aggregate, conditioned. The cause of this seeming
incongruity is as follows. We attend, in the first argument, solely
to the absolute totality of the series of conditions, the one of which
determines the other in time, and thus arrive at a necessary
unconditioned. In the second, we consider, on the contrary, the
contingency of everything that is determined in the series of time-
for every event is preceded by a time, in which the condition itself
must be determined as conditioned--and thus everything that is
unconditioned or absolutely necessary disappears. In both, the mode
of proof is quite in accordance with the common procedure of human
reason, which often falls into discord with itself, from considering
an object from two different points of view. Herr von Mairan
regarded the controversy between two celebrated astronomers, which
arose from a similar difficulty as to the choice of a proper
standpoint, as a phenomenon of sufficient importance to warrant a
separate treatise on the subject. The one concluded: the moon revolves
on its own axis, because it constantly presents the same side to the
earth; the other declared that the moon does not revolve on its own
axis, for the same reason. Both conclusions were perfectly correct,
according to the point of view from which the motions of the moon were
considered.

SECTION III. Of the Interest of Reason in these Self-contradictions.

We have thus completely before us the dialectical procedure of the
cosmological ideas. No possible experience can present us with an
object adequate to them in extent. Nay, more, reason itself cannot
cogitate them as according with the general laws of experience. And
yet they are not arbitrary fictions of thought. On the contrary,
reason, in its uninterrupted progress in the empirical synthesis, is
necessarily conducted to them, when it endeavours to free from all
conditions and to comprehend in its unconditioned totality that
which can only be determined conditionally in accordance with the laws
of experience. These dialectical propositions are so many attempts
to solve four natural and unavoidable problems of reason. There are
neither more, nor can there be less, than this number, because there
are no other series of synthetical hypotheses, limiting a priori the
empirical synthesis.

The brilliant claims of reason striving to extend its dominion
beyond the limits of experience, have been represented above only in
dry formulae, which contain merely the grounds of its pretensions.
They have, besides, in conformity with the character of a
transcendental philosophy, been freed from every empirical element;
although the full splendour of the promises they hold out, and the
anticipations they excite, manifests itself only when in connection
with empirical cognitions. In the application of them, however, and
in the advancing enlargement of the employment of reason, while
struggling to rise from the region of experience and to soar to
those sublime ideas, philosophy discovers a value and a dignity,
which, if it could but make good its assertions, would raise it far
above all other departments of human knowledge--professing, as it
does, to present a sure foundation for our highest hopes and the
ultimate aims of all the exertions of reason. The questions: whether
the world has a beginning and a limit to its extension in space;
whether there exists anywhere, or perhaps, in my own thinking Self,
an indivisible and indestructible unity--or whether nothing but what
is divisible and transitory exists; whether I am a free agent, or,
like other beings, am bound in the chains of nature and fate; whether,
finally, there is a supreme cause of the world, or all our thought
and speculation must end with nature and the order of external things--are
questions for the solution of which the mathematician would
willingly exchange his whole science; for in it there is no
satisfaction for the highest aspirations and most ardent desires of
humanity. Nay, it may even be said that the true value of mathematics-
that pride of human reason--consists in this: that she guides reason
to the knowledge of nature--in her greater as well as in her less
manifestations--in her beautiful order and regularity--guides her,
moreover, to an insight into the wonderful unity of the moving
forces in the operations of nature, far beyond the expectations of
a philosophy building only on experience; and that she thus encourages
philosophy to extend the province of reason beyond all experience,
and at the same time provides it with the most excellent materials
for supporting its investigations, in so far as their nature admits,
by adequate and accordant intuitions.

Unfortunately for speculation--but perhaps fortunately for the
practical interests of humanity--reason, in the midst of her highest
anticipations, finds herself hemmed in by a press of opposite and
contradictory conclusions, from which neither her honour nor her
safety will permit her to draw back. Nor can she regard these
conflicting trains of reasoning with indifference as mere passages
at arms, still less can she command peace; for in the subject of the
conflict she has a deep interest. There is no other course left open
to her than to reflect with herself upon the origin of this disunion
in reason--whether it may not arise from a mere misunderstanding.
After such an inquiry, arrogant claims would have to be given up on
both sides; but the sovereignty of reason over understanding and sense
would be based upon a sure foundation.

We shall at present defer this radical inquiry and, in the meantime,
consider for a little what side in the controversy we should most
willingly take, if we were obliged to become partisans at all. As,
in this case, we leave out of sight altogether the logical criterion
of truth, and merely consult our own interest in reference to the
question, these considerations, although inadequate to settle the
question of right in either party, will enable us to comprehend how
those who have taken part in the struggle, adopt the one view rather
than the other--no special insight into the subject, however, having
influenced their choice. They will, at the same time, explain to us
many other things by the way--for example, the fiery zeal on the one
side and the cold maintenance of their cause on the other; why the
one party has met with the warmest approbations, and the other has
always been repulsed by irreconcilable prejudices.

There is one thing, however, that determines the proper point of
view, from which alone this preliminary inquiry can be instituted
and carried on with the proper completeness--and that is the
comparison of the principles from which both sides, thesis and
antithesis, proceed. My readers would remark in the propositions of
the antithesis a complete uniformity in the mode of thought and a
perfect unity of principle. Its principle was that of pure empiricism,
not only in the explication of the phenomena in the world, but also
in the solution of the transcendental ideas, even of that of the universe
itself. The affirmations of the thesis, on the contrary, were based,
in addition to the empirical mode of explanation employed in the
series of phenomena, on intellectual propositions; and its
principles were in so far not simple. I shall term the thesis, in view
of its essential characteristic, the dogmatism of pure reason.

On the side of Dogmatism, or of the thesis, therefore, in the
determination of the cosmological ideas, we find:

1. A practical interest, which must be very dear to every
right-thinking man. That the word has a beginning--that the nature
of my thinking self is simple, and therefore indestructible--that I
am a free agent, and raised above the compulsion of nature and her
laws--and, finally, that the entire order of things, which form the
world, is dependent upon a Supreme Being, from whom the whole receives
unity and connection--these are so many foundation-stones of
morality and religion. The antithesis deprives us of all these
supports--or, at least, seems so to deprive us.

2. A speculative interest of reason manifests itself on this side.
For, if we take the transcendental ideas and employ them in the manner
which the thesis directs, we can exhibit completely a priori the
entire chain of conditions, and understand the derivation of the
conditioned--beginning from the unconditioned. This the antithesis
does not do; and for this reason does not meet with so welcome a
reception. For it can give no answer to our question respecting the
conditions of its synthesis--except such as must be supplemented by
another question, and so on to infinity. According to it, we must rise
from a given beginning to one still higher; every part conducts us
to a still smaller one; every event is preceded by another event which
is its cause; and the conditions of existence rest always upon other
and still higher conditions, and find neither end nor basis in some
self-subsistent thing as the primal being.

3. This side has also the advantage of popularity; and this
constitutes no small part of its claim to favour. The common
understanding does not find the least difficulty in the idea of the
unconditioned beginning of all synthesis--accustomed, as it is, rather
to follow our consequences than to seek for a proper basis for
cognition. In the conception of an absolute first, moreover--the
possibility of which it does not inquire into--it is highly
gratified to find a firmly-established point of departure for its
attempts at theory; while in the restless and continuous ascent from
the conditioned to the condition, always with one foot in the air,
it can find no satisfaction.

On the side of the antithesis, or Empiricism, in the determination
of the cosmological ideas:

1. We cannot discover any such practical interest arising from
pure principles of reason as morality and religion present. On the
contrary, pure empiricism seems to empty them of all their power and
influence. If there does not exist a Supreme Being distinct from the
world--if the world is without beginning, consequently without a
Creator--if our wills are not free, and the soul is divisible and
subject to corruption just like matter--the ideas and principles of
morality lose all validity and fall with the transcendental ideas
which constituted their theoretical support.

