| But when we consider the same actions in relation to reason--not for the purpose of explaining their origin, that is, in relation to speculative reason, but to practical reason, as the producing cause of these actions--we shall discover a rule and an order very different from those of nature and experience. |
| For the declaration of this mental faculty may be that what has and could not but take place in the course of nature, ought not to have taken place. |
| Sometimes, too, we discover, or believe that we discover, that the ideas of reason did actually stand in a causal relation to certain actions of man; and that these actions have taken place because they were determined, not by empirical causes, but by the act of the will upon grounds of reason. |
| Now, granting that reason stands in a causal relation to phenomena; can an action of reason be called free, when we know that, sensuously, in its empirical character, it is completely determined and absolutely necessary? |
| But this empirical character is itself determined by the intelligible character. |
| The latter we cannot cognize; we can only indicate it by means of phenomena, which enable us to have an immediate cognition only of the empirical character.* An action, then, in so far as it is to be ascribed to an intelligible cause, does not result from it in accordance with empirical laws. |
| That is to say, not the conditions of pure reason, but only their effects in the internal sense, precede the act. |
| Pure reason, as a purely intelligible faculty, is not subject to the conditions of time. |
| The causality of reason in its intelligible character does not begin to be; |
| it does not make its appearance at a certain time, for the purpose of producing an effect. |
| If this were not the case, the causality of reason would be subservient to the natural law of phenomena, which determines them according to time, and as a series of causes and effects in time; it would consequently cease to be freedom and become a part of nature. |
| We are therefore justified in saying; "If reason stands in a causal relation to phenomena, it is a faculty which originates the sensuous condition of an empirical series of effects." For the condition, which resides in the reason, is non-sensuous, and therefore cannot be originated, or begin to be. |
| And thus we find--what we could not discover in any empirical series--a condition of a successive series of events itself empirically unconditioned. |
| For, in the present case, the condition stands out of and beyond the series of phenomena--it is intelligible, and it consequently cannot be subjected to any sensuous condition, or to any time-determination by a preceding cause. |
| [*Footnote; The real morality of actions--their merit or demerit, and even that of our own conduct, is completely unknown to us. |
| Our estimates can relate only to their empirical character. |
| How much is the result of the action of free will, how much is to be ascribed to nature and to blameless error, or to a happy constitution of temperament (merito fortunae), no one can discover, nor, for this reason, determine with perfect justice.] |
| But, in another respect, the same cause belongs also to the series of phenomena. |
| Man is himself a phenomenon. |
| His will has an empirical character, which is the empirical cause of all his actions. |
| There is no condition--determining man and his volition in conformity with this character--which does not itself form part of the series of effects in nature, and is subject to their law--the law according to which an empirically undetermined cause of an event in time cannot exist. |