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

itself. The concepts of reality, of substance, even of causality, and those of necessity in existence, have no meaning that could determine any object, unless they are used to make the empirical knowledge of an object pos^ sible.

They may be used, therefore, to explain the possibility of things in the world of sense, but not to explain the possibility of a universe itself^ because such an hypothesis is outside the world and could never be an object of possible experience. I can, however, admit perfectly well such an inconceivable Being, being the object of a mere idea, relative to the world of sense, though not as existing by itself.

For if the greatest possible empirical use of my reason depends on an idea (on the systematically complete unity of which I shall soon speak more in detail), which by itself can never be adequately represented in experience, though it is indispensably necessary in order to bring the empirical unity as near as possible to the highest perfection, I shall not only have the right, but even the duty, to realise such an idea, that is, to assign to it a real object, though only as a something in general, which by itself I do not know at all, and to which, as the cause of that systematical unity, I ascribe, in reference to it, such qualities as are analogous to the concepts [p. 6'jZ'\ employed by the understanding in dealing with experience.

I shall, therefore, according to the analogy of realities in the world, of substances, of causality, and of necessity, conceive a Being possessing all these in the highest perfection, and, as this idea rests on my reason only, conceive that Being as self-subsistent reason^ being, through the ideas of the greatest harmony and unity, the cause of the universe. In doing this I omit all conditions which could limit the idea, simply in order to render, with

Transcendental Dialectic 545

the help of such a fundamental cause, the systematical unity of the manifold in the universe, and, through it, the greatest possible empirical use of reason, possible. I then look upon all connections in the world as if they were ordered by a supreme reason, of which our own reason is but a faint copy, and I represent to myself that Supreme Being through concepts which, properly speaking, are applicable to the world of sense only. As, however, I make none but a relative use of that transcendental hypothesis, as the substratum of the greatest possible unity of experience, I may perfectly well represent a Being which I distinguish from the world, by qualities which belong to the world of sense only. For I demand by no means, nor am I justified in demanding, that I should know that object of my idea, according to what it may be by itself. I have no concepts whatever for it, and even the concepts [p. 679] of reality, substance, causality, ay, of the necessity in existence, lose all their meaning, and become mere titles of concepts, void of contents, as soon as I venture with them outside the field of the senses. I only present to myself the relation of a Being, utterly unknown to me as existing by itself, to the greatest possible systematical unity of the universe, in order to use it as a schema of the regulative principle of the greatest possible empirical use of my reason.

If now we glance at the transcendental object of our idea, we find that we cannot, according to the concepts of reality, substance, causality, etc., presuppose its reality by itself y because such concepts are altogether inapplicable to something totally distinct from the world of sense. The supposition, therefore, which reason makes of a Supreme Being, as the highest cause, is relative only, devised

2 N

546 Transcendental Dialectic for the sake of the systematical unity in the world of sense, and a mere Something in the idea, while we have no concept of what it may be by itself. Thus we are able to understand why we require the idea of an original Being, necessary by itself, with reference to all that is given to the senses as existing, but can never have the slightest conception of it and of its absolute necessity.