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

perience can never yield such. You must therefore take the object as given a priori in intuition, and found your synthetical proposition on that. If you did not possess in yourselves the power of a priori intuition, if that subjective condition were not at the same time, as to the form, the general condition a priori under which alone the object of that (external) intuition becomes possible, if, in fact, the object (the triangle) were something by itself without any reference to you as the subject, how could you say that what exists necessarily in your subjective conditions of constructing a triangle, belongs of necessity to the triangle itself .'^ For you could not add something entirely new (the figure) to your concepts of three lines, something which should of necessity belong to the object, as that object is given Ijefore your knowledge of it, and not by it. If therefore space, and time also, were not pure forms of your intuition, which contains the a priori conditions under which alone things can become external objects to you, while, without that subjective condition, they are nothing, you could not predicate anything of external objects a priori and synthetically. It is therefore beyond the reach of doubt, and not possible [p. 49] only or probable, that space and time, as the necessary conditions of all experience, external and internal, are purely subjective conditions of our intuition, and that, with reference to them, all things are phenomena only, and not things thus existing by themselves in such or such wise. Hence, so far as their form is concerned, much may be predicated of them a priori, but nothing whatever of the things by themselves on which these phenomena may be grounded.^

1 Here follows in the Second Edition, Supplement XI.

THE

ELEMENTS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM

[p. 50]

SECOND PART

TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC

INTRODUCTION

THE IDEA OF A TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC

Of Logic ill General

Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of our soul ; the first receives representations (receptivity of impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object by these representations (spontaneity of concepts). By the first an object is given us, by the second the object is thought, in relation to that representation which is a mere determination of the soul. Intuition therefore and concepts constitute the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts can yield any real knowledge.

Both are either pure or empirical. They are empirical when sensation, presupposing the actual presence of the

p. 40

Ti'ansce7tdental Logic 41

object, is contained in it. They are pure when no sensation is mixed up with the representation. The latter may be called the material of sensuous knowledge. Pure intuition therefore contains the form only by which [p. 51] something is seen, and pure conception the form only by which an object is thought. Pure intuitions and pure concepts only are possible a priori, empirical intuitions and empirical concepts a posteriori.

We call se7isibility the receptivity of our soul, or 1 its power of receiving representations whenever it is I in any wise affected, while the understanding, on the I contrary, is with us the power of producing representa- I tions, or the spontaneity of knowledge. We are so constituted that our intuition must always be sensuous, and consist of the mode in which we are affected by objects. What enables us to think the objects of our sensuous intuition is the understanding. Neither of these qualities or faculties is preferable to the other. Without sensibility! objects would not be given to us, without understanding I they would not be thought by us. Thoughts without con- I tents are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.^ Therefore it is equally necessary to make our concepts sensuous, i.e. to add to them their object in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible, i.e. to bring them under concepts. These two powers or faculties cannot exchange their functions. The understanding cannot see7| the senses cannot think. By their union only can know- I ledge be produced. But this is no reason for confounding the share which belongs to each in the production of knowledge. On the contrary, they should al- [p. 52] ways be carefully separated and distinguished, and we have therefore divided the science of the rules of sen42 Transcendental Logic sibility in general, i.e. aesthetic, from the science of the rules of the understanding in general, i.e. logic.