| The conception of substance always relates to intuitions, which with me cannot be other than sensuous, and which consequently lie completely out of the sphere of the understanding and its thought; but to this sphere belongs the affirmation that the Ego is simple in thought. |
| It would indeed be surprising, if the conception of "substance," which in other cases requires so much labour to distinguish from the other elements presented by intuition--so much trouble, too, to discover whether it can be simple (as in the case of the parts of matter)--should be presented immediately to me, as if by revelation, in the poorest mental representation of all. |
| 3. The proposition of the identity of my Self amidst all the manifold representations of which I am conscious, is likewise a proposition lying in the conceptions themselves, and is consequently analytical. |
| But this identity of the subject, of which I am conscious in all its representations, does not relate to or concern the intuition of the subject, by which it is given as an object. |
| This proposition cannot therefore enounce the identity of the person, by which is understood the consciousness of the identity of its own substance as a thinking being in all change and variation of circumstances. |
| To prove this, we should require not a mere analysis of the proposition, but synthetical judgements based upon a given intuition. |
| 4. I distinguish my own existence, as that of a thinking being, from that of other things external to me--among which my body also is reckoned. |
| This is also an analytical proposition, for other things are exactly those which I think as different or distinguished from myself. |
| But whether this consciousness of myself is possible without things external to me; and whether therefore I can exist merely as a thinking being (without being man)--cannot be known or inferred from this proposition. |
| Thus we have gained nothing as regards the cognition of myself as object, by the analysis of the consciousness of my Self in thought. |
| The logical exposition of thought in general is mistaken for a metaphysical determination of the object. |
| Our Critique would be an investigation utterly superfluous, if there existed a possibility of proving a priori, that all thinking beings are in themselves simple substances, as such, therefore, possess the inseparable attribute of personality, and are conscious of their existence apart from and unconnected with matter. |
| For we should thus have taken a step beyond the world of sense, and have penetrated into the sphere of noumena; and in this case the right could not be denied us of extending our knowledge in this sphere, of establishing ourselves, and, under a favouring star, appropriating to ourselves possessions in it. |
| For the proposition; "Every thinking being, as such, is simple substance," is an a priori synthetical proposition; because in the first place it goes beyond the conception which is the subject of it, and adds to the mere notion of a thinking being the mode of its existence, and in the second place annexes a predicate (that of simplicity) to the latter conception--a predicate which it could not have discovered in the sphere of experience. |
| It would follow that a priori synthetical propositions are possible and legitimate, not only, as we have maintained, in relation to objects of possible experience, and as principles of the possibility of this experience itself, but are applicable to things in themselves--an inference which makes an end of the whole of this Critique, and obliges us to fall back on the old mode of metaphysical procedure. |
| But indeed the danger is not so great, if we look a little closer into the question. |
| There lurks in the procedure of rational Psychology a paralogism, which is represented in the following syllogism: |
| That which cannot be cogitated otherwise than as subject, does not exist otherwise than as subject, and is therefore substance. |
| A thinking being, considered merely as such, cannot be cogitated otherwise than as subject. |
| Therefore it exists also as such, that is, as substance. |
| In the major we speak of a being that can be cogitated generally and in every relation, consequently as it may be given in intuition. |