2. But empiricism, in compensation, holds out to reason, in its
speculative interests, certain important advantages, far exceeding
any that the dogmatist can promise us. For, when employed by the
empiricist, understanding is always upon its proper ground of
investigation--the field of possible experience, the laws of which
it can explore, and thus extend its cognition securely and with
clear intelligence without being stopped by limits in any direction.
Here can it and ought it to find and present to intuition its proper
object--not only in itself, but in all its relations; or, if it employ
conceptions, upon this ground it can always present the
corresponding images in clear and unmistakable intuitions. It is quite
unnecessary for it to renounce the guidance of nature, to attach
itself to ideas, the objects of which it cannot know; because, as mere
intellectual entities, they cannot be presented in any intuition. On
the contrary, it is not even permitted to abandon its proper
occupation, under the pretence that it has been brought to a
conclusion (for it never can be), and to pass into the region of
idealizing reason and transcendent conceptions, which it is not
required to observe and explore the laws of nature, but merely to
think and to imagine--secure from being contradicted by facts, because
they have not been called as witnesses, but passed by, or perhaps
subordinated to the so-called higher interests and considerations of
pure reason.

Hence the empiricist will never allow himself to accept any epoch of
nature for the first--the absolutely primal state; he will not believe
that there can be limits to his outlook into her wide domains, nor
pass from the objects of nature, which he can satisfactorily explain
by means of observation and mathematical thought--which he can
determine synthetically in intuition, to those which neither sense
nor imagination can ever present in concreto; he will not concede the
existence of a faculty in nature, operating independently of the
laws of nature--a concession which would introduce uncertainty into
the procedure of the understanding, which is guided by necessary
laws to the observation of phenomena; nor, finally, will he permit
himself to seek a cause beyond nature, inasmuch as we know nothing
but it, and from it alone receive an objective basis for all our
conceptions and instruction in the unvarying laws of things.

In truth, if the empirical philosopher had no other purpose in the
establishment of his antithesis than to check the presumption of a
reason which mistakes its true destination, which boasts of its
insight and its knowledge, just where all insight and knowledge
cease to exist, and regards that which is valid only in relation to
a practical interest, as an advancement of the speculative interests
of the mind (in order, when it is convenient for itself, to break
the thread of our physical investigations, and, under pretence of
extending our cognition, connect them with transcendental ideas, by
means of which we really know only that we know nothing)--if, I say,
the empiricist rested satisfied with this benefit, the principle
advanced by him would be a maxim recommending moderation in the
pretensions of reason and modesty in its affirmations, and at the same
time would direct us to the right mode of extending the province of
the understanding, by the help of the only true teacher, experience.
In obedience to this advice, intellectual hypotheses and faith would
not be called in aid of our practical interests; nor should we
introduce them under the pompous titles of science and insight. For
speculative cognition cannot find an objective basis any other where
than in experience; and, when we overstep its limits our synthesis,
which requires ever new cognitions independent of experience, has no
substratum of intuition upon which to build.

But if--as often happens--empiricism, in relation to ideas,
becomes itself dogmatic and boldly denies that which is above the
sphere of its phenomenal cognition, it falls itself into the error
of intemperance--an error which is here all the more reprehensible,
as thereby the practical interest of reason receives an irreparable
injury.

And this constitutes the opposition between Epicureanism* and
Platonism.

[*Footnote: It is, however, still a matter of doubt whether Epicurus
ever propounded these principles as directions for the objective employment
of the understanding. If, indeed, they were nothing more than maxims
for the speculative exercise of reason, he gives evidence therein a
more genuine philosophic spirit than any of the philosophers of
antiquity. That, in the explanation of phenomena, we must proceed as
if the field of inquiry had neither limits in space nor commencement
in time; that we must be satisfied with the teaching of experience
in reference to the material of which the world is posed; that we must
not look for any other mode of the origination of events than that
which is determined by the unalterable laws of nature; and finally,
that we not employ the hypothesis of a cause distinct from the world
to account for a phenomenon or for the world itself--are principles
for the extension of speculative philosophy, and the discovery of
the true sources of the principles of morals, which, however little
conformed to in the present day, are undoubtedly correct. At the
same time, any one desirous of ignoring, in mere speculation, these
dogmatical propositions, need not for that reason be accused of
denying them.]

Both Epicurus and Plato assert more in their systems than they know.
The former encourages and advances science--although to the
prejudice of the practical; the latter presents us with excellent
principles for the investigation of the practical, but, in relation
to everything regarding which we can attain to speculative cognition,
permits reason to append idealistic explanations of natural phenomena,
to the great injury of physical investigation.

3. In regard to the third motive for the preliminary choice of a
party in this war of assertions, it seems very extraordinary that
empiricism should be utterly unpopular. We should be inclined to
believe that the common understanding would receive it with
pleasure--promising as it does to satisfy it without passing the
bounds of experience and its connected order; while transcendental
dogmatism obliges it to rise to conceptions which far surpass the
intelligence and ability of the most practised thinkers. But in
this, in truth, is to be found its real motive. For the common
understanding thus finds itself in a situation where not even the most
learned can have the advantage of it. If it understands little or
nothing about these transcendental conceptions, no one can boast of
understanding any more; and although it may not express itself in so
scholastically correct a manner as others, it can busy itself with
reasoning and arguments without end, wandering among mere ideas, about
which one can always be very eloquent, because we know nothing about
them; while, in the observation and investigation of nature, it
would be forced to remain dumb and to confess its utter ignorance.
Thus indolence and vanity form of themselves strong recommendations
of these principles. Besides, although it is a hard thing for a
philosopher to assume a principle, of which he can give to himself
no reasonable account, and still more to employ conceptions, the
objective reality of which cannot be established, nothing is more
usual with the common understanding. It wants something which will
allow it to go to work with confidence. The difficulty of even
comprehending a supposition does not disquiet it, because--not knowing
what comprehending means--it never even thinks of the supposition it
may be adopting as a principle; and regards as known that with which
it has become familiar from constant use. And, at last, all
speculative interests disappear before the practical interests which
it holds dear; and it fancies that it understands and knows what its
necessities and hopes incite it to assume or to believe. Thus the
empiricism of transcendentally idealizing reason is robbed of all
popularity; and, however prejudicial it may be to the highest
practical principles, there is no fear that it will ever pass the
limits of the schools, or acquire any favour or influence in society
or with the multitude.

Human reason is by nature architectonic. That is to say, it
regards all cognitions as parts of a possible system, and hence
accepts only such principles as at least do not incapacitate a
cognition to which we may have attained from being placed along with
others in a general system. But the propositions of the antithesis
are of a character which renders the completion of an edifice of
cognitions impossible. According to these, beyond one state or epoch
of the world there is always to be found one more ancient; in every
part always other parts themselves divisible; preceding every event
another, the origin of which must itself be sought still higher; and
everything in existence is conditioned, and still not dependent on
an unconditioned and primal existence. As, therefore, the antithesis
will not concede the existence of a first beginning which might be
available as a foundation, a complete edifice of cognition, in the
presence of such hypothesis, is utterly impossible. Thus the
architectonic interest of reason, which requires a unity--not
empirical, but a priori and rational--forms a natural recommendation
for the assertions of the thesis in our antinomy.

But if any one could free himself entirely from all considerations
of interest, and weigh without partiality the assertions of reason,
attending only to their content, irrespective of the consequences
which follow from them; such a person, on the supposition that he knew
no other way out of the confusion than to settle the truth of one or
other of the conflicting doctrines, would live in a state of continual
hesitation. Today, he would feel convinced that the human will is
free; to-morrow, considering the indissoluble chain of nature, he
would look on freedom as a mere illusion and declare nature to be
all-in-all. But, if he were called to action, the play of the merely
speculative reason would disappear like the shapes of a dream, and
practical interest would dictate his choice of principles. But, as
it well befits a reflective and inquiring being to devote certain
periods of time to the examination of its own reason--to divest itself
of all partiality, and frankly to communicate its observations for
the judgement and opinion of others; so no one can be blamed for, much
less prevented from, placing both parties on their trial, with
permission to end themselves, free from intimidation, before
intimidation, before a sworn jury of equal condition with
themselves--the condition of weak and fallible men.

