| 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. |