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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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As regards the latter, which can never be given in a determinate mode except by experience, there are no a priori notions which relate to it, except the undetermined conceptions of the synthesis of possible sensations, in so far as these belong (in a possible experience) to the unity of consciousness. Thus, pure reason, which at first seemed to promise us nothing less than the extension of our cognition beyond the limits of experience, is found, when thoroughly examined, to contain nothing but regulative principles, the virtue and function of which is to introduce into our cognition a higher degree of unity than the understanding could of itself. When the mind forms a reasoning concerning any matter of fact, which is only probable, it casts its eye backward upon past experience, and transferring it to the future, is presented with so many contrary views of its object, of which those that are of the same kind uniting together, and running into one act of the mind, serve to fortify and inliven it. For that which stands in connection with a perception according to the laws of the progress of experience is real.
It is only by experience we learn their influence and connexion; and this influence we ought never to extend beyond experience. To cogitate the latter in regard to its internal possibility, that is, to determine the application of the categories to it, no idea is required--no representation which transcends experience. Accordingly, when we know in experience that something happens, we always presuppose that something precedes, whereupon it follows in conformity with a rule.