SECTION IV. Of the necessity imposed upon Pure Reason of presenting a Solution of its Transcendental Problems.

To avow an ability to solve all problems and to answer all questions
would be a profession certain to convict any philosopher of
extravagant boasting and self-conceit, and at once to destroy the
confidence that might otherwise have been reposed in him. There are,
however, sciences so constituted that every question arising within
their sphere must necessarily be capable of receiving an answer from
the knowledge already possessed, for the answer must be received
from the same sources whence the question arose. In such sciences it
is not allowable to excuse ourselves on the plea of necessary and
unavoidable ignorance; a solution is absolutely requisite. The rule
of right and wrong must help us to the knowledge of what is right or
wrong in all possible cases; otherwise, the idea of obligation or duty
would be utterly null, for we cannot have any obligation to that which
we cannot know. On the other hand, in our investigations of the
phenomena of nature, much must remain uncertain, and many questions
continue insoluble; because what we know of nature is far from being
sufficient to explain all the phenomena that are presented to our
observation. Now the question is: Whether there is in
transcendental philosophy any question, relating to an object
presented to pure reason, which is unanswerable by this reason; and
whether we must regard the subject of the question as quite uncertain,
so far as our knowledge extends, and must give it a place among
those subjects, of which we have just so much conception as is
sufficient to enable us to raise a question--faculty or materials
failing us, however, when we attempt an answer.

Now I maintain that, among all speculative cognition, the
peculiarity of transcendental philosophy is that there is no question,
relating to an object presented to pure reason, which is insoluble
by this reason; and that the profession of unavoidable ignorance-
the problem being alleged to be beyond the reach of our faculties-
cannot free us from the obligation to present a complete and
satisfactory answer. For the very conception which enables us to raise
the question must give us the power of answering it; inasmuch as the
object, as in the case of right and wrong, is not to be discovered
out of the conception.

But, in transcendental philosophy, it is only the cosmological
questions to which we can demand a satisfactory answer in relation
to the constitution of their object; and the philosopher is not
permitted to avail himself of the pretext of necessary ignorance and
impenetrable obscurity. These questions relate solely to the
cosmological ideas. For the object must be given in experience, and
the question relates to the adequateness of the object to an idea.
If the object is transcendental and therefore itself unknown; if the
question, for example, is whether the object--the something, the
phenomenon of which (internal--in ourselves) is thought--that is to
say, the soul, is in itself a simple being; or whether there is a
cause of all things, which is absolutely necessary--in such cases we
are seeking for our idea an object, of which we may confess that it
is unknown to us, though we must not on that account assert that it
is impossible.* The cosmological ideas alone posses the peculiarity
that we can presuppose the object of them and the empirical
synthesis requisite for the conception of that object to be given;
and the question, which arises from these ideas, relates merely to
the progress of this synthesis, in so far as it must contain absolute
totality--which, however, is not empirical, as it cannot be given in
any experience. Now, as the question here is solely in regard to a
thing as the object of a possible experience and not as a thing in
itself, the answer to the transcendental cosmological question need
not be sought out of the idea, for the question does not regard an
object in itself. The question in relation to a possible experience
is not, "What can be given in an experience in concreto" but "what
is contained in the idea, to which the empirical synthesis must
approximate." The question must therefore be capable of solution
from the idea alone. For the idea is a creation of reason itself,
which therefore cannot disclaim the obligation to answer or refer us
to the unknown object.

[*Footnote: The question, "What is the constitution of a transcendental
object?" is unanswerable--we are unable to say what it is; but we
can perceive that the question itself is nothing; because it does
not relate to any object that can be presented to us. For this reason,
we must consider all the questions raised in transcendental psychology
as answerable and as really answered; for they relate to the
transcendental subject of all internal phenomena, which is not
itself phenomenon and consequently not given as an object, in which,
moreover, none of the categories--and it is to them that the
question is properly directed--find any conditions of its application.
Here, therefore, is a case where no answer is the only proper
answer. For a question regarding the constitution of a something which
cannot be cogitated by any determined predicate, being completely
beyond the sphere of objects and experience, is perfectly null and
void.]

It is not so extraordinary, as it at first sight appears, that a
science should demand and expect satisfactory answers to all the
questions that may arise within its own sphere (questiones
domesticae), although, up to a certain time, these answers may not
have been discovered. There are, in addition to transcendental
philosophy, only two pure sciences of reason; the one with a
speculative, the other with a practical content--pure mathematics
and pure ethics. Has any one ever heard it alleged that, from our
complete and necessary ignorance of the conditions, it is uncertain
what exact relation the diameter of a circle bears to the circle in
rational or irrational numbers? By the former the sum cannot be
given exactly, by the latter only approximately; and therefore we
decide that the impossibility of a solution of the question is
evident. Lambert presented us with a demonstration of this. In the
general principles of morals there can be nothing uncertain, for the
propositions are either utterly without meaning, or must originate
solely in our rational conceptions. On the other hand, there must be
in physical science an infinite number of conjectures, which can never
become certainties; because the phenomena of nature are not given as
objects dependent on our conceptions. The key to the solution of
such questions cannot, therefore, be found in our conceptions, or in
pure thought, but must lie without us and for that reason is in many
cases not to be discovered; and consequently a satisfactory
explanation cannot be expected. The questions of transcendental
analytic, which relate to the deduction of our pure cognition, are
not to be regarded as of the same kind as those mentioned above; for
we are not at present treating of the certainty of judgements in relation
to the origin of our conceptions, but only of that certainty in
relation to objects.

We cannot, therefore, escape the responsibility of at least a
critical solution of the questions of reason, by complaints of the
limited nature of our faculties, and the seemingly humble confession
that it is beyond the power of our reason to decide, whether the world
has existed from all eternity or had a beginning--whether it is
infinitely extended, or enclosed within certain limits--whether
anything in the world is simple, or whether everything must be capable
of infinite divisibility--whether freedom can originate phenomena,
or whether everything is absolutely dependent on the laws and order
of nature--and, finally, whether there exists a being that is
completely unconditioned and necessary, or whether the existence of
everything is conditioned and consequently dependent on something
external to itself, and therefore in its own nature contingent. For
all these questions relate to an object, which can be given nowhere
else than in thought. This object is the absolutely unconditioned
totality of the synthesis of phenomena. If the conceptions in our
minds do not assist us to some certain result in regard to these
problems, we must not defend ourselves on the plea that the object
itself remains hidden from and unknown to us. For no such thing or
object can be given--it is not to be found out of the idea in our
minds. We must seek the cause of our failure in our idea itself, which
is an insoluble problem and in regard to which we obstinately assume
that there exists a real object corresponding and adequate to it. A
clear explanation of the dialectic which lies in our conception,
will very soon enable us to come to a satisfactory decision in
regard to such a question.

The pretext that we are unable to arrive at certainty in regard to
these problems may be met with this question, which requires at
least a plain answer: "From what source do the ideas originate, the
solution of which involves you in such difficulties? Are you seeking
for an explanation of certain phenomena; and do you expect these ideas
to give you the principles or the rules of this explanation?" Let it
be granted, that all nature was laid open before you; that nothing
was hid from your senses and your consciousness. Still, you could not
cognize in concreto the object of your ideas in any experience. For
what is demanded is not only this full and complete intuition, but
also a complete synthesis and the consciousness of its absolute
totality; and this is not possible by means of any empirical
cognition. It follows that your question--your idea--is by no means
necessary for the explanation of any phenomenon; and the idea cannot
have been in any sense given by the object itself. For such an
object can never be presented to us, because it cannot be given by
any possible experience. Whatever perceptions you may attain to, you
are still surrounded by conditions--in space, or in time--and you cannot
discover anything unconditioned; nor can you decide whether this
unconditioned is to be placed in an absolute beginning of the
synthesis, or in an absolute totality of the series without beginning.
A whole, in the empirical signification of the term, is always
merely comparative. The absolute whole of quantity (the universe),
of division, of derivation, of the condition of existence, with the
question--whether it is to be produced by finite or infinite
synthesis, no possible experience can instruct us concerning. You will
not, for example, be able to explain the phenomena of a body in the
least degree better, whether you believe it to consist of simple, or
of composite parts; for a simple phenomenon--and just as little an
infinite series of composition--can never be presented to your
perception. Phenomena require and admit of explanation, only in so
far as the conditions of that explanation are given in perception;
but the sum total of that which is given in phenomena, considered as
an absolute whole, is itself a perception--and we cannot therefore
seek for explanations of this whole beyond itself, in other perceptions.
The explanation of this whole is the proper object of the
transcendental problems of pure reason.

