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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.

*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