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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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The same care of avoiding prolixity is the reason why I wave the examination of the will and direct passions, as they appear in animals; since nothing is more evident, than that they are of the same nature, and excited by the same causes as in human creatures. Thus upon the whole we may infer, that when we talk of any being, whether of a superior or inferior nature, as endowed with a power or force, proportioned to any effect; when we speak of a necessary connexion betwixt objects, and suppose, that this connexion depends upon an efficacy or energy, with which any of these objects are endowed; in all these expressions, so applied, we have really no distinct meaning, and make use only of common words, without any clear and determinate ideas. Now, I may admit the existence of an incomprehensible being of this nature--the object of a mere idea, relatively to the world of sense; although I have no ground to admit its existence absolutely and in itself. There is in human nature an unworthy propensity--a propensity which, like everything that springs from nature, must in its final purpose be conducive to the good of humanity--to conceal our real sentiments, and to give expression only to certain received opinions, which are regarded as at once safe and promotive of the common good. And now the question arises; "How is metaphysics, as a natural disposition, possible?" In other words, how, from the nature of universal human reason, do those questions arise which pure reason proposes to itself, and which it is impelled by its own feeling of need to answer as well as it can? Thirdly, The nature and qualities of that idea. I shall content myself with casting a cursory glance, from a purely transcendental point of view--that of the nature of pure reason--on the labours of philosophers up to the present time.