Immanuel Kant

“ The question of the principle of the form of the intelligible world turns, therefore, upon making apparent in what manner it is possible for several substances to be in mutual commerce, and for this reason to pertain to the same whole, which is called world. We do not here consider the world, let it be understood, as to matter, that is, as to the nature of the substances of which it consists, whether they be material or immaterial, but as to form, that is to say, how among several things taken separately a connection, and among them all, totality can have place. ”

“ Phenomena of the external sense are examined and set forth in physics; those of the internal sense in empirical psychology. But pure human intuition is not a universal or logical concept under which, but a singular in which all sensible objects are thought, and hence contains concepts of space and time, which, since they determine nothing concerning sensible objects as to quality, are not the objects of science except as to quantity. Hence pure mathematics considers space in geometry and time in pure mechanics. ”

“ Time, then, is the absolutely first formal principle of the sensible world. For all sensible things of whatsoever description are unthinkable except as posited either simultaneously or one after another, and, indeed, as if involved and mutually related by determinate position in the tract of unique time, so that by this primary concept of everything sensuous originates necessarily that formal whole which is not a part of another, that is, the phenomenal World. ”

“ For as a force is nothing but a relation of a substance a to something else b, an accident, as of a reason to the consequence, the possibility of any force does not rest in the identity of the cause and the effect, or the substance and the accident, and hence even the impossibility of forces made up falsely does not depend solely on contradiction. Therefore it is not permissible to assume as possible any original force unless the force be given by experience. Neither can the possibility be conceived a priori by any perspicacity of the intellect. ”

“ The idea of time is singular, not general. For any time whatever is thought only as a part of one and the same unmeasured time. If you think two years you cannot represent them to yourself but in a mutually determinate position, and if they do not immediately follow one the other, you cannot think of them except as connected by some intermediate time. Which of different times is first and which later can be defined in no way by any marks conceivable by the intellect, unless you are willing to run into a circle, and the mind discerns it by no more than one intuition. ”

“ Pure mathematics, then, expounding the form of our entire sensuous cognition, is the organon of all intuitive and distinct knowledge, and since its objects are not only the formal principles of all intuition, but themselves original intuitions, it confers cognition both perfectly true, and the model of the highest degree of clearness to others. ”

“ This absolute totality, apparently an everyday and perfectly obvious concept, especially when, as happens in the definition, it is enunciated negatively, when canvassed thoroughly becomes the crucial test of the philosopher. For it is scarce conceivable how the inexhaustible series of the states of the universe succeeding one another eternally be reducible to a whole comprehending all changes whatsoever. ”

“ SCHOLIUM If it were right to overstep a little the limits of apodictic certainty befitting metaphysics, it would seem worth while to trace out some things pertaining not merely to the laws but even to the causes of sensuous intuition, which are only intellectually knowable. Of course the human mind is not affected by external things, and the world does not lie open to its insight infinitely, except as far as itself together with all other things is sustained by the same infinite power of one. Hence it does not perceive external things but by the presence of the same common sustaining cause; ”

“ Those who defend the reality of space either conceive of it as an absolute and immense receptacle of possible things, an opinion which, besides the English, pleases most geometricians, or they contend for its being the relation of existing things itself, which clearly vanishes in the removal of things and is thinkable only in actual things, as besides Leibnitz, is maintained by most of our countrymen. The first inane fiction of the reason, imagining true infinite relation without any mutually related things, pertains to the world of fable. ”

“ In whatever exists are space and time, that is to say, every substance is extended and continuously changed. But though people of dense conception are bound firmly by this law of imagination, even they see readily that it pertains only to the efforts of fancy, shadowing forth to itself the appearance of things, not to the conditions of existence. ”

“ It is, therefore, absurd to excite reason against the primary postulates of pure time, as, for example, continuity, etc., since they follow from laws prior and superior to which nothing is found, and since reason herself in the use of the principle of contradiction cannot dispense with the support of this concept, so primitive and original is it. ”

“ They persuade themselves that it is easy to conceive, to be sure, how God may discern what is present, that is, what is actual in the time in which he is, but how He may foresee what is future, that is, what is actual in the time in which He is not yet, they deem an intellectual difficulty; as if the existence of the Necessary Being descended through all the moments of an imaginary time, and, having already exhausted a part of His duration, saw before Him the eternity He was yet to live simultaneously with the present events of the world. ”

“ Paragraph 10 To man, no intuition of intellectual concepts is given, only symbolical cognition, and intellection is granted us only by universal concepts in the abstract, not by the concrete singular. For all intuition is restricted by some principle of form under which alone anything can be discerned by the mind immediately or as singular, and not merely conceived discursively by general concepts. ”

“ But beyond doubt either concept is acquired, not, it is true, abstracted from the sense of objects, for sensation gives the matter not the form of human cognition, but from the very action of the mind co-ordinating its sense-percepts in accordance with perpetual laws, as though an immutable type, and hence to be known intuitively. For sensations excite this act of the mind but do not influence intuition, neither is there anything connate here except the law of the soul in accordance with which it conjoins in a certain way its sensations derived from the presence of an object. ”

“ Surely, unless the concept of space were originally given by the nature of the mind, so as to cause him to toil in vain who should labor to fashion mentally any relations other than those prescribed by it, since in the fiction he would be compelled to employ the aid of this very same concept, geometry could not be used very safely in natural philosophy, For it might be doubted whether this same notion drawn from experience would agree sufficiently with nature, the determinations from which it was abstracted being, perchance, denied, a suspicion of which has entered some minds already. ”

