The notorious problem, therefore, as to a possible association between the thinking and the extended, would, when all that is purely imaginative is deducted, come to this, how external intuition, namely, that of space (or what fills space, namely, form and movement), is possible in any thinking subject? To this question, however, no human being can return an answer, and instead of attempting to fill this gap in our knowledge, all we can do is to indicate it by ascribing external phenomena to a transcendental object as the cause of this class of representations, but which we shall never know, nor be able to form any concept of. In all practical questions we treat phenomena as objects by themselves, without troubling ourselves about the first cause of their possibility (as phenomena). But as soon as we go beyond, the concept of a transcendental object becomes inevitable.
The decision of all the discussions on the state of a thinking being, before this association with matter (life) or after the ceasing of such association (death), depends on the remarks which we have just made on the association between the thinking and the extended. The opinion that the thinking subject was able to think before any association with bodies, would assume the following form, that before the beginning of that kind of sensibility through which something appears to us in space, the same transcendental objects, which in our present state appear as bodies, could have been seen in a totally different way. The other opinion that, after the cessation of its association with the material world, the soul could continue to think, would be expressed as follows: that, if that kind of sensibility through which transcendental and, for the present, entirely unknown objects appear to us as a material world, should cease, it would not follow that thereby all intuition of them would be removed: it being quite possible that the same unknown objects should continue to be known by the thinking subject, although no longer in the quality of bodies.
Now it is quite true that no one can produce from speculative principles the smallest ground for such an assertion, or do more than presuppose its possibility, but neither can any valid dogmatical objection be raised against it. For whoever would attempt to do so, would know neither more nor less than I myself, or anybody else, about the absolute and internal cause of external and material phenomena. As he cannot pretend to know on what the reality of external phenomena in our present state (in life) really rests, neither can he know that the condition of all external intuition, or the thinking subject itself, will cease after this state (in death).
We thus see that all the wrangling about the nature of a thinking being, and its association with the material world, arises simply from our filling the gap, due to our ignorance, with paralogisms of reason, and by changing thoughts into things and hypostasising them. On this an imaginary science is built up, both by those who assert and by those who deny, some pretending to know about objects of which no human being has any conception, while others make their own representations to be objects, all turning round in a constant circle of ambiguities and contradictions. Nothing but a sober, strict, and just criticism can free us of this dogmatical illusion, which, through theories and systems, deceives so many by an imaginary happiness. It alone can limit our speculative pretensions to the sphere of possible experience, and this not by a shallow scoffing at repeated failures or by pious sighs over the limits of our reason, but by a demarcation made according to well-established principles, writing the nihil ulterius with perfect assurance on those Herculean columns which Nature herself has erected, in order that the voyage of our reason should be continued so far only as the continuous shores of experience extend—shores which we can never forsake without being driven upon a boundless ocean, which, after deceiving us again and again, makes us in the end cease all our laborious and tedious endeavours as perfectly hopeless.
We have yet to give a general and clear investigation of the transcendental, and yet natural illusion, produced by the paralogisms of pure reason, and the justification of our systematical arrangement of them, which ran parallel with the table of the categories. We could not have done this at the beginning of this section, without running the risk of becoming obscure, or inconveniently anticipating our arguments. We shall now try to fulfil our duty.
All illusion may be explained as mistaking the subjective condition of thought for the knowledge of the object. In the introduction to the transcendental Dialectic, we showed that pure reason is occupied exclusively with the totality of the synthesis of conditions belonging to anything conditioned. Now as the dialectical illusion of pure reason cannot be an empirical illusion, such as occurs in certain empirical kinds of knowledge, it can refer only to the conditions of thought in general, so that there can only be three cases of the dialectical use of pure reason:—
1. The synthesis of the conditions of a thought in general.
2. The synthesis of the conditions of empirical thought.
3. The synthesis of the conditions of pure thought.
In every one of these three cases pure reason is occupied only with the absolute totality of that synthesis, that is, with that condition, which is itself unconditioned. It is on this division also that the threefold transcendental illusion is founded which leads to three subdivisions of the Dialectic, and to as many pretended sciences flowing from pure reason, namely, transcendental psychology, cosmology, and theology. We are at present concerned with the first only.
As, in thinking in general, we take no account of the relation of our thoughts to any object (whether of the senses or of the pure understanding), what is called (1) the synthesis of the conditions of a thought in general, is not objective at all, but only a synthesis of thought with the subject, which synthesis is wrongly taken for the synthetical representation of an object.
