| How else can we account for the inextinguishable desire in the human mind to find a firm footing in some region beyond the limits of the world of experience? |
| It hopes to attain to the possession of a knowledge in which it has the deepest interest. |
| It enters upon the path of pure speculation; but in vain. |
| We have some reason, however, to expect that, in the only other way that lies open to it--the path of practical reason--it may meet with better success. |
| I understand by a canon a list of the a priori principles of the proper employment of certain faculties of cognition. |
| Thus general logic, in its analytical department, is a formal canon for the faculties of understanding and reason. |
| In the same way, Transcendental Analytic was seen to be a canon of the pure understanding; for it alone is competent to enounce true a priori synthetical cognitions. |
| But, when no proper employment of a faculty of cognition is possible, no canon can exist. |
| But the synthetical cognition of pure speculative reason is, as has been shown, completely impossible. |
| There cannot, therefore, exist any canon for the speculative exercise of this faculty--for its speculative exercise is entirely dialectical; and, consequently, transcendental logic, in this respect, is merely a discipline, and not a canon. |
| If, then, there is any proper mode of employing the faculty of pure reason--in which case there must be a canon for this faculty--this canon will relate, not to the speculative, but to the practical use of reason. |
| This canon we now proceed to investigate. |
| SECTION I. Of the Ultimate End of the Pure Use of Reason. |
| There exists in the faculty of reason a natural desire to venture beyond the field of experience, to attempt to reach the utmost bounds of all cognition by the help of ideas alone, and not to rest satisfied until it has fulfilled its course and raised the sum of its cognitions into a self-subsistent systematic whole. |
| Is the motive for this endeavour to be found in its speculative, or in its practical interests alone? |
| Setting aside, at present, the results of the labours of pure reason in its speculative exercise, I shall merely inquire regarding the problems the solution of which forms its ultimate aim, whether reached or not, and in relation to which all other aims are but partial and intermediate. |
| These highest aims must, from the nature of reason, possess complete unity; otherwise the highest interest of humanity could not be successfully promoted. |
| The transcendental speculation of reason relates to three things; the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. |
| The speculative interest which reason has in those questions is very small; and, for its sake alone, we should not undertake the labour of transcendental investigation--a labour full of toil and ceaseless struggle. |
| We should be loth to undertake this labour, because the discoveries we might make would not be of the smallest use in the sphere of concrete or physical investigation. |
| We may find out that the will is free, but this knowledge only relates to the intelligible cause of our volition. |