“ Paragraph 29 The spurious axioms of the third kind from conditions proper to the subject whence they are transferred rashly to the object are plentiful, not, as in those of the Second Class, because the only way to the intellectual concept lies through the sensuous data, but because only by aid of the latter can the concept be applied to that which is given by experience, that is, can we know whether something is contained under a certain intellectual concept or not. To this class belongs the threadbare one of the schools: whatever exists contingently does at some time not exist. ”

“ In intercommunication there are not effects from causes alien to all mutual relation. Hence, the unity in the conjunction of the substances of the universe is the consequence of the dependence of all on one. Therefore, the form of the universe witnesses the cause of matter, and only the sole cause of all things is the cause of the universe, nor is there an architect of the world not at the same time its creator. ”

“ This formal principle of our intuition—space and time—is the condition under which something can be an object of our senses, and hence as a condition of sensuous knowledge is not a medium for intellectual intuition. Besides, all the material of our cognition is given only by the senses, but the noumenon, as such, is not conceivable by representations drawn from sensations; hence the intellectual concept, as such, is destitute of all data of human intuition. For the intuition of our mind is always passive, and therefore possible only to the extent to which something can affect our senses. ”

“ The sham cause in physical influence consists in rashly assuming that the commerce of substance and transitive forces is sufficiently knowable from their mere existence. Hence it is not so much a system as rather the neglect of all philosophical system as a superfluity in the argument. Freeing the concept from this defect, we shall have a species of commerce alone deserving to be called real, and from which the whole constituting the world merits being called real, and not ideal or imaginary. ”

“ Those who use so perverse an argumentation have fallen into a grave error. [2] For whatever is repugnant to the laws of the intellect and reason is of course impossible, but that which being the object of pure reason does merely not fall under the laws of intuitive cognition is not so. For here the disagreement between the sensuous and the intellectual faculties, whose natures I shall presently explain, indicates nothing except that the abstract ideas which the mind has received from the intellect can often not be followed out in the concrete and converted into intuitions. ”

“ The method of the science not being practiced much nowadays, except what logic prescribes to all sciences generally, that fitted for the peculiar nature of metaphysics being simply ignored, it is no wonder that those who everlastingly turn the Sisyphean stone of this inquiry do not seem so far to have made much progress. Though here I neither can nor will expatiate upon so important and extensive a subject, I shall briefly shadow forth what constitutes no despicable part of this method, namely, the infection between sensuous and intellectual cognition, not only as creeping in on those incautious in the application of principles, but even producing spurious principles under the appearance of axioms. ”

“ The second is the partiality for unity proper to the philosophical mind, whence this wide-spread canon has flown forth: principles are not to be multiplied beyond supreme necessity, to which we give in our adhesion, not because we have insight into causal unity in the world either by reason or experience, but as seeking it by an impulse of the intellect which seems to itself to have by thus much advanced in the explication of phenomena, by as much as it is granted to it to descend from the same principle to a greater number of consequences, The third of this kind of principles is: ”

“ Hence space is employed as the type even of the concept of time itself, representing it by a line, and its limits—moments—by points. Time, on the other hand, approaches more to a universal and rational concept, comprising under its relations all things whatsoever, to wit, space itself, and besides, those accidents which are not comprehended in the relations of space, such as the thoughts of the soul. ”

“ For although the notion of a part can be taken in a universal sense, and although everything contained under this notion, if regarded as posited in the same series, constitutes unity, yet the concept of the whole appears to exact their all being taken simultaneously, which in the case given is impossible. For, although to the whole series nothing succeeds, there is given in the succession no posited series to which nothing succeeds, unless it be the last. There will, then, in eternity be something which is last, which is absurd. ”

“ Things cannot appear to the senses under any form but by means of a power of the soul co-ordinating all sensations in accordance with a fixed law implanted in its nature. Since, therefore, nothing at all can be given the senses except conformably to the primary axioms of space and their consequences which are taught by geometry, though their principle be but subjective, yet the soul will necessarily agree with them, since to this extent it agrees with itself; and the laws of sensuality will be the laws of nature so far as it can be perceived by our senses. ”

“ Moral philosophy, then, inasmuch as supplying the first principles of judgment, is not cognized except by pure intellect, and itself belongs to pure philosophy, and Epicurus reducing its criteria to deduction from the sense of pleasure or pain is rightly reprehended, together with some moderns following him a certain distance from afar, as Shaftesbury and his adherents. In any class of things having variable quantity the maximum is the common measure and the principle of cognition. ”

“ Paragraph 22 If, as we validly conclude from a given world to a single cause of all its parts, we may similarly argue reversely from the given cause common to all to their interconnection, and hence to the form of the world—though I confess this conclusion does not seem as plain to me—then the primary connection of substances will not be contingent but by the sustentation of all by the common principle, necessary, and hence the harmony proceeding from their very subsistence founded in a common cause would proceed according to the usual rules. ”

“ Nature, therefore, is subject with absolute precision to all the precepts of geometry as to all the properties of space there demonstrated, this being the subjective condition, not hypothetically but intuitively given, of every phenomenon in which nature can ever be revealed to the senses. ”

“ Several actual worlds without one another are not, therefore, impossible by the very concept, as Wolf hastily concluded from the notion of a complex or multiplicity which he deemed sufficient to a whole, as such, but only on condition that there exist but one necessary cause of all things. If several are admitted, several worlds without one another will be possible in the strictest metaphysical sense. ”