| Such an effect may therefore be considered to be free in relation to its intelligible cause, and necessary in relation to the phenomena from which it is a necessary consequence--a distinction which, stated in this perfectly general and abstract manner, must appear in the highest degree subtle and obscure. |
| The sequel will explain. |
| It is sufficient, at present, to remark that, as the complete and unbroken connection of phenomena is an unalterable law of nature, freedom is impossible--on the supposition that phenomena are absolutely real. |
| Hence those philosophers who adhere to the common opinion on this subject can never succeed in reconciling the ideas of nature and freedom. |
| Possibility of Freedom in Harmony with the Universal Law of Natural Necessity. |
| That element in a sensuous object which is not itself sensuous, I may be allowed to term intelligible. |
| If, accordingly, an object which must be regarded as a sensuous phenomenon possesses a faculty which is not an object of sensuous intuition, but by means of which it is capable of being the cause of phenomena, the causality of an object or existence of this kind may be regarded from two different points of view. |
| It may be considered to be intelligible, as regards its action--the action of a thing which is a thing in itself, and sensuous, as regards its effects--the effects of a phenomenon belonging to the sensuous world. |
| We should accordingly, have to form both an empirical and an intellectual conception of the causality of such a faculty or power--both, however, having reference to the same effect. |
| This twofold manner of cogitating a power residing in a sensuous object does not run counter to any of the conceptions which we ought to form of the world of phenomena or of a possible experience. |
| Phenomena--not being things in themselves--must have a transcendental object as a foundation, which determines them as mere representations; and there seems to be no reason why we should not ascribe to this transcendental object, in addition to the property of self-phenomenization, a causality whose effects are to be met with in the world of phenomena, although it is not itself a phenomenon. |
| But every effective cause must possess a character, that is to say, a law of its causality, without which it would cease to be a cause. |
| In the above case, then, every sensuous object would possess an empirical character, which guaranteed that its actions, as phenomena, stand in complete and harmonious connection, conformably to unvarying natural laws, with all other phenomena, and can be deduced from these, as conditions, and that they do thus, in connection with these, constitute a series in the order of nature. |
| This sensuous object must, in the second place, possess an intelligible character, which guarantees it to be the cause of those actions, as phenomena, although it is not itself a phenomenon nor subordinate to the conditions of the world of sense. |
| The former may be termed the character of the thing as a phenomenon, the latter the character of the thing as a thing in itself. |
| Now this active subject would, in its character of intelligible subject, be subordinate to no conditions of time, for time is only a condition of phenomena, and not of things in themselves. |
| No action would begin or cease to be in this subject; it would consequently be free from the law of all determination of time--the law of change, namely, that everything which happens must have a cause in the phenomena of a preceding state. |
| In one word, the causality of the subject, in so far as it is intelligible, would not form part of the series of empirical conditions which determine and necessitate an event in the world of sense. |
| Again, this intelligible character of a thing cannot be immediately cognized, because we can perceive nothing but phenomena, but it must be capable of being cogitated in harmony with the empirical character; for we always find ourselves compelled to place, in thought, a transcendental object at the basis of phenomena although we can never know what this object is in itself. |
| In virtue of its empirical character, this subject would at the same time be subordinate to all the empirical laws of causality, and, as a phenomenon and member of the sensuous world, its effects would have to be accounted for by a reference to preceding phenomena. |
| Eternal phenomena must be capable of influencing it; and its actions, in accordance with natural laws, must explain to us how its empirical character, that is, the law of its causality, is to be cognized in and by means of experience. |