Fourthly, if we assume the existence of an absolutely necessary being- whether it be the world or something in the world, or the cause of the world- we must place it in a time at an infinite distance from any given moment; for, otherwise, it must be dependent on some other and higher existence.Such an existence is, in this case, too large for our empirical conception, and unattainable by the continued regress of any synthesis.
But if we believe that everything in the world- be it condition or conditioned- is contingent; every given existence is too small for our conception.For in this case we are compelled to seek for some other existence upon which the former depends.
We have said that in all these cases the cosmological idea is either too great or too small for the empirical regress in a synthesis, and consequently for every possible conception of the understanding.Why did we not express ourselves in a manner exactly the reverse of this and, instead of accusing the cosmological idea of over stepping or of falling short of its true aim, possible experience, say that, in the first case, the empirical conception is always too small for the idea, and in the second too great, and thus attach the blame of these contradictions to the empirical regress? The reason is this.
Possible experience can alone give reality to our conceptions; without it a conception is merely an idea, without truth or relation to an object.Hence a possible empirical conception must be the standard by which we are to judge whether an idea is anything more than an idea and fiction of thought, or whether it relates to an object in the world.If we say of a thing that in relation to some other thing it is too large or too small, the former is considered as existing for the sake of the latter, and requiring to be adapted to it.Among the trivial subjects of discussion in the old schools of dialectics was this question: "If a ball cannot pass through a hole, shall we say that the ball is too large or the hole too small?" In this case it is indifferent what expression we employ; for we do not know which exists for the sake of the other.On the other hand, we cannot say:
"The man is too long for his coat"; but: "The coat is too short for the man."We are thus led to the well-founded suspicion that the cosmological ideas, and all the conflicting sophistical assertions connected with them, are based upon a false and fictitious conception of the mode in which the object of these ideas is presented to us; and this suspicion will probably direct us how to expose the illusion that has so long led us astray from the truth.
SECTION VI.Transcendental Idealism as the Key to the Solution of Pure Cosmological Dialectic.
In the transcendental aesthetic we proved that everything intuited in space and time, all objects of a possible experience, are nothing but phenomena, that is, mere representations; and that these, as presented to us- as extended bodies, or as series of changes- have no self-subsistent existence apart from human thought.This doctrine Icall Transcendental Idealism.* The realist in the transcendental sense regards these modifications of our sensibility, these mere representations, as things subsisting in themselves.
*I have elsewhere termed this theory formal idealism, to distinguish it from material idealism, which doubts or denies the existence of external things.To avoid ambiguity, it seems advisable in many cases to employ this term instead of that mentioned in the text.
It would be unjust to accuse us of holding the long-decried theory of empirical idealism, which, while admitting the reality of space, denies, or at least doubts, the existence of bodies extended in it, and thus leaves us without a sufficient criterion of reality and illusion.The supporters of this theory find no difficulty in admitting the reality of the phenomena of the internal sense in time; nay, they go the length of maintaining that this internal experience is of itself a sufficient proof of the real existence of its object as a thing in itself.
Transcendental idealism allows that the objects of external intuition- as intuited in space, and all changes in time- as represented by the internal sense, are real.For, as space is the form of that intuition which we call external, and, without objects in space, no empirical representation could be given us, we can and ought to regard extended bodies in it as real.The case is the same with representations in time.But time and space, with all phenomena therein, are not in themselves things.They are nothing but representations and cannot exist out of and apart from the mind.
