Critique of Pure Reason

by Immanuel Kant

  The succession in time is therefore the only empirical criterion of an effect with regard to the causality of the cause which precedes it. The glass is the cause of the rising of the water above its horizontal surface, although both phenomena are simultaneous. For as soon as I draw water in a glass from a larger vessel, something follows, namely, the change of the horizontal state which it had before into a concave state which it assumes in the glass.

  This causality leads to the concept of action, that to the concept of force, and lastly, to the concept of substance. As I do not mean to burden my critical task, which only concerns the sources of synthetical knowledge a priori, with analytical processes which aim at the explanation, and not at the expansion of our concepts, I leave a fuller treatment of these to a future system of pure reason; nay, I may refer to many well-known manuals in which such an analysis may be found. I cannot pass, however, over the empirical criterion of a substance, so far as it seems to manifest itself, not so much through the permanence of the phenomenon as through action.

  Wherever there is action, therefore activity and force, there must be substance, and in this alone the seat of that fertile source of phenomena can be sought. This sounds very well, but if people are asked to explain what they mean by substance, they find it by no means easy to answer without reasoning in a circle. How can we conclude immediately from the action to the permanence of the agent, which nevertheless is an essential and peculiar characteristic of substance (phenomenon)? After what we have explained before, however, the answer to this question is not so difficult, though it would be impossible, according to the ordinary way of proceeding analytically only with our concepts. Action itself implies the relation of the subject of the causality to the effect. As all effect consists in that which happens, that is, in the changeable, indicating time in succession, the last subject of it is the permanent, as the substratum of all that changes, that is substance. For, according to the principle of causality, actions are always the first ground of all change of phenomena, and cannot exist therefore in a subject that itself changes, because in that case other actions and another subject would be required to determine that change. Action, therefore, is a sufficient empirical criterion to prove substantiality, nor is it necessary that I should first establish its permanency by means of compared perceptions, which indeed would hardly be possible in this way, at least with that completeness which is required by the magnitude and strict universality of the concept. That the first subject of the causality of all arising and perishing cannot itself (in the field of phenomena) arise and perish, is a safe conclusion, pointing in the end to empirical necessity and permanency in existence, that is, the concept of a substance as a phenomenon.

  If anything happens, the mere fact of something arising, without any reference to what it is, is in itself a matter for enquiry. The transition from the not-being of a state into that state, even though it contained no quality whatever as a phenomenon, must itself be investigated. This arising, as we have shown in No. A, does not concern the substance (because a substance never arises), but its state only. It is therefore mere change, and not an arising out of nothing. When such an arising is looked upon as the effect of a foreign cause, it is called creation. This can never be admitted as an event among phenomena, because its very possibility would destroy the unity of experience. If, however, we consider all things, not as phenomena, but as things by themselves and objects of the understanding only, then, though they are substances, they may be considered as dependent in their existence on a foreign cause. Our words would then assume quite a different meaning, and no longer be applicable to phenomena, as possible objects of experience.

  How anything can be changed at all, how it is possible that one state in a given time is followed by another at another time, of that we have not the slightest conception a priori. We want for that a knowledge of real powers, which can be given empirically only: for instance, a knowledge of motive powers, or what is the same, a knowledge of certain successive phenomena (as movements) which indicate the presence of such forces. What can be considered a priori, according to the law of causality and the conditions of time, are the form of every change, the condition under which alone, as an arising of another state, it can take place (its contents, that is, the state, which is changed, being what it may), and therefore the succession itself of the states (that which has happened).15

  When a substance passes from one state a into another b, the moment of the latter is different from the moment of the former state, and follows it. Again, that second state, as a reality (in phenomena), differs from the first in which that reality did not exist, as b from zero; that is, even if the state b differed from the state a in quantity only, that change is an arising of b—a, which in the former state was non-existent, and in relation to which that state is =0.

  The question therefore arises how a thing can pass from a state = a to another = b? Between two moments there is always a certain time, and between two states in these two moments there is always a difference which must have a certain quantity, because all parts of phenomena are always themselves quantities. Every transition therefore from one state into another takes place in a certain time between two moments, the first of which determines the state from which a thing arises, the second that at which it arrives. Both therefore are the temporal limits of a change or of an intermediate state between two states, and belong as such to the whole of the change. Every change, however, has a cause which proves its causality during the whole of the time in which the change takes place. The cause therefore does not produce the change suddenly (in one moment), but during a certain time; so that, as the time grows from the initiatory moment a to its completion in b, the quantity of reality also (b - a) is produced through all the smaller degrees between the first and the last. All change therefore is possible only through a continuous action of causality which, so far as it is uniform, is called a momentum. A change does not consist of such moment, but is produced by them as their effect.

