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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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It is also declared that the internal possibility of this freely-acting nature (which is the source of all art, and perhaps also of human reason) is derivable from another and superhuman art--a conclusion which would perhaps be found incapable of standing the test of subtle transcendental criticism. A prisoner, who has neither money nor interest, discovers the impossibility of his escape, as well from the obstinacy of the goaler, as from the walls and bars with which he is surrounded; and in all attempts for his freedom chuses rather to work upon the stone and iron of the one, than upon the inflexible nature of the other. In order to answer these objections, we must take the matter pretty deep, and consider the nature and origin of several ideas, lest we dispute without understanding perfectly the subject of the controversy. An idea is by its very nature weaker and fainter than an impression; but being in every other respect the same, cannot imply any very great mystery. The idea of transcendental freedom, on the contrary, requires that reason--in relation to its causal power of commencing a series of phenomena--should be independent of all sensuous determining causes; and thus it seems to be in opposition to the law of nature and to all possible experience. For, in the latter case, it would come later than the system; whereas it is really itself the parent of all that is systematic in our cognition of nature. I answer this objection, by pleading guilty, and by confessing that my intention never was to penetrate into the nature of bodies, or explain the secret causes of their operations. The idea of transcendental freedom, on the contrary, requires that reason--in relation to its causal power of commencing a series of phenomena--should be independent of all sensuous determining causes; and thus it seems to be in opposition to the law of nature and to all possible experience. For the regulative law of systematic unity requires us to study nature on the supposition that systematic and final unity in infinitum is everywhere discoverable, even in the highest diversity.