Although, therefore, the solution of these problems is
unattainable through experience, we must not permit ourselves to say
that it is uncertain how the object of our inquiries is constituted.
For the object is in our own mind and cannot be discovered in
experience; and we have only to take care that our thoughts are
consistent with each other, and to avoid falling into the amphiboly
of regarding our idea as a representation of an object empirically
given, and therefore to be cognized according to the laws of experience.
A dogmatical solution is therefore not only unsatisfactory but
impossible. The critical solution, which may be a perfectly certain
one, does not consider the question objectively, but proceeds by
inquiring into the basis of the cognition upon which the question
rests.

SECTION V. Sceptical Exposition of the Cosmological Problems presented in the four Transcendental Ideas.

We should be quite willing to desist from the demand of a dogmatical
answer to our questions, if we understood beforehand that, be the
answer what it may, it would only serve to increase our ignorance,
to throw us from one incomprehensibility into another, from one
obscurity into another still greater, and perhaps lead us into
irreconcilable contradictions. If a dogmatical affirmative or negative
answer is demanded, is it at all prudent to set aside the probable
grounds of a solution which lie before us and to take into
consideration what advantage we shall gain, if the answer is to favour
the one side or the other? If it happens that in both cases the answer
is mere nonsense, we have in this an irresistible summons to institute
a critical investigation of the question, for the purpose of
discovering whether it is based on a groundless presupposition and
relates to an idea, the falsity of which would be more easily
exposed in its application and consequences than in the mere
representation of its content. This is the great utility of the
sceptical mode of treating the questions addressed by pure reason to
itself. By this method we easily rid ourselves of the confusions of
dogmatism, and establish in its place a temperate criticism, which,
as a genuine cathartic, will successfully remove the presumptuous notions
of philosophy and their consequence--the vain pretension to
universal science.

If, then, I could understand the nature of a cosmological idea and
perceive, before I entered on the discussion of the subject at all,
that, whatever side of the question regarding the unconditioned of
the regressive synthesis of phenomena it favoured--it must either be
too great or too small for every conception of the understanding--I
would be able to comprehend how the idea, which relates to an object
of experience--an experience which must be adequate to and in
accordance with a possible conception of the understanding--must be
completely void and without significance, inasmuch as its object is
inadequate, consider it as we may. And this is actually the case
with all cosmological conceptions, which, for the reason above
mentioned, involve reason, so long as it remains attached to them,
in an unavoidable antinomy. For suppose:

First, that the world has no beginning--in this case it is too large
for our conception; for this conception, which consists in a
successive regress, cannot overtake the whole eternity that has
elapsed. Grant that it has a beginning, it is then too small for the
conception of the understanding. For, as a beginning presupposes a
time preceding, it cannot be unconditioned; and the law of the
empirical employment of the understanding imposes the necessity of
looking for a higher condition of time; and the world is, therefore,
evidently too small for this law.

The same is the case with the double answer to the question
regarding the extent, in space, of the world. For, if it is infinite
and unlimited, it must be too large for every possible empirical
conception. If it is finite and limited, we have a right to ask: "What
determines these limits?" Void space is not a self-subsistent
correlate of things, and cannot be a final condition--and still less
an empirical condition, forming a part of a possible experience. For
how can we have any experience or perception of an absolute void?
But the absolute totality of the empirical synthesis requires that
the unconditioned be an empirical conception. Consequently, a finite
world is too small for our conception.

Secondly, if every phenomenon (matter) in space consists of an
infinite number of parts, the regress of the division is always too
great for our conception; and if the division of space must cease with
some member of the division (the simple), it is too small for the idea
of the unconditioned. For the member at which we have discontinued
our division still admits a regress to many more parts contained in
the object.

Thirdly, suppose that every event in the world happens in accordance
with the laws of nature; the causality of a cause must itself be an
event and necessitates a regress to a still higher cause, and
consequently the unceasing prolongation of the series of conditions
a parte priori. Operative nature is therefore too large for every
conception we can form in the synthesis of cosmical events.

If we admit the existence of spontaneously produced events, that is,
of free agency, we are driven, in our search for sufficient reasons,
on an unavoidable law of nature and are compelled to appeal to the
empirical law of causality, and we find that any such totality of
connection in our synthesis is too small for our necessary empirical
conception.

Fourthly, if we assume the existence of an absolutely necessary
being--whether it be the world or something in the world, or the cause
of the world--we must place it in a time at an infinite distance
from any given moment; for, otherwise, it must be dependent on some
other and higher existence. Such an existence is, in this case, too
large for our empirical conception, and unattainable by the
continued regress of any synthesis.

But if we believe that everything in the world--be it condition or
conditioned--is contingent; every given existence is too small for
our conception. For in this case we are compelled to seek for some
other existence upon which the former depends.

We have said that in all these cases the cosmological idea is either
too great or too small for the empirical regress in a synthesis, and
consequently for every possible conception of the understanding. Why
did we not express ourselves in a manner exactly the reverse of this
and, instead of accusing the cosmological idea of over stepping or
of falling short of its true aim, possible experience, say that, in
the first case, the empirical conception is always too small for the
idea, and in the second too great, and thus attach the blame of
these contradictions to the empirical regress? The reason is this.
Possible experience can alone give reality to our conceptions; without
it a conception is merely an idea, without truth or relation to an
object. Hence a possible empirical conception must be the standard
by which we are to judge whether an idea is anything more than an idea
and fiction of thought, or whether it relates to an object in the
world. If we say of a thing that in relation to some other thing it
is too large or too small, the former is considered as existing for
the sake of the latter, and requiring to be adapted to it. Among the
trivial subjects of discussion in the old schools of dialectics was
this question: "If a ball cannot pass through a hole, shall we say
that the ball is too large or the hole too small?" In this case it
is indifferent what expression we employ; for we do not know which
exists for the sake of the other. On the other hand, we cannot say:
"The man is too long for his coat"; but: "The coat is too short for
the man."

We are thus led to the well-founded suspicion that the
cosmological ideas, and all the conflicting sophistical assertions
connected with them, are based upon a false and fictitious
conception of the mode in which the object of these ideas is presented
to us; and this suspicion will probably direct us how to expose the
illusion that has so long led us astray from the truth.

SECTION VI. Transcendental Idealism as the Key to the Solution of Pure Cosmological Dialectic.

In the transcendental aesthetic we proved that everything intuited
in space and time, all objects of a possible experience, are nothing
but phenomena, that is, mere representations; and that these, as
presented to us--as extended bodies, or as series of changes--have
no self-subsistent existence apart from human thought. This doctrine
I call Transcendental Idealism.* The realist in the transcendental
sense regards these modifications of our sensibility, these mere
representations, as things subsisting in themselves.

[*Footnote: I have elsewhere termed this theory formal idealism, to
distinguish it from material idealism, which doubts or denies the
existence of external things. To avoid ambiguity, it seems advisable
in many cases to employ this term instead of that mentioned in the text.]

