Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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Discipline of Pure Reason 62g
dental criticism it was thought better, as that principle could never be surrendered, to make a sturdy appeal to the common sense of mankind (an expedient which [p. 784] always shows that the cause of reason is desperate) than to attempt new dogmatical proofs of it.
But, if the proposition that has to be proved is an assertion of pure reason, and if I even intend by means of pure ideas to go beyond my empirical concepts, it would be all the more necessary that the proof should contain the justification of such a step of synthesis (if it were possible) as a necessary condition of its own validity. The so-called proof of the simple nature of our thinking substance (soul), derived from the unity of apperception, seems very plausible ; but it is confronted by an inevitable difficulty, because, as the absolute unity is not a concept that can be immediately referred to a perception, but, as an idea, can only be inferred, it is difficult to understand how the mere consciousness which is, or at least may be, contained in a// thought, though it may be so far a simple representation, can lead me on to the consciousness and the knowledge of a thing, in which thought alone is contained. For if I represent to myself the power of my body, as in motion, it is then to me an absolute unity, and my representation of it is a simple one. I can, therefore, very well express this representation by the motion of a point ; because the volume of the body is here of no consequence, and can, without any diminution of its power, be conceived as small as one likes, and, therefore, even as existing in one point. But I should never conclude from this that, if noth- [p. 785] ing is given to me but the motive power of a body, that body can be conceived as a simple substance, because its
630 Discipline of Pure Reason representation is independent of the quantity of its volume, and, therefore, simple. I thus detect a paralogism, because the simple in the abstract is totally different from the simple as an object, and the ego which, conceived in the abstract, contains nothing manifold, can, as an object, when signifying the soul, become a very complex concept, comprehending and implying many things.
In order to be prepared for such a paralogism (for unless we suspected it, the proof might excite no suspicion), it is absolutely necessary to be always in possession of a criterion of such synthetical propositions, which are meant to prove more than experience can ever supply.
This criterion consists in our demanding that the proof should not be carried directly to the predicate in question, but that, first, the principle of the possibility of expanding our given concept a priori into ideas and realising them, should be established.
If we always exercised this caution, and, before attempting any such proof, wisely considered ourselves, how, and with what degree of confidence, we might expect such an expansion through pure reason, and whence we might take, in such cases, knowledge which cannot be evolved from concepts nor anticipated with ref- [p. ']'^6\ erence to possible experience, we might spare ourselves many difficult, and yet fruitless endeavours, by not asking of reason what evidently is beyond its power, or rather, by subjecting reason, which when once under the influence of this passion for speculative conquest, is not easily checked,! to a thorough discipline of moderation.
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