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

a regressus in infinitum^ because this would anticipate the members which the regressus has not yet reached, and represent its number as so large that no empirical synthesis could ever reach it. It would therefore (though negatively only) determine the quantity of the world prior to the regressus, which is impossible, because it is not given to me by any intuition (in its totality), so that its quantity cannot be given prior to the regressus.

Hence we cannot say anything of the quantity or extension of the world by itself, not even that there is in it a regressus in infinitiun ; but we must look for the concept of its quantity according to the rule that determines the empirical regressus in it.

This rule, however, says no more than that, however far we may have got in the series of empirical conditions, we ought never to assume an absolute limit, but subordinate every phenomenon, as conditioned, to another, [p. 520] as its condition, and that we must proceed further to that condition. This is the regressus in indefinitzimy which, as it fixes no quantity in the object, can clearly enough be distinguished from the regressus in infinitum.

I cannot say therefore that, as to time past or as to space, the world is infinite. For such a concept of quantity, as a given infinity, is empirical, and therefore, with reference to the world as an object of the senses, absolutely impossible. Nor shall I say that the regressus, beginning with a given perception, and going on to everything that limits it in a series, both in space and in time past, goes on in infinitum, because this would presuppose an infinite quantity of the world. Nor can I say again that it is finite, for the absolute limit is likewise empirically impossible. Hence it follows that I shall not be able to say anything of the whole object of experience (the

Transce7idental Dialectic 423

world of sense), but only of the rule, according to which experience can take place and be continued in accordance with its object.

To the cosmological question, therefore, respecting the quantity of the world, the first and negative answer is, that the world has no first beginning in time, and no extreme limit in space.

For, in the contrary case, the world would be limited by empty time and empty space. As however, [p. 521] as a phenomenon, it cannot, by itself, be either, — a phenomenon not being a thing by itself, — we should have to admit the perception of a limitation by means of absolute empty time or empty space, by which these limits of the world could be given in a possible experience. Such an experience, however, would be perfectly void of contents, and therefore impossible. Consequently an absolute limit of the world is impossible empirically, and therefore absolutely also.^

From this follows at the same time the affirmative answer, that the regressus in the series of the phenomena of the world, intended as a determination of the quantity of the world, goes on in indefinitimi, which is the same as if we say that the world of sense has no absolute quantity, but that the empirical regressus (through which alone it can be given on the side of its conditions) has its own rule,

1 It will have been observed that the argument has here been carried on in a very different way from the dogmatical argument, which was presented before, in the antithesis of the first antinomy. There we took the world of sense, according to the common and dogmatical view, as a thing given by itself, in its totality, before any regressus : and we had denied to it, if it did not occupy all time and all space, any place at all in both. Hence the conclusion also was different from what it is here, for it went to the real infinity of the world.

424 Transcendental Dialectic namely, to advance from every member of the series, as conditioned, to a more distant member, whether by our own experience, or by the guidance of history, [p. 522] or through the chain of causes and their effects ; and never to dispense with the extension of the possible empirical use of the understanding, this being the proper and really only task of reason and its principles.