| But within this whole of possible experience lie all our cognitions, and in the universal relation to this experience consists transcendental truth, which antecedes all empirical truth, and renders the latter possible. |
| It is, however, evident at first sight, that although the schemata of sensibility are the sole agents in realizing the categories, they do, nevertheless, also restrict them, that is, they limit the categories by conditions which lie beyond the sphere of understanding-- namely, in sensibility. |
| Hence the schema is properly only the phenomenon, or the sensuous conception of an object in harmony with the category. |
| (Numerus est quantitas phaenomenon--sensatio realitas phaenomenon; constans et perdurabile rerum substantia phaenomenon-- aeternitas, necessitas, phaenomena, etc.) Now, if we remove a restrictive condition, we thereby amplify, it appears, the formerly limited conception. |
| In this way, the categories in their pure signification, free from all conditions of sensibility, ought to be valid of things as they are, and not, as the schemata represent them, merely as they appear; and consequently the categories must have a significance far more extended, and wholly independent of all schemata. |
| In truth, there does always remain to the pure conceptions of the understanding, after abstracting every sensuous condition, a value and significance, which is, however, merely logical. |
| But in this case, no object is given them, and therefore they have no meaning sufficient to afford us a conception of an object. |
| The notion of substance, for example, if we leave out the sensuous determination of permanence, would mean nothing more than a something which can be cogitated as subject, without the possibility of becoming a predicate to anything else. |
| Of this representation I can make nothing, inasmuch as it does not indicate to me what determinations the thing possesses which must thus be valid as premier subject. |
| Consequently, the categories, without schemata are merely functions of the understanding for the production of conceptions, but do not represent any object. |
| This significance they derive from sensibility, which at the same time realizes the understanding and restricts it. |
| CHAPTER II. System of all Principles of the Pure Understanding. |
| In the foregoing chapter we have merely considered the general conditions under which alone the transcendental faculty of judgement is justified in using the pure conceptions of the understanding for synthetical judgements. |
| Our duty at present is to exhibit in systematic connection those judgements which the understanding really produces a priorI. For this purpose, our table of the categories will certainly afford us the natural and safe guidance. |
| For it is precisely the categories whose application to possible experience must constitute all pure a priori cognition of the understanding; and the relation of which to sensibility will, on that very account, present us with a complete and systematic catalogue of all the transcendental principles of the use of the understanding. |
| Principles a priori are so called, not merely because they contain in themselves the grounds of other judgements, but also because they themselves are not grounded in higher and more general cognitions. |
| This peculiarity, however, does not raise them altogether above the need of a proof. |
| For although there could be found no higher cognition, and therefore no objective proof, and although such a principle rather serves as the foundation for all cognition of the object, this by no means hinders us from drawing a proof from the subjective sources of the possibility of the cognition of an object. |
| Such a proof is necessary, moreover, because without it the principle might be liable to the imputation of being a mere gratuitous assertion. |
| In the second place, we shall limit our investigations to those principles which relate to the categories. |
| For as to the principles of transcendental aesthetic, according to which space and time are the conditions of the possibility of things as phenomena, as also the restriction of these principles, namely, that they cannot be applied to objects as things in themselves--these, of course, do not fall within the scope of our present inquiry. |