| 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. |