第 45 页

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, an;3 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.*

*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, be 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]

*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] 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 bas 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.