It would be unjust to accuse us of holding the long-decried theory
of empirical idealism, which, while admitting the reality of space,
denies, or at least doubts, the existence of bodies extended in it,
and thus leaves us without a sufficient criterion of reality and
illusion. The supporters of this theory find no difficulty in
admitting the reality of the phenomena of the internal sense in
time; nay, they go the length of maintaining that this internal
experience is of itself a sufficient proof of the real existence of
its object as a thing in itself.

Transcendental idealism allows that the objects of external
intuition--as intuited in space, and all changes in time--as
represented by the internal sense, are real. For, as space is the form
of that intuition which we call external, and, without objects in
space, no empirical representation could be given us, we can and ought
to regard extended bodies in it as real. The case is the same with
representations in time. But time and space, with all phenomena
therein, are not in themselves things. They are nothing but
representations and cannot exist out of and apart from the mind.
Nay, the sensuous internal intuition of the mind (as the object of
consciousness), the determination of which is represented by the
succession of different states in time, is not the real, proper
self, as it exists in itself--not the transcendental subject--but only
a phenomenon, which is presented to the sensibility of this, to us,
unknown being. This internal phenomenon cannot be admitted to be a
self-subsisting thing; for its condition is time, and time cannot be
the condition of a thing in itself. But the empirical truth of
phenomena in space and time is guaranteed beyond the possibility of
doubt, and sufficiently distinguished from the illusion of dreams or
fancy--although both have a proper and thorough connection in an
experience according to empirical laws. The objects of experience then
are not things in themselves, but are given only in experience, and
have no existence apart from and independently of experience. That
there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever
observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means
only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them
at some future time. For that which stands in connection with a
perception according to the laws of the progress of experience is
real. They are therefore really existent, if they stand in empirical
connection with my actual or real consciousness, although they are
not in themselves real, that is, apart from the progress of experience.

There is nothing actually given--we can be conscious of nothing as
real, except a perception and the empirical progression from it to
other possible perceptions. For phenomena, as mere representations,
are real only in perception; and perception is, in fact, nothing but
the reality of an empirical representation, that is, a phenomenon.
To call a phenomenon a real thing prior to perception means either
that we must meet with this phenomenon in the progress of
experience, or it means nothing at all. For I can say only of a
thing in itself that it exists without relation to the senses and
experience. But we are speaking here merely of phenomena in space
and time, both of which are determinations of sensibility, and not
of things in themselves. It follows that phenomena are not things in
themselves, but are mere representations, which if not given in us--in
perception--are non-existent.

The faculty of sensuous intuition is properly a receptivity--a
capacity of being affected in a certain manner by representations,
the relation of which to each other is a pure intuition of space and
time--the pure forms of sensibility. These representations, in so far
as they are connected and determinable in this relation (in space and
time) according to laws of the unity of experience, are called
objects. The non-sensuous cause of these representations is completely
unknown to us and hence cannot be intuited as an object. For such an
object could not be represented either in space or in time; and
without these conditions intuition or representation is impossible.
We may, at the same time, term the non-sensuous cause of phenomena
the transcendental object--but merely as a mental correlate to
sensibility, considered as a receptivity. To this transcendental
object we may attribute the whole connection and extent of our
possible perceptions, and say that it is given and exists in itself
prior to all experience. But the phenomena, corresponding to it, are
not given as things in themselves, but in experience alone. For they
are mere representations, receiving from perceptions alone
significance and relation to a real object, under the condition that
this or that perception--indicating an object--is in complete
connection with all others in accordance with the rules of the unity
of experience. Thus we can say: "The things that really existed in
past time are given in the transcendental object of experience." But
these are to me real objects, only in so far as I can represent to
my own mind, that a regressive series of possible perceptions-
following the indications of history, or the footsteps of cause and
effect--in accordance with empirical laws--that, in one word, the
course of the world conducts us to an elapsed series of time as the
condition of the present time. This series in past time is represented
as real, not in itself, but only in connection with a possible
experience. Thus, when I say that certain events occurred in past
time, I merely assert the possibility of prolonging the chain of
experience, from the present perception, upwards to the conditions
that determine it according to time.

If I represent to myself all objects existing in all space and time,
I do not thereby place these in space and time prior to all
experience; on the contrary, such a representation is nothing more
than the notion of a possible experience, in its absolute
completeness. In experience alone are those objects, which are nothing
but representations, given. But, when I say they existed prior to my
experience, this means only that I must begin with the perception
present to me and follow the track indicated until I discover them
in some part or region of experience. The cause of the empirical
condition of this progression--and consequently at what member therein
I must stop, and at what point in the regress I am to find this
member--is transcendental, and hence necessarily incognizable. But
with this we have not to do; our concern is only with the law of
progression in experience, in which objects, that is, phenomena, are
given. It is a matter of indifference, whether I say, "I may in the
progress of experience discover stars, at a hundred times greater
distance than the most distant of those now visible," or, "Stars at
this distance may be met in space, although no one has, or ever will
discover them." For, if they are given as things in themselves,
without any relation to possible experience, they are for me
non-existent, consequently, are not objects, for they are not
contained in the regressive series of experience. But, if these
phenomena must be employed in the construction or support of the
cosmological idea of an absolute whole, and when we are discussing
a question that oversteps the limits of possible experience, the
proper distinction of the different theories of the reality of
sensuous objects is of great importance, in order to avoid the
illusion which must necessarily arise from the misinterpretation of
our empirical conceptions.

SECTION VII. Critical Solution of the Cosmological Problem.

The antinomy of pure reason is based upon the following
dialectical argument: "If that which is conditioned is given, the
whole series of its conditions is also given; but sensuous objects
are given as conditioned; consequently..." This syllogism, the major
of which seems so natural and evident, introduces as many cosmological
ideas as there are different kinds of conditions in the synthesis of
phenomena, in so far as these conditions constitute a series. These
ideas require absolute totality in the series, and thus place reason
in inextricable embarrassment. Before proceeding to expose the fallacy
in this dialectical argument, it will be necessary to have a correct
understanding of certain conceptions that appear in it.

In the first place, the following proposition is evident, and
indubitably certain: "If the conditioned is given, a regress in the
series of all its conditions is thereby imperatively required." For
the very conception of a conditioned is a conception of something
related to a condition, and, if this condition is itself
conditioned, to another condition--and so on through all the members
of the series. This proposition is, therefore, analytical and has
nothing to fear from transcendental criticism. It is a logical
postulate of reason: to pursue, as far as possible, the connection
of a conception with its conditions.

If, in the second place, both the conditioned and the condition
are things in themselves, and if the former is given, not only is
the regress to the latter requisite, but the latter is really given
with the former. Now, as this is true of all the members of the
series, the entire series of conditions, and with them the
unconditioned, is at the same time given in the very fact of the
conditioned, the existence of which is possible only in and through
that series, being given. In this case, the synthesis of the
conditioned with its condition, is a synthesis of the understanding
merely, which represents things as they are, without regarding whether
and how we can cognize them. But if I have to do with phenomena,
which, in their character of mere representations, are not given, if
I do not attain to a cognition of them (in other words, to themselves,
for they are nothing more than empirical cognitions), I am not
entitled to say: "If the conditioned is given, all its conditions
(as phenomena) are also given." I cannot, therefore, from the fact
of a conditioned being given, infer the absolute totality of the
series of its conditions. For phenomena are nothing but an empirical
synthesis in apprehension or perception, and are therefore given
only in it. Now, in speaking of phenomena it does not follow that,
if the conditioned is given, the synthesis which constitutes its
empirical condition is also thereby given and presupposed; such a
synthesis can be established only by an actual regress in the series
of conditions. But we are entitled to say in this case that a
regress to the conditions of a conditioned, in other words, that a
continuous empirical synthesis is enjoined; that, if the conditions
are not given, they are at least required; and that we are certain
to discover the conditions in this regress.

