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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 here the interruptions in the appearance of these perceptions are so long and frequent, that it is impossible to overlook them; and as the appearance of a perception in the mind and its existence seem at first sight entirely the same, it may be doubted, whether we can ever assent to so palpable a contradiction, and suppose a perception to exist without being present to the mind. Under this last head I comprehend their situation as well as relations, their external position as well as the independence of their existence and operation. - To demonstrate the existence of a necessary being, I cannot be permitted in this place to employ any other than the cosmological argument, which ascends from the conditioned in phenomena to the unconditioned in conception--the unconditioned being considered the necessary condition of the absolute totality of the series.
We advance, rather than retard our existence; and following what seems the natural succession of time, proceed from past to present, and from present to future. Hence, Leibnitz, in attributing to the substances of the world--as cogitated by the understanding alone--a community, required the mediating aid of a divinity; for, from their existence, such a property seemed to him with justice inconceivable. But let us consider, that no two ideas are in themselves contrary, except those of existence and non-existence, which are plainly resembling, as implying both of them an idea of the object; though the latter excludes the object from all times and places, in which it is supposed not to exist. For, although I do not discover the element of the unconditioned in the conception of such a being--an element which is manifestly existent in the sum-total of all conditions--I am not entitled to conclude that its existence is therefore conditioned; just as I am not entitled to affirm, in a hypothetical syllogism, that where a certain condition does not exist (in the present, completeness, as far as pure conceptions are concerned), the conditioned does not exist either.