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Cliquer sur les phrases pour les voir dans leur contexte. Les textes de Immanuel Kant et David Hume sont disponibles auprès du Projet Gutenberg.
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Now, reason is not subject in its causality to any conditions of phenomena or of time; and a difference in time may produce a difference in the relation of phenomena to each other--for these are not things and therefore not causes in themselves--but it cannot produce any difference in the relation in which the action stands to the faculty of reason. But the term, conception of reason, or rational conception, itself indicates that it does not confine itself within the limits of experience, because its object-matter is a cognition, of which every empirical cognition is but a part--nay, the whole of possible experience may be itself but a part of it--a cognition to which no actual experience ever fully attains, although it does always pertain to it. Having thus found in every probability, beside the original uncertainty inherent in the subject, a new uncertainty derived from the weakness of that faculty, which judges, and having adjusted these two together, we are obliged by our reason to add a new doubt derived from the possibility of error in the estimation we make of the truth and fidelity of our faculties. I shall illustrate this regulative principle of reason by an example, from its employment in the world of experience; proved it cannot be by any amount of experience, or by any number of facts, for such arguments cannot establish the truth of transcendental propositions. The naturalist of pure reason lays it down as his principle that common reason, without the aid of science--which he calls sound reason, or common sense--can give a more satisfactory answer to the most important questions of metaphysics than speculation is able to do. All these kinds of probability are received by philosophers, and allowed to be reasonable foundations of belief and opinion. Even reason, unbiased by private ends, or interested considerations, cannot judge otherwise, if it puts itself in the place of a being whose business it is to dispense all happiness to others. Among the rest, it is the reason why there is a much greater mixture of pride in contempt, than of humility in respect, and why we are more elevated with the view of one below us, than mortifyed with the presence of one above us.