  This is the law of continuity in all change, founded on this, that neither time nor a phenomenon in time consists of parts which are the smallest possible, and that nevertheless the state of a thing which is being changed passes through all these parts, as elements, to its new state. No difference of the real in phenomena and no difference in the quantity of times is ever the smallest; and thus the new state of reality grows from the first state in which that reality did not exist through all the infinite degrees thereof, the differences of which from one another are smaller than that between zero and a.

  It does not concern us at present of what utility this principle may be in physical science. But how such a principle, which seems to enlarge our knowledge of nature so much, can be possible a priori, that requires a careful investigation, although we can see that it is real and true, and might thus imagine that the question how it was possible is unnecessary. For there are so many unfounded pretensions to enlarge our knowledge by pure reason that we must accept it as a general principle, to be always distrustful, and never to believe or accept anything of this kind without documents capable of a thorough deduction, however clear the dogmatical proof of it may appear.

  All addition to our empirical knowledge and every advance in perception is nothing but an enlargement of the determinations of our internal sense, that is, a progression in time, whatever the objects may be, whether phenomena or pure intuitions. This progression in time determines everything, and is itself determined by nothing else, that is, the parts of that progression are only given in time, and through the synthesis of time, but not time before this synthesis. For this reason every transition in our perception to something that follows in time is really a determination of time through the production of that perception, and as time is always and in all its parts a quantity, the production of a perception as a quantity, through all degrees (none of them being the smallest), from zero up to its determined degree. This shows how it is possible to know a priori a law of changes, as far as their form is co
ncerned. We are only anticipating our own apprehension, the formal condition of which, as it dwells in us before all given phenomena, may well be known a priori.

  In the same manner therefore in which time contains the sensuous condition a priori of the possiability of a continuous progression of that which exists to that which follows, the understanding, by means of the unity of apperception, is a condition a priori of the possibility of a continuous determination of the position of all phenomena in that time, and this through a series of causes and effects, the former producing inevitably the existence of the latter, and thus rendering, the empirical knowledge of the relations of time valid for all times (universally) and therefore objectively valid.

  C

  [Third Analogy

  Principle of Community

  All substances, in so far as they are coexistent, stand in complete community, that is, reciprocity one to another16]

  Proof

  Things are coexistent in so far as they exist at one and the same time. But how can we know that they exist at one and the same time? Only if the order in the synthesis of apprehension of the manifold is indifferent, that is, if I may advance from A through B, C, D, to E, or contrariwise from E to A. For, if the synthesis were successive in time (in the order beginning with A and ending with E), it would be impossible to begin the apprehension with the perception of E and to go backwards to A, because A belongs to past time, and can no longer be an object of apprehension.

  If we supposed it possible that in a number of substances, as phenomena, each were perfectly isolated, so that none influenced another or received influences from another, then the coexistence of them could never become an object of possible perception, nor could the existence of the one through any process of empirical synthesis lead us on to the existence of another. For if we imagined that they were separated by a perfectly empty space, a perception, proceeding from the one in time to the other might no doubt determine the existence of it by means of a subsequent perception, but would never be able to determine whether that phenomenon followed objectively on the other or was coexistent with it.

  There must therefore be something besides their mere existence by which A determines its place in time for B, and B for A, because thus only can these two substances be represented empirically as coexistent. Nothing, however, can determine the place of anything else in time, except that which is its cause or the cause of its determinations. Therefore every substance (since it can be effect with regard to its determinations only) must contain in itself the causality of certain determinations in another substance, and, at the same time, the effects of the causality of that other substance, that is, substances must stand in dynamical communion, immediately or mediately, with each other, if their coexistence is to be known in any possible experience. Now, everything without which the experience of any objects would be impossible, may be said to be necessary with reference to such objects of experience; from which it follows that it is necessary for all substances, so far as they are coexistent as phenomena, to stand in a complete communion of reciprocity with each other.

