| Let us take, for example, the conceptions of mathematics, and first in its pure intuitions. |
| Space has three dimensions--"Between two points there can be only one straight line," etc. |
| Although all these principles, and the representation of the object with which this science occupies itself, are generated in the mind entirely a priori, they would nevertheless have no significance if we were not always able to exhibit their significance in and by means of phenomena (empirical objects). |
| Hence it is requisite that an abstract conception be made sensuous, that is, that an object corresponding to it in intuition be forthcoming, otherwise the conception remains, as we say, without sense, that is, without meaning. |
| Mathematics fulfils this requirement by the construction of the figure, which is a phenomenon evident to the senses. |
| The same science finds support and significance in number; this in its turn finds it in the fingers, or in counters, or in lines and points. |
| The conception itself is always produced a priori, together with the synthetical principles or formulas from such conceptions; but the proper employment of them, and their application to objects, can exist nowhere but in experience, the possibility of which, as regards its form, they contain a priorI. That this is also the case with all of the categories and the principles based upon them is evident from the fact that we cannot render intelligible the possibility of an object corresponding to them without having recourse to the conditions of sensibility, consequently, to the form of phenomena, to which, as their only proper objects, their use must therefore be confined, inasmuch as, if this condition is removed, all significance, that is, all relation to an object, disappears, and no example can be found to make it comprehensible what sort of things we ought to think under such conceptions. |
| The conception of quantity cannot be explained except by saying that it is the determination of a thing whereby it can be cogitated how many times one is placed in it. |
| But this "how many times" is based upon successive repetition, consequently upon time and the synthesis of the homogeneous therein. |
| Reality, in contradistinction to negation, can be explained only by cogitating a time which is either filled therewith or is void. |
| If I leave out the notion of permanence (which is existence in all time), there remains in the conception of substance nothing but the logical notion of subject, a notion of which I endeavour to realize by representing to myself something that can exist only as a subject. |
| But not only am I perfectly ignorant of any conditions under which this logical prerogative can belong to a thing, I can make nothing out of the notion, and draw no inference from it, because no object to which to apply the conception is determined, and we consequently do not know whether it has any meaning at all. |
| In like manner, if I leave out the notion of time, in which something follows upon some other thing in conformity with a rule, I can find nothing in the pure category, except that there is a something of such a sort that from it a conclusion may be drawn as to the existence of some other thing. |
| But in this case it would not only be impossible to distinguish between a cause and an effect, but, as this power to draw conclusions requires conditions of which I am quite ignorant, the conception is not determined as to the mode in which it ought to apply to an object. |
| The so-called principle; "Everything that is contingent has a cause," comes with a gravity and self-assumed authority that seems to require no support from without. |
| But, I ask, what is meant by contingent? |
| The answer is that the non-existence of which is possible. |
| But I should like very well to know by what means this possibility of non-existence is to be cognized, if we do not represent to ourselves a succession in the series of phenomena, and in this succession an existence which follows a non-existence, or conversely, consequently, change. |
| For to say, that the non-existence of a thing is not self-contradictory is a lame appeal to a logical condition, which is no doubt a necessary condition of the existence of the conception, but is far from being sufficient for the real objective possibility of non-existence. |
| I can annihilate in thought every existing substance without self-contradiction, but I cannot infer from this their objective contingency in existence, that is to say, the possibility of their non-existence in itself. |
| As regards the category of community, it may easily be inferred that, as the pure categories of substance and causality are incapable of a definition and explanation sufficient to determine their object without the aid of intuition, the category of reciprocal causality in the relation of substances to each other (commercium) is just as little susceptible thereof. |