in the four Transcendental Ideas
We should be quite willing to desist from the demand of a dogmatical
answer to our questions, if we understood beforehand that, be the
answer what it may, it would only serve to increase our ignorance, to
throw us from one incomprehensibility into another, from one obscurity
into another still greater, and perhaps lead us into irreconcilable
contradictions. If a dogmatical affirmative or negative answer is
demanded, is it at all prudent to set aside the probable grounds of a
solution which lie before us and to take into consideration what
advantage we shall gain, if the answer is to favour the one side or the
other? If it happens that in both cases the answer is mere nonsense, we
have in this an irresistible summons to institute a critical
investigation of the question, for the purpose of discovering whether
it is based on a groundless presupposition and relates to an idea, the
falsity of which would be more easily exposed in its application and
consequences than in the mere representation of its content. This is
the great utility of the sceptical mode of treating the questions
addressed by pure reason to itself. By this method we easily rid
ourselves of the confusions of dogmatism, and establish in its place a
temperate criticism, which, as a genuine cathartic, will successfully
remove the presumptuous notions of philosophy and their consequence—the
vain pretension to universal science.
If, then, I could understand the nature of a cosmological idea and
perceive, before I entered on the discussion of the subject at all,
that, whatever side of the question regarding the unconditioned of the
regressive synthesis of phenomena it favoured—it must either be too
great or too small for every conception of the understanding—I would be
able to comprehend how the idea, which relates to an object of
experience—an experience which must be adequate to and in accordance
with a possible conception of the understanding—must be completely void
and without significance, inasmuch as its object is inadequate,
consider it as we may. And this is actually the case with all
cosmological conceptions, which, for the reason above mentioned,
involve reason, so long as it remains attached to them, in an
unavoidable antinomy. For suppose:
First, that the world has no beginning—in this case it is too large for
our conception; for this conception, which consists in a successive
regress, cannot overtake the whole eternity that has elapsed. Grant
that it has a beginning, it is then too small for the conception of the
understanding. For, as a beginning presupposes a time preceding, it
cannot be unconditioned; and the law of the empirical employment of the
understanding imposes the necessity of looking for a higher condition
of time; and the world is, therefore, evidently too small for this law.
The same is the case with the double answer to the question regarding
the extent, in space, of the world. For, if it is infinite and
unlimited, it must be too large for every possible empirical
conception. If it is finite and limited, we have a right to ask: “What
determines these limits?” Void space is not a self-subsistent correlate
of things, and cannot be a final condition—and still less an empirical
condition, forming a part of a possible experience. For how can we have
any experience or perception of an absolute void? But the absolute
totality of the empirical synthesis requires that the unconditioned be
an empirical conception. Consequently, a finite world is too small for
our conception.
Secondly, if every phenomenon (matter) in space consists of an infinite
number of parts, the regress of the division is always too great for
our conception; and if the division of space must cease with some
member of the division (the simple), it is too small for the idea of
the unconditioned. For the member at which we have discontinued our
division still admits a regress to many more parts contained in the
object.
Thirdly, suppose that every event in the world happens in accordance
with the laws of nature; the causality of a cause must itself be an
event and necessitates a regress to a still higher cause, and
consequently the unceasing prolongation of the series of conditions a
parte priori. Operative nature is therefore too large for every
conception we can form in the synthesis of cosmical events.
If we admit the existence of spontaneously produced events, that is, of
free agency, we are driven, in our search for sufficient reasons, on an
unavoidable law of nature and are compelled to appeal to the empirical
law of causality, and we find that any such totality of connection in
our synthesis is too small for our necessary empirical conception.
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.