It follows from this that the dialectical conclusion as to the condition of all thought in general, which condition itself is unconditioned, does not involve a fault in its contents (for it ignores all contents or objects), but only a fault in form, and must therefore be called a paralogism.
As, moreover, the only condition which accompanies all thought is the I, in the general proposition I think, reason has really to deal with this condition, so far as that condition is itself unconditioned. It is however a formal condition only, namely, the logical unity of every thought, no account being taken of any object; but it is represented nevertheless as an object which I think, namely, as the I itself and its unconditioned unity.
If I were asked what is the nature of a thing which thinks, I could not give any answer a priori, for the answer ought to be synthetical, as an analytical answer might explain perhaps the meaning of the term "thought," but could never add any real knowledge of that on which the possibility of thought depends. For a synthetical solution, however, we should require intuition, and this has been entirely left out of account in the general form given to our problem. It is equally impossible to answer the general question, what is the nature of a thing which is moveable, because in that case the impermeable extension (matter) is not given. But although I have no answer to return to that question in general, it might seem that I could answer it in a special case, namely, in the proposition which expresses the self-consciousness, I think. For this I is the first subject, i.e. substance, it is simple, etc. These, however, ought then to be propositions of experience, which nevertheless, without a general rule containing the conditions of the possibility of thought in general and a priori, could not contain such predicates (which are not empirical). This consideration makes our knowledge of the nature of a thinking being derived from pure concepts, which seemed at first so plausible, extremely suspicious, though we have not yet discovered the place where the fault really lies.
A further investigation, however, of the origin of the attributes which I predicate of myself as a thinking being in general, may help us to discover the fault. They are no more than pure categories by which I can never think a definite object, but only the unity of the representations which is requisite in order to determine an object. Without a previous intuition, no category by itself can g
ive me a concept of an object, for by intuition alone the object is given, which afterwards is thought in accordance with a category. In order to declare a thing to be a substance in phenomenal appearance, predicates of its intuition must first be given to me, in which I may distinguish the permanent from the changeable, and the substratum (the thing in itself) from that which is merely inherent in it. If I call a thing simple as a phenomenon, what I mean is that its intuition is a part of phenomenal appearance, but cannot itself be divided into parts, etc. But if I know something to be simple by a concept only, and not by phenomenal appearance, I have really no knowledge whatever of the object, but only of my concept which I make to myself of something in general, that is incapable of any real intuition. I only say that I think something as perfectly simple, because I have really nothing to say of it except that it is something.
Now the mere apperception (the I) is substance in concept, simple in concept, etc., and so far all the psychological propositions of which we spoke before are incontestably true. Nevertheless what we really wish to know of the soul, becomes by no means known to us in that way, because all those predicates are with regard to intuition non-valid, entailing no consequences with regard to objects of experience, and therefore entirely empty. For that concept of substance does not teach me that the soul continues by itself, or that it is a part of external intuitions, which itself cannot be resolved into parts, and cannot therefore arise or perish by any changes of nature. These are qualities which would make the soul known to us in its connection with experience, and might give us an insight into its origin and future state. But if I say, by means of the category only, that the soul is a simple substance, it is clear that the bare rational concept of substance contains nothing beyond the thought that a thing should be represented as a subject in itself, without becoming in turn a predicate of anything else. Nothing can be deduced from this, with regard to the permanence (of the 1), nor can the attribute of simplicity add that of permanence, nor can we thus learn anything whatsoever as to the fate of the soul in the revolutions of the world. If anybody could tell us that the soul is a simple part of matter, we might, with the help of experience, deduce from this the permanence and, on account of its simple nature, the indestructibility of the soul. But of all this, the concept of the 1, in the psychological proposition of I think, tells us nothing.
The reason why that being which thinks within us imagines that it knows itself by means of pure categories, and especially by that which expresses absolute unity under each head, is this. The apperception itself is the ground of the possibility of the categories, and these represent nothing but the synthesis of the manifold in intuition, so far as it has unity in apperception. Self-consciousness therefore is the representation of that which forms the condition of all unity, and is itself unconditioned. One may therefore say of the thinking I (the soul), which represents itself as substance, simple, numerically identical in all time, and as the correlative of all existence, from which in fact all other existence must be concluded, that it does not know itself through the categories, but knows the categories only, and through them all objects, in the absolute unity of apperception, that is, through itself. It may seem no doubt self-evident that I cannot know as an object that which is presupposed in order to enable me to know an object and that the determining self (thought) differs from the self that is to be determined (the thinking subject), like knowledge from its object. Nevertheless nothing is more natural or at least more tempting than the illusion which makes us look upon the unity in the synthesis of thoughts as a perceived unity in the subject of thoughts. One might call it the surreptitious admission of an hypostasised consciousness (apperceptionis substantiatae).
