| 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. |