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phenomenon is given only in and through this infinity, that is, an

undetermined number of parts is given, while the parts themselves

are given and determined only in and through the subdivision; in a

word, the infinity of the division necessarily presupposes that the

whole is not already divided in se. Hence our division determines a

number of parts in the whole- a number which extends just as far as

the actual regress in the division; while, on the other hand, the very

notion of a body organized to infinity represents the whole as already

and in itself divided. We expect, therefore, to find in it a

determinate, but at the same time, infinite, number of parts- which is

self-contradictory. For we should thus have a whole containing a

series of members which could not be completed in any regress- which

is infinite, and at the same time complete in an organized

composite. Infinite divisibility is applicable only to a quantum

continuum, and is based entirely on the infinite divisibility of

space, But in a quantum discretum the multitude of parts or units is

always determined, and hence always equal to some number. To what

extent a body may be organized, experience alone can inform us; and

although, so far as our experience of this or that body has

extended, we may not have discovered any inorganic part, such parts

must exist in possible experience. But how far the transcendental

division of a phenomenon must extend, we cannot know from

experience- it is a question which experience cannot answer; it is

answered only by the principle of reason which forbids us to

consider the empirical regress, in the analysis of extended body, as

ever absolutely complete.

Concluding Remark on the Solution of the Transcendental

Mathematical Ideas- and Introductory to the

Solution of the Dynamical Ideas.

We presented the antinomy of pure reason in a tabular form, and we

endeavoured to show the ground of this self-contradiction on the

part of reason, and the only means of bringing it to a conclusion-

znamely, by declaring both contradictory statements to be false. We

represented in these antinomies the conditions of phenomena as

belonging to the conditioned according to relations of space and time-

which is the usual supposition of the common understanding. In this

respect, all dialectical representations of totality, in the series of

conditions to a given conditioned, were perfectly homogeneous. The

condition was always a member of the series along with the

conditioned, and thus the homogeneity of the whole series was assured.

In this case the regress could never be cogitated as complete; or,

if this was the case, a member really conditioned was falsely regarded

as a primal member, consequently as unconditioned. In such an

antinomy, therefore, we did not consider the object, that is, the

conditioned, but the series of conditions belonging to the object, and

the magnitude of that series. And thus arose the difficulty- a

difficulty not to be settled by any decision regarding the claims of

the two parties, but simply by cutting the knot- by declaring the

series proposed by reason to be either too long or too short for the

understanding, which could in neither case make its conceptions

adequate with the ideas.

But we have overlooked, up to this point, an essential difference

existing between the conceptions of the understanding which reason

endeavours to raise to the rank of ideas- two of these indicating a

mathematical, and two a dynamical synthesis of phenomena. Hitherto, it

was necessary to signalize this distinction; for, just as in our

general representation of all transcendental ideas, we considered them

under phenomenal conditions, so, in the two mathematical ideas, our

discussion is concerned solely with an object in the world of

phenomena. But as we are now about to proceed to the consideration

of the dynamical conceptions of the understanding, and their

adequateness with ideas, we must not lose sight of this distinction.

We shall find that it opens up to us an entirely new view of the

conflict in which reason is involved. For, while in the first two

antinomies, both parties were dismissed, on the ground of having

advanced statements based upon false hypothesis; in the present case

the hope appears of discovering a hypothesis which may be consistent

with the demands of reason, and, the judge completing the statement of

the grounds of claim, which both parties had left in an unsatisfactory

state, the question may be settled on its own merits, not by

dismissing the claimants, but by a comparison of the arguments on both

sides. If we consider merely their extension, and whether they are

adequate with ideas, the series of conditions may be regarded as all

homogeneous. But the conception of the understanding which lies at the

basis of these ideas, contains either a synthesis of the homogeneous

(presupposed in every quantity- in its composition as well as in its

division) or of the heterogeneous, which is the case in the

dynamical synthesis of cause and effect, as well as of the necessary

and the contingent.

Thus it happens that in the mathematical series of phenomena no

other than a sensuous condition is admissible- a condition which is

itself a member of the series; while the dynamical series of

sensuous conditions admits a heterogeneous condition, which is not a

member of the series, but, as purely intelligible, lies out of and

beyond it. And thus reason is satisfied, and an unconditioned placed

at the head of the series of phenomena, without introducing

confusion into or discontinuing it, contrary to the principles of

the understanding.

Now, from the fact that the dynamical ideas admit a condition of

phenomena which does not form a part of the series of phenomena,

arises a result which we should not have expected from an antinomy. In

former cases, the result was that both contradictory dialectical

statements were declared to be false. In the present case, we find the

conditioned in the dynamical series connected with an empirically

unconditioned, but non-sensuous condition; and thus satisfaction is

done to the understanding on the one hand and to the reason on the

other.* While, moreover, the dialectical arguments for unconditioned

totality in mere phenomena fall to the ground, both propositions of

reason may be shown to be true in their proper signification. This

could not happen in the case of the cosmological ideas which

demanded a mathematically unconditioned unity; for no condition

could be placed at the head of the series of phenomena, except one

which was itself a phenomenon and consequently a member of the series.

*For the understanding cannot admit among phenomena a condition

which is itself empirically unconditioned. But if it is possible to

cogitate an intelligible condition- one which is not a member of the

series of phenomena- for a conditioned phenomenon, without breaking

the series of empirical conditions, such a condition may be admissible

as empirically unconditioned, and the empirical regress continue

regular, unceasing, and intact.

III. Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Totality of

the Deduction of Cosmical Events from their Causes.

There are only two modes of causality cogitable- the causality of

nature or of freedom. The first is the conjunction of a particular

state with another preceding it in the world of sense, the former

following the latter by virtue of a law. Now, as the causality of

phenomena is subject to conditions of time, and the preceding state,

if it had always existed, could not have produced an effect which

would make its first appearance at a particular time, the causality of

a cause must itself be an effect- must itself have begun to be, and

therefore, according to the principle of the understanding, itself

requires a cause.

We must understand, on the contrary, by the term freedom, in the

cosmological sense, a faculty of the spontaneous origination of a

state; the causality of which, therefore, is not subordinated to

another cause determining it in time. Freedom is in this sense a

pure transcendental idea, which, in the first place, contains no

empirical element; the object of which, in the second place, cannot be

given or determined in any experience, because it is a universal law

of the very possibility of experience, that everything which happens

must have a cause, that consequently the causality of a cause, being

itself something that has happened, must also have a cause. In this

view of the case, the whole field of experience, how far soever it may

extend, contains nothing that is not subject to the laws of nature.

But, as we cannot by this means attain to an absolute totality of

conditions in reference to the series of causes and effects, reason

creates the idea of a spontaneity, which can begin to act of itself,

and without any external cause determining it to action, according

to the natural law of causality.

It is especially remarkable that the practical conception of freedom

is based upon the transcendental idea, and that the question of the

possibility of the former is difficult only as it involves the

consideration of the truth of the latter. Freedom, in the practical

sense, is the independence of the will of coercion by sensuous

impulses. A will is sensuous, in so far as it is pathologically

affected (by sensuous impulses); it is termed animal (arbitrium

brutum), when it is pathologically necessitated. The human will is

certainly an arbitrium sensitivum, not brutum, but liberum; because

sensuousness does not necessitate its action, a faculty existing in

man of self-determination, independently of all sensuous coercion.

It is plain that, if all causality in the world of sense were

natural- and natural only- every event would be determined by

another according to necessary laws, and that, consequently,

phenomena, in so far as they determine the will, must necessitate

every action as a natural effect from themselves; and thus all

practical freedom would fall to the ground with the transcendental

idea. For the latter presupposes that although a certain thing has not

happened, it ought to have happened, and that, consequently, its

phenomenal cause was not so powerful and determinative as to exclude

the causality of our will- a causality capable of producing effects

independently of and even in opposition to the power of natural

causes, and capable, consequently, of spontaneously originating a

series of events.

Here, too, we find it to be the case, as we generally found in the

self-contradictions and perplexities of a reason which strives to pass

the bounds of possible experience, that the problem is properly not

physiological, but transcendental. The question of the possibility

of freedom does indeed concern psychology; but, as it rests upon

dialectical arguments of pure reason, its solution must engage the

attention of transcendental philosophy. Before attempting this

solution, a task which transcendental philosophy cannot decline, it

will be advisable to make a remark with regard to its procedure in the

settlement of the question.

If phenomena were things in themselves, and time and space forms

of the existence of things, condition and conditioned would always

be members of the same series; and thus would arise in the present

case the antinomy common to all transcendental ideas- that their

series is either too great or too small for the understanding. The

dynamical ideas, which we are about to discuss in this and the

following section, possess the peculiarity of relating to an object,

not considered as a quantity, but as an existence; and thus, in the

discussion of the present question, we may make abstraction of the

quantity of the series of conditions, and consider merely the

dynamical relation of the condition to the conditioned. The

question, then, suggests itself, whether freedom is possible; and,

if it is, whether it can consist with the universality of the

natural law of causality; and, consequently, whether we enounce a

proper disjunctive proposition when we say: "Every effect must have

its origin either in nature or in freedom," or whether both cannot

exist together in the same event in different relations. The principle

of an unbroken connection between all events in the phenomenal

world, in accordance with the unchangeable laws of nature, is a

well-established principle of transcendental analytic which admits

of no exception. The question, therefore, is: "Whether an effect,

determined according to the laws of nature, can at the same time be

produced by a free agent, or whether freedom and nature mutually

exclude each other?" And here, the common but fallacious hypothesis of

the absolute reality of phenomena manifests its injurious influence in

embarrassing the procedure of reason. For if phenomena are things in

themselves, freedom is impossible. In this case, nature is the

complete and all-sufficient cause of every event; and condition and

conditioned, cause and effect are contained in the same series, and

necessitated by the same law. If, on the contrary, phenomena are

held to be, as they are in fact, nothing more than mere

representations, connected with each other in accordance with

empirical laws, they must have a ground which is not phenomenal. But

the causality of such an intelligible cause is not determined or

determinable by phenomena; although its effects, as phenomena, must be

determined by other phenomenal existences. This cause and its

causality exist therefore out of and apart from the series of

phenomena; while its effects do exist and are discoverable in the

series of empirical conditions. Such an effect may therefore be

considered to be free in relation to its intelligible cause, and

necessary in relation to the phenomena from which it is a necessary

consequence- a distinction which, stated in this perfectly general and

abstract manner, must appear in the highest degree subtle and obscure.

The sequel will explain. It is sufficient, at present, to remark that,