We can now see that the major, in the above cosmological
syllogism, takes the conditioned in the transcendental signification
which it has in the pure category, while the minor speaks of it in
the empirical signification which it has in the category as applied
to phenomena. There is, therefore, a dialectical fallacy in the
syllogism--a sophisma figurae dictionis. But this fallacy is not a
consciously devised one, but a perfectly natural illusion of the
common reason of man. For, when a thing is given as conditioned, we
presuppose in the major its conditions and their series,
unperceived, as it were, and unseen; because this is nothing more than
the logical requirement of complete and satisfactory premisses for
a given conclusion. In this case, time is altogether left out in the
connection of the conditioned with the condition; they are supposed
to be given in themselves, and contemporaneously. It is, moreover,
just as natural to regard phenomena (in the minor) as things in
themselves and as objects presented to the pure understanding, as in
the major, in which complete abstraction was made of all conditions
of intuition. But it is under these conditions alone that objects are
given. Now we overlooked a remarkable distinction between the
conceptions. The synthesis of the conditioned with its condition,
and the complete series of the latter (in the major) are not limited
by time, and do not contain the conception of succession. On the
contrary, the empirical synthesis and the series of conditions in
the phenomenal world--subsumed in the minor--are necessarily
successive and given in time alone. It follows that I cannot
presuppose in the minor, as I did in the major, the absolute
totality of the synthesis and of the series therein represented; for
in the major all the members of the series are given as things in
themselves--without any limitations or conditions of time, while in
the minor they are possible only in and through a successive
regress, which cannot exist, except it be actually carried into
execution in the world of phenomena.

After this proof of the viciousness of the argument commonly
employed in maintaining cosmological assertions, both parties may
now be justly dismissed, as advancing claims without grounds or title.
But the process has not been ended by convincing them that one or both
were in the wrong and had maintained an assertion which was without
valid grounds of proof. Nothing seems to be clearer than that, if
one maintains: "The world has a beginning," and another: "The world
has no beginning," one of the two must be right. But it is likewise
clear that, if the evidence on both sides is equal, it is impossible
to discover on what side the truth lies; and the controversy
continues, although the parties have been recommended to peace
before the tribunal of reason. There remains, then, no other means
of settling the question than to convince the parties, who refute each
other with such conclusiveness and ability, that they are disputing
about nothing, and that a transcendental illusion has been mocking
them with visions of reality where there is none. The mode of
adjusting a dispute which cannot be decided upon its own merits, we
shall now proceed to lay before our readers.

Zeno of Elea, a subtle dialectician, was severely reprimanded by
Plato as a sophist, who, merely from the base motive of exhibiting
his skill in discussion, maintained and subverted the same proposition
by arguments as powerful and convincing on the one side as on the
other. He maintained, for example, that God (who was probably
nothing more, in his view, than the world) is neither finite nor
infinite, neither in motion nor in rest, neither similar nor
dissimilar to any other thing. It seemed to those philosophers who
criticized his mode of discussion that his purpose was to deny
completely both of two self-contradictory propositions--which is
absurd. But I cannot believe that there is any justice in this
accusation. The first of these propositions I shall presently consider
in a more detailed manner. With regard to the others, if by the word
of God he understood merely the Universe, his meaning must have
been--that it cannot be permanently present in one place--that is,
at rest--nor be capable of changing its place--that is, of moving-
because all places are in the universe, and the universe itself is,
therefore, in no place. Again, if the universe contains in itself
everything that exists, it cannot be similar or dissimilar to any
other thing, because there is, in fact, no other thing with which it
can be compared. If two opposite judgements presuppose a contingent
impossible, or arbitrary condition, both--in spite of their opposition
(which is, however, not properly or really a contradiction)--fall
away; because the condition, which ensured the validity of both, has
itself disappeared.

If we say: "Everybody has either a good or a bad smell," we have
omitted a third possible judgement--it has no smell at all; and thus
both conflicting statements may be false. If we say: "It is either
good-smelling or not good-smelling (vel suaveolens vel
non-suaveolens)," both judgements are contradictorily opposed; and
the contradictory opposite of the former judgement--some bodies are
not good-smelling--embraces also those bodies which have no smell at
all. In the preceding pair of opposed judgements (per disparata),
the contingent condition of the conception of body (smell) attached
to both conflicting statements, instead of having been omitted in the
latter, which is consequently not the contradictory opposite of the
former.

If, accordingly, we say: "The world is either infinite in extension,
or it is not infinite (non est infinitus)"; and if the former
proposition is false, its contradictory opposite--the world is not
infinite--must be true. And thus I should deny the existence of an
infinite, without, however affirming the existence of a finite
world. But if we construct our proposition thus: "The world is
either infinite or finite (non-infinite)," both statements may be
false. For, in this case, we consider the world as per se determined
in regard to quantity, and while, in the one judgement, we deny its
infinite and consequently, perhaps, its independent existence; in
the other, we append to the world, regarded as a thing in itself, a
certain determination--that of finitude; and the latter may be false
as well as the former, if the world is not given as a thing in itself,
and thus neither as finite nor as infinite in quantity. This kind of
opposition I may be allowed to term dialectical; that of
contradictories may be called analytical opposition. Thus then, of
two dialectically opposed judgements both may be false, from the fact,
that the one is not a mere contradictory of the other, but actually
enounces more than is requisite for a full and complete contradiction.

When we regard the two propositions--"The world is infinite in
quantity," and, "The world is finite in quantity," as contradictory
opposites, we are assuming that the world--the complete series of
phenomena--is a thing in itself. For it remains as a permanent
quantity, whether I deny the infinite or the finite regress in the
series of its phenomena. But if we dismiss this assumption--this
transcendental illusion--and deny that it is a thing in itself, the
contradictory opposition is metamorphosed into a merely dialectical
one; and the world, as not existing in itself--independently of the
regressive series of my representations--exists in like manner neither
as a whole which is infinite nor as a whole which is finite in itself.
The universe exists for me only in the empirical regress of the series
of phenomena and not per se. If, then, it is always conditioned, it
is never completely or as a whole; and it is, therefore, not an
unconditioned whole and does not exist as such, either with an
infinite, or with a finite quantity.

What we have here said of the first cosmological idea--that of the
absolute totality of quantity in phenomena--applies also to the
others. The series of conditions is discoverable only in the
regressive synthesis itself, and not in the phenomenon considered as
a thing in itself--given prior to all regress. Hence I am compelled
to say: "The aggregate of parts in a given phenomenon is in itself
neither finite nor infinite; and these parts are given only in the
regressive synthesis of decomposition--a synthesis which is never
given in absolute completeness, either as finite, or as infinite."
The same is the case with the series of subordinated causes, or of
the conditioned up to the unconditioned and necessary existence, which
can never be regarded as in itself, ind in its totality, either as
finite or as infinite; because, as a series of subordinate
representations, it subsists only in the dynamical regress and
cannot be regarded as existing previously to this regress, or as a
self-subsistent series of things.

Thus the antinomy of pure reason in its cosmological ideas
disappears. For the above demonstration has established the fact
that it is merely the product of a dialectical and illusory
opposition, which arises from the application of the idea of
absolute totality--admissible only as a condition of things in
themselves--to phenomena, which exist only in our representations,
and--when constituting a series--in a successive regress. This
antinomy of reason may, however, be really profitable to our
speculative interests, not in the way of contributing any dogmatical
addition, but as presenting to us another material support in our
critical investigations. For it furnishes us with an indirect proof
of the transcendental ideality of phenomena, if our minds were not
completely satisfied with the direct proof set forth in the
Trancendental Aesthetic. The proof would proceed in the following
dilemma. If the world is a whole existing in itself, it must be either
finite or infinite. But it is neither finite nor infinite--as has been
shown, on the one side, by the thesis, on the other, by the
antithesis. Therefore the world--the content of all phenomena--is
not a whole existing in itself. It follows that phenomena are nothing,
apart from our representations. And this is what we mean by
transcendental ideality.