If we want to have a logical term for the paralogism in the dialectical syllogisms of rational psychology, based on perfectly correct premisses, it might be called a sophisma figurae dictionis. In the major we use the category, with reference to its condition, transcendentally only; in the minor and in the conclusion, we use the same category, with reference to the soul which is to be comprehended under that condition, empirically. Thus, in the paralogism of substantiality,7 the concept of substance is a purely intellectual concept which, without the conditions of sensuous intuition, admits of a transcendental use only, that is, of no use at all. In the minor, however, we refer the same concept to the object of all internal experience, though without having previously established the condition of its application in concreto, namely, its permanence. We thus are making an empirical, and therefore entirely inadmissible use of it.
Lastly, in order to show the systematical connection of all these dialectical propositions of a rationalising psychology, according to their connection in pure reason, and thus to establish their completeness, it should be
remarked that the apperception is carried through all the classes of the categories, but only with reference to those concepts of the understanding, which in each of them formed a foundation of unity for the others in a possible perception, namely subsistence, reality, unity (not plurality), and existence, all of which are here represented by reason, as conditions (themselves unconditioned) of the possibility of a thinking being. Thus the soul knows in itself:—
I
The unconditioned unity
of the relation,
that is,
itself, not as inherent,
but as
subsisting.
II
III
The unconditioned unity
The unconditioned unity
of quality,
in the manifoldness of time,
that is,
that is,
not as a real whole,
not as at different times
but as
numerically different,
simple.8
but as
one and the same subject.
IV
The unconditioned unity
of existence in space,
that is,
not as the consciousness of many things outside it,
but as the consciousness of the existence of itself only,
and of other things, merely
as its representations.
Reason is the faculty of principles. The statements of pure psychology do not contain empirical predicates of the soul, but such as, if they exist, are meant to determine the object by itself, independent of all experience, and therefore by a pure reason only. They ought therefore to rest on principles and on general concepts of thinking beings. Instead of this we find that a single representation, I think,9 governs them all, a representation which, for the very reason that it expresses the pure formula of all my experience (indefinitely), claims to be a general proposition, applicable to all thinking beings, and, though single in all respects, has the appearance of an absolute unity of the conditions of thought in general, thus stretching far beyond the limits of possible experience.]
1 The reader, who may not guess at once the psychological purport of these transcendental and abstract terms, or understand why the latter attribute of the soul belongs to the category of existence, will find their full explanation and justification in the sequel. Moreover, I have to apologise for the many Latin expressions which, contrary to good taste, have crept in instead of their native equivalents, not only here; but throughout the whole of the work. My only excuse is, that I thought it better to sacrifice something of the elegance of language, rather than to throw any impediments in the way of real students, by the use of inaccurate and obscure expressions.
2 All that follows from here to the beginning of the second chapter, is left out in the Second Edition, and replaced by Supplement XXVII.
3 Afterwards transcendental instead of pure
4 It would be very easy to give to this argument the ordinary scholastic dress. But for my purposes it is sufficient to have clearly exhibited, even in a popular form, the ground on which it rests.
5 An elastic ball, which impinges on another in a straight line, communicate
s to it its whole motion, and therefore (if we only consider the places in space) its whole state. If then, in analogy with such bodies, we admit substances of which the one communicates to the other representations with consciousness, we could imagine a whole series of them, in which the first communicates its state and its consciousness to the second, the second its own state with that of the first substance to a third, and this again all the states of the former, together with its own, and a consciousness of them, to another. That last substance would be conscious of all the states of the previously changed substances, as of its own, because all of them had been transferred to it with the consciousness of them; but for all that it would not have been the same person in all those states.
6 We must well master this paradoxical, but quite correct proposition, that nothing can be in space, except what is represented in it. For space itself is nothing but representation, and whatever is in it must therefore be contained in that representation. There is nothing whatever in space, except so far as it is really represented in it. That a thing can exist only in the representation of it, may no doubt sound strange; but will lose its strangeness if we consider that the things with which we have to deal, are not things by themselves, but phenomena only, that is, representations.
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