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Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.

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But the question in the present case is evidently synthetical--it aims at the extension of our cognition beyond the bounds of experience--it requires an assurance respecting the existence of a being corresponding with the idea in our minds, to which no experience can ever be adequate.

 Laws do not exist except by relation to the subject in which the phenomena inhere, in so far as it possesses understanding, just as phenomena have no existence except by relation to the same existing subject in so far as it has senses. Philosophers have always talked of an absolutely necessary being, and have nevertheless declined to take the trouble of conceiving whether--and how--a being of this nature is even cogitable, not to mention that its existence is actually demonstrable. It has been observed, that reason, in a strict and philosophical sense, can have influence on our conduct only after two ways: Either when it excites a passion by informing us of the existence of something which is a proper object of it; or when it discovers the connexion of causes and effects, so as to afford us means of exerting any passion. It cannot be experience, because the principle adduced annexes the two representations, cause and effect, to the representation existence, not only with universality, which experience cannot give, but also with the expression of necessity, therefore completely a priori and from pure conceptions. Both philosophers and the vulgar suppose the first of these to have a distinct continued existence.