This remark is of some importance. It enables us to see that the
proofs of the fourfold antinomy are not mere sophistries--are not
fallacious, but grounded on the nature of reason, and valid--under
the supposition that phenomena are things in themselves. The opposition
of the judgements which follow makes it evident that a fallacy lay
in the initial supposition, and thus helps us to discover the true
constitution of objects of sense. This transcendental dialectic does
not favour scepticism, although it presents us with a triumphant
demonstration of the advantages of the sceptical method, the great
utility of which is apparent in the antinomy, where the arguments of
reason were allowed to confront each other in undiminished force.
And although the result of these conflicts of reason is not what we
expected--although we have obtained no positive dogmatical addition
to metaphysical science--we have still reaped a great advantage in
the correction of our judgements on these subjects of thought.

SECTION VIII. Regulative Principle of Pure Reason in relation to the Cosmological Ideas.

The cosmological principle of totality could not give us any certain
knowledge in regard to the maximum in the series of conditions in
the world of sense, considered as a thing in itself. The actual
regress in the series is the only means of approaching this maximum.
This principle of pure reason, therefore, may still be considered as
valid--not as an axiom enabling us to cogitate totality in the
object as actual, but as a problem for the understanding, which
requires it to institute and to continue, in conformity with the
idea of totality in the mind, the regress in the series of the
conditions of a given conditioned. For in the world of sense, that
is, in space and time, every condition which we discover in our
investigation of phenomena is itself conditioned; because sensuous
objects are not things in themselves (in which case an absolutely
unconditioned might be reached in the progress of cognition), but
are merely empirical representations the conditions of which must
always be found in intuition. The principle of reason is therefore
properly a mere rule--prescribing a regress in the series of
conditions for given phenomena, and prohibiting any pause or rest on
an absolutely unconditioned. It is, therefore, not a principle of
the possibility of experience or of the empirical cognition of
sensuous objects--consequently not a principle of the understanding;
for every experience is confined within certain proper limits
determined by the given intuition. Still less is it a constitutive
principle of reason authorizing us to extend our conception of the
sensuous world beyond all possible experience. It is merely a
principle for the enlargement and extension of experience as far as
is possible for human faculties. It forbids us to consider any
empirical limits as absolute. It is, hence, a principle of reason,
which, as a rule, dictates how we ought to proceed in our empirical
regress, but is unable to anticipate or indicate prior to the
empirical regress what is given in the object itself. I have termed
it for this reason a regulative principle of reason; while the
principle of the absolute totality of the series of conditions, as
existing in itself and given in the object, is a constitutive
cosmological principle. This distinction will at once demonstrate
the falsehood of the constitutive principle, and prevent us from
attributing (by a transcendental subreptio) objective reality to an
idea, which is valid only as a rule.

In order to understand the proper meaning of this rule of pure
reason, we must notice first that it cannot tell us what the object
is, but only how the empirical regress is to be proceeded with in
order to attain to the complete conception of the object. If it gave
us any information in respect to the former statement, it would be
a constitutive principle--a principle impossible from the nature of
pure reason. It will not therefore enable us to establish any such
conclusions as: "The series of conditions for a given conditioned is
in itself finite," or, "It is infinite." For, in this case, we
should be cogitating in the mere idea of absolute totality, an
object which is not and cannot be given in experience; inasmuch as
we should be attributing a reality objective and independent of the
empirical synthesis, to a series of phenomena. This idea of reason
cannot then be regarded as valid--except as a rule for the
regressive synthesis in the series of conditions, according to which
we must proceed from the conditioned, through all intermediate and
subordinate conditions, up to the unconditioned; although this goal
is unattained and unattainable. For the absolutely unconditioned cannot
be discovered in the sphere of experience.

We now proceed to determine clearly our notion of a synthesis
which can never be complete. There are two terms commonly employed
for this purpose. These terms are regarded as expressions of different
and distinguishable notions, although the ground of the distinction
has never been clearly exposed. The term employed by the mathematicians
is progressus in infinitum. The philosophers prefer the expression
progressus in indefinitum. Without detaining the reader with an
examination of the reasons for such a distinction, or with remarks
on the right or wrong use of the terms, I shall endeavour clearly to
determine these conceptions, so far as is necessary for the purpose
in this Critique.

We may, with propriety, say of a straight line, that it may be
produced to infinity. In this case the distinction between a
progressus in infinitum and a progressus in indefinitum is a mere
piece of subtlety. For, although when we say, "Produce a straight
line," it is more correct to say in indefinitum than in infinitum;
because the former means, "Produce it as far as you please," the
second, "You must not cease to produce it"; the expression in
infinitum is, when we are speaking of the power to do it, perfectly
correct, for we can always make it longer if we please--on to
infinity. And this remark holds good in all cases, when we speak of
a progressus, that is, an advancement from the condition to the
conditioned; this possible advancement always proceeds to infinity.
We may proceed from a given pair in the descending line of generation
from father to son, and cogitate a never-ending line of descendants
from it. For in such a case reason does not demand absolute totality
in the series, because it does not presuppose it as a condition and
as given (datum), but merely as conditioned, and as capable of being
given (dabile).

Very different is the case with the problem: "How far the regress,
which ascends from the given conditioned to the conditions, must
extend"; whether I can say: "It is a regress in infinitum," or only
"in indefinitum"; and whether, for example, setting out from the human
beings at present alive in the world, I may ascend in the series of
their ancestors, in infinitum--or whether all that can be said is,
that so far as I have proceeded, I have discovered no empirical ground
for considering the series limited, so that I am justified, and
indeed, compelled to search for ancestors still further back, although
I am not obliged by the idea of reason to presuppose them.

My answer to this question is: "If the series is given in
empirical intuition as a whole, the regress in the series of its
internal conditions proceeds in infinitum; but, if only one member
of the series is given, from which the regress is to proceed to
absolute totality, the regress is possible only in indefinitum." For
example, the division of a portion of matter given within certain
limits--of a body, that is--proceeds in infinitum. For, as the
condition of this whole is its part, and the condition of the part
a part of the part, and so on, and as in this regress of decomposition
an unconditioned indivisible member of the series of conditions is
not to be found; there are no reasons or grounds in experience for
stopping in the division, but, on the contrary, the more remote
members of the division are actually and empirically given prior to
this division. That is to say, the division proceeds to infinity. On
the other hand, the series of ancestors of any given human being is
not given, in its absolute totality, in any experience, and yet the
regress proceeds from every genealogical member of this series to
one still higher, and does not meet with any empirical limit
presenting an absolutely unconditioned member of the series. But as
the members of such a series are not contained in the empirical
intuition of the whole, prior to the regress, this regress does not
proceed to infinity, but only in indefinitum, that is, we are called
upon to discover other and higher members, which are themselves always
conditioned.

In neither case--the regressus in infinitum, nor the regressus in
indefinitum, is the series of conditions to be considered as
actually infinite in the object itself. This might be true of things
in themselves, but it cannot be asserted of phenomena, which, as
conditions of each other, are only given in the empirical regress
itself. Hence, the question no longer is, "What is the quantity of
this series of conditions in itself--is it finite or infinite?" for
it is nothing in itself; but, "How is the empirical regress to be
commenced, and how far ought we to proceed with it?" And here a signal
distinction in the application of this rule becomes apparent. If the
whole is given empirically, it is possible to recede in the series
of its internal conditions to infinity. But if the whole is not given,
and can only be given by and through the empirical regress, I can only
say: "It is possible to infinity, to proceed to still higher
conditions in the series." In the first case, I am justified in
asserting that more members are empirically given in the object than
I attain to in the regress (of decomposition). In the second case,
I am justified only in saying, that I can always proceed further in
the regress, because no member of the series is given as absolutely
conditioned, and thus a higher member is possible, and an inquiry with
regard to it is necessary. In the one case it is necessary to find
other members of the series, in the other it is necessary to inquire
for others, inasmuch as experience presents no absolute limitation
of the regress. For, either you do not possess a perception which
absolutely limits your empirical regress, and in this case the regress
cannot be regarded as complete; or, you do possess such a limitative
perception, in which case it is not a part of your series (for that
which limits must be distinct from that which is limited by it), and
it is incumbent you to continue your regress up to this condition,
and so on.

