Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

The case is totally different with the problem, how far the regressus from something given as conditioned may ascend in a series to its conditions ; whether I may call it a regressus into the infinite, or only into the indefinite {in indefinitiim ; and whether I may ascend, for instance, from the men now living, through the series of their ancestors, in ijifinitiim ; or whether I may only say that, so far as I have gone back, I have never met with an empirical ground for considering the series limited anywhere, so that I feel justified, and at the same time obliged

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to search for an ancestor of every one of these ancestors, though not to presuppose them.

I say, therefore, that where the whole is given in empirical intuition, the regressus in the series of its internal conditions proceeds iji infinitum^ while if a member only of a series is given, from which the regressus to the absolute totality has first to be carried out, the regressus is only in indefinitiun. Thus we must [p. 513] say that the division of matter, as given between its limits (a body), goes on in infinitiLm^ because that matter is complete and therefore, with all its possible parts, given in empirical intuition. As the condition of that whole consists in its part, and the condition of that part in the part of that part, and so on, and as in this regressus of decomposition we never meet with an unconditioned (indivisible) member of that series of conditions, there is nowhere an empirical ground for stopping the division ; nay, the further members of that continued division are themselves empirically given before the continuation of the division, and therefore the division goes on in infinitum. The series of ancestors, on the contrary, of any given man, exists nowhere in its absolute totality, in any possible experience, while the regressus goes on from every link in the generation to a higher one, so that no empirical limit can be found which should represent a link as absolutely unconditioned. As, however, the links too, which might supply the condition, do not exist in the empirical intuition of the whole, prior to the regressus, that regressus does not proceed in infinitnm (by a division of what is given), but to an indefinite distance, in its search for more links in addition to those which are given, and which themselves are again always conditioned only.

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41 8 Transcendental Dialectic

In neither case — the regressus in infinitum [p. 514] nor the regressus in indefinitmn — is the series of conditions to be considered as given as infinite in the object. They are not things by themselves, but phenomena only, which, as conditions of each other, are given only in the regressus itself.

Therefore the question is no longer how great this series of conditions may be by itself, whether finite or infinite, for it is nothing by itself, but only how we are to carry out the empirical regressus, and how far we may continue it. And here we see a very important difference with regard to the rule of that progress. If the whole is given empirically, it is possible to go back in the series of its conditions in infinitum.

But if the whole is not given, but has first to be given through an empirical regressus, I can only say that it is possible to proceed to still higher conditions of the series.

In the former case I could say that more members exist and are empirically given than I can reach through the regressus (of decomposition); in the latter I can only say that I may advance still further in the regressus, because no member is empirically given as absolutely unconditioned, and a higher member therefore alwayspossible, and therefore the enquiry for it necessary.

In the former case it was necessary to find more members of the series, in the latter it is necessary to enquire for more, because no experience is absolutely limiting.

For [p. 515] either you have no perception which absolutely limits your empirical regressus, and in that case you cannot consider that regressus as complete, or you have a perception which limits your series, and in that case it cannot be a part of your finished series (because what limits must be different from that which is limited by it), and you must therefore continue your regressus to that condition also, and so on for ever.