  The word communion (Gemeinschaft) may be used in two senses, meaning either communio or commercium. We use it here in the latter sense: as a dynamical communion without which even the local communio spatii could never be known empirically. We can easily perceive in our experience, that continuous influences only can lead our senses in all parts of space from one object to another; that the light which plays between our eyes and celestial bodies produces a mediate communion between us and them, and proves the coexistence of the latter; that we cannot change any place empirically (perceive such a change) unless matter itself renders the perception of our own place possible to us, and that by means of its reciprocal influence only matter can evince its simultaneous existence, and thus (though mediately only) its coexistence, even to the most distant objects. Without this communion every perception (of any phenomenon in space) is separated from the others, and the chain of empirical representations, that is, experience itself, would have to begin de novo with every new object, without the former experience being in the least connected with it, or standing to it in any temporal relation. I do not want to say anything here against empty space. Empty space may exist where perception cannot reach, and where therefore no empirical knowledge of coexistence takes place, but, in that case, it is no object for any possible experience.

  The following remarks may elucidate this. It is necessary that in our mind all phenomena, as being contained in a possible experience, must share a communion of apperception, and if the objects are to be represented as connected in coexistence, they must reciprocally determine their place in time, and thus constitute a whole. If this subjective communion is to rest on an objective ground, or is to refer to phenomena as substances, then the perception of the one as cause must render possible the perception of the other, and vice versa: so that the succession which always exists in perceptions, as apprehensions, may not be attributed to the objects, but that the objects should be represented as existing simultaneously. This is a reciprocal influence, that is a real commercium of substances, without which the empirical relation of co-existence would be impossible in our experience. Through this commercium, phenomena as being apart from each other and yet connected, constitute a compound (compositum reale), and such compounds become possible in many ways. The three dynamical relations, therefore, from which all others are derived, are inherence, consequence, and composition.

  These are the three analogies of experience. They are nothing but principles for determining the existence of phenomena in time, according to its three modes. First, the relation of time itself, as to a quantity (quantity of existence, that is duration). Secondly, the relation in time, as in a series (successively). And thirdly, likewise in time, as the whole of all existence (simultaneously). This unity in the determination of time is dynamical only, that is, time is not looked upon as that in which experience assigns immediately its place to every existence, for this would be impossible; because absolute time is no object of perception by which phenomena could be held together; but the rule of the understanding through which alone the existence of phenomena can receive synthetical unity in time determines the place of each of them in time, therefore a priori and as valid for all time.

  By nature (in the empirical sense of the word) we mean the coherence of phenomena in their existence, according to necessary rules, that is, laws. There are therefore certain laws, and they exist a priori, which themselves make nature possible, while the empirical laws exist and are discovered through experience, but in accordance with those original laws which first render experience possible. Our analogies therefore represent the unity of nature in the coherence of all phenomena, under certain exponents, which express the relation of time (as comprehending all existence) to the unity of apperception, which apperception can only take place in the synthesis according to rules. The three analogies, therefore, simply say, that all phenomena exist in one nature, and must so exist because, without such unity a priori no unity of experience, and therefore no determination of objects in experience, would be possible.

  With regard to the mode of proof, by which we have arrived at these transcendental laws of nature and its peculiar character, a remark must be made which will become important as a rule for any other attempt to prove intelligible, and at the same time synthetical propositions a priori. If we had attempted to prove these analogies dogmatically, that is from concepts, showing that all which exists is found only in that which is permanent, that every event presupposes something in a previous state on which it follows by rule, and lastly, that in the manifold which is coexistent, states coexist in relation to each other by rule, all our labour would have been in vain. For we may analyse as much as we like, we shall never arrive from one object and its existence at the existence of another, or at its mode of existence by means of the concepts of these things only. What else then remained? There remained the possibility of experience, as that knowledge in which all obj
ects must in the end be capable of being given to us, if their representation is to have any objective reality for us. In this, namely in the synthetical unity of apperception of all phenomena, we discovered the conditions a priori of an absolute and necessary determination in time of all phenomenal existence. Without this even the empirical determinations in time would be impossible, and we thus established the rules of the synthetical unity a priori, by which we might anticipate experience. It was because people were ignorant of this method, and imagined that they could prove dogmatically synthetical propositions which the empirical use of the understanding follows as its principles, that so many and always unsuccessful attempts have been made to prove the proposition of the 'sufficient reason.' The other two analogies have not even been thought of, though everybody followed them unconsciously,17 because the method of the categories was wanting, by which alone every gap in the under standing, both with regard to concepts and principles, can be discovered and pointed out.

  IV

  The Postulates of Empirical Thought in General

  1. What agrees with the formal conditions of experience (in intuition and in concepts) is possible