These remarks will be placed in their proper light by their
application in the following section.

SECTION IX. Of the Empirical Use of the Regulative Principle of Reason with regard to the Cosmological Ideas.

We have shown that no transcendental use can be made either of the
conceptions of reason or of understanding. We have shown, likewise,
that the demand of absolute totality in the series of conditions in
the world of sense arises from a transcendental employment of
reason, resting on the opinion that phenomena are to be regarded as
things in themselves. It follows that we are not required to answer
the question respecting the absolute quantity of a series--whether
it is in itself limited or unlimited. We are only called upon to
determine how far we must proceed in the empirical regress from
condition to condition, in order to discover, in conformity with the
rule of reason, a full and correct answer to the questions proposed
by reason itself.

This principle of reason is hence valid only as a rule for the
extension of a possible experience--its invalidity as a principle
constitutive of phenomena in themselves having been sufficiently
demonstrated. And thus, too, the antinomial conflict of reason with
itself is completely put an end to; inasmuch as we have not only
presented a critical solution of the fallacy lurking in the opposite
statements of reason, but have shown the true meaning of the ideas
which gave rise to these statements. The dialectical principle of
reason has, therefore, been changed into a doctrinal principle. But
in fact, if this principle, in the subjective signification which we
have shown to be its only true sense, may be guaranteed as a principle
of the unceasing extension of the employment of our understanding,
its influence and value are just as great as if it were an axiom for
the a priori determination of objects. For such an axiom could not
exert a stronger influence on the extension and rectification of our
knowledge, otherwise than by procuring for the principles of the
understanding the most widely expanded employment in the field of
experience.

I. Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Totality of the Composition of Phenomena in the Universe.

Here, as well as in the case of the other cosmological problems, the
ground of the regulative principle of reason is the proposition that
in our empirical regress no experience of an absolute limit, and
consequently no experience of a condition, which is itself
absolutely unconditioned, is discoverable. And the truth of this
proposition itself rests upon the consideration that such an
experience must represent to us phenomena as limited by nothing or
the mere void, on which our continued regress by means of perception
must abut--which is impossible.

Now this proposition, which declares that every condition attained
in the empirical regress must itself be considered empirically
conditioned, contains the rule in terminis, which requires me, to
whatever extent I may have proceeded in the ascending series, always
to look for some higher member in the series--whether this member is
to become known to me through experience, or not.

Nothing further is necessary, then, for the solution of the first
cosmological problem, than to decide, whether, in the regress to the
unconditioned quantity of the universe (as regards space and time),
this never limited ascent ought to be called a regressus in
infinitum or indefinitum.

The general representation which we form in our minds of the
series of all past states or conditions of the world, or of all the
things which at present exist in it, is itself nothing more than a
possible empirical regress, which is cogitated--although in an
undetermined manner--in the mind, and which gives rise to the
conception of a series of conditions for a given object.* Now I have
a conception of the universe, but not an intuition--that is, not an
intuition of it as a whole. Thus I cannot infer the magnitude of the
regress from the quantity or magnitude of the world, and determine
the former by means of the latter; on the contrary, I must first of
all form a conception of the quantity or magnitude of the world from
the magnitude of the empirical regress. But of this regress I know
nothing more than that I ought to proceed from every given member of
the series of conditions to one still higher. But the quantity of the
universe is not thereby determined, and we cannot affirm that this
regress proceeds in infinitum. Such an affirmation would anticipate
the members of the series which have not yet been reached, and
represent the number of them as beyond the grasp of any empirical
synthesis; it would consequently determine the cosmical quantity prior
to the regress (although only in a negative manner)--which is
impossible. For the world is not given in its totality in any
intuition: consequently, its quantity cannot be given prior to the
regress. It follows that we are unable to make any declaration
respecting the cosmical quantity in itself--not even that the
regress in it is a regress in infinitum; we must only endeavour to
attain to a conception of the quantity of the universe, in
conformity with the rule which determines the empirical regress in
it. But this rule merely requires us never to admit an absolute limit
to our series--how far soever we may have proceeded in it, but always,
on the contrary, to subordinate every phenomenon to some other as its
condition, and consequently to proceed to this higher phenomenon. Such
a regress is, therefore, the regressus in indefinitum, which, as not
determining a quantity in the object, is clearly distinguishable
from the regressus in infinitum.

[*Footnote: The cosmical series can neither be greater nor smaller
than the possible empirical regress, upon which its conception is based.
And as this regress cannot be a determinate infinite regress, still
less a determinate finite (absolutely limited), it is evident that
we cannot regard the world as either finite or infinite, because the
regress, which gives us the representation of the world, is neither
finite nor infinite.]

It follows from what we have said that we are not justified in
declaring the world to be infinite in space, or as regards past
time. For this conception of an infinite given quantity is
empirical; but we cannot apply the conception of an infinite
quantity to the world as an object of the senses. I cannot say, "The
regress from a given perception to everything limited either in
space or time, proceeds in infinitum," for this presupposes an
infinite cosmical quantity; neither can I say, "It is finite," for
an absolute limit is likewise impossible in experience. It follows
that I am not entitled to make any assertion at all respecting the
whole object of experience--the world of sense; I must limit my
declarations to the rule according to which experience or empirical
knowledge is to be attained.

To the question, therefore, respecting the cosmical quantity, the
first and negative answer is: "The world has no beginning in time,
and no absolute limit in space."

For, in the contrary case, it would be limited by a void time on the
one hand, and by a void space on the other. Now, since the world, as
a phenomenon, cannot be thus limited in itself for a phenomenon is
not a thing in itself; it must be possible for us to have a perception
of this limitation by a void time and a void space. But such a
perception--such an experience is impossible; because it has no
content. Consequently, an absolute cosmical limit is empirically,
and therefore absolutely, impossible.*

[*Footnote: The reader will remark that the proof presented above is
very different from the dogmatical demonstration given in the antithesis
of the first antinomy. In that demonstration, it was taken for granted
that the world is a thing in itself--given in its totality prior to
all regress, and a determined position in space and time was denied
to it--if it was not considered as occupying all time and all space.
Hence our conclusion differed from that given above; for we inferred
in the antithesis the actual infinity of the world.]

From this follows the affirmative answer: "The regress in the series
of phenomena--as a determination of the cosmical quantity, proceeds
in indefinitum." This is equivalent to saying: "The world of sense
has no absolute quantity, but the empirical regress (through which
alone the world of sense is presented to us on the side of its conditions)
rests upon a rule, which requires it to proceed from every member of
the series, as conditioned, to one still more remote (whether
through personal experience, or by means of history, or the chain of
cause and effect), and not to cease at any point in this extension
of the possible empirical employment of the understanding." And this
is the proper and only use which reason can make of its principles.

The above rule does not prescribe an unceasing regress in one kind
of phenomena. It does not, for example, forbid us, in our ascent
from an individual human being through the line of his ancestors, to
expect that we shall discover at some point of the regress a
primeval pair, or to admit, in the series of heavenly bodies, a sun
at the farthest possible distance from some centre. All that it demands
is a perpetual progress from phenomena to phenomena, even although
an actual perception is not presented by them (as in the case of our
perceptions being so weak as that we are unable to become conscious
of them), since they, nevertheless, belong to possible experience.

Every beginning is in time, and all limits to extension are in
space. But space and time are in the world of sense. Consequently
phenomena in the world are conditionally limited, but the world itself
is not limited, either conditionally or unconditionally.

For this reason, and because neither the world nor the cosmical
series of conditions to a given conditioned can be completely given,
our conception of the cosmical quantity is given only in and through
the regress and not prior to it--in a collective intuition. But the
regress itself is really nothing more than the determining of the
cosmical quantity, and cannot therefore give us any determined
conception of it--still less a conception of a quantity which is, in
relation to a certain standard, infinite. The regress does not,
therefore, proceed to infinity (an infinity given), but only to an
indefinite extent, for or the of presenting to us a quantity--realized
only in and through the regress itself.

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