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

even entirely to destroy its practical employment, it is in reality of positive, and of very important use, if only we are convinced that there is an absolutely necessary practical use of pure reason (the moral use), in which reason must inevitably go beyond the limits of sensibility, and though not requiring for this purpose the assistance of speculative reason, must at all events be assured against its opposition, lest it be brought in conflict with itself.

To deny that this service, which is rendered by criticism, is a positive advantage, would be the same as to deny that the police confers upon us any positive advantage, its principal occupation being to prevent violence, which citizens have to apprehend from citizens, so that each may pursue his vocation in peace and security.

We had established in the analytical part of our critique the following points : — First, that space and time are only forms of sensuous intuition, therefore conditions of the existence of things, as phenomena only ; Secondly, that we have no concepts of the understanding, and therefore nothing whereby we can arrive at the knowledge of things, except in so far as an intuition [p. xxvi] corresponding to these concepts can be given, and consequently that we cannot have knowledge of any object, as a thing by itself, but only in so far as it is an object of sensuous intuition, that is, a phenomenon.

This proves no doubt that all speculative knowledge of reason is limited to objects of experience ; but it should be carefully borne in mind, that this leaves it perfectly open to us, to think the same objects as things by themselves, though we cannot know them.^ For otherwise we should arrive at the absurd conclusion, that there is phenomenal appearance with- [p. xxvii]

^ In order to know an object, I must be able to prove its possibility, either from its reality, as attested by experience, or a priori by means of reason. But I can think whatever I please, provided only I do not contradict myself, that is, provided my conception is a possible thought, though I may be unable to answer for the existence of a corresponding object in the sum total of all possibilities. Before I can attribute to such a concept objective reality (real possibility, as distinguished from the former, which is purely logical), something more is required. This something more, however, need not be sought for in the sources of theoretical knowledge, for it may be found in those of practical knowledge also.

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out something that appears. Let us suppose that the necessary distinction, estabhshed in our critique, between things as objects of experience and the same things by themselves, had not been made. In that case, the principle of causaHty, and with it the mechanism of nature, as determined by it, would apply to all things in general, as efficient causes.

I should then not be able to say of one and the same being, for instance the human soul, that its will is free, and, at the same time, subject to the necessity of nature, that is, not free, without involving myself in a palpable contradiction : and this because I had taken the soul, in both propositions, in one and the same sense, namely, as a thing in general (as something by itself), as, without previous criticism, I could not but take it.

If, however, our criticism was true, in teaching us to take an object in two senses, namely, either as a phenomenon, or as a thing by itself, and if the deduction of our concepts of the understanding was correct, and the principle of causality appUes to things only, if taken in the first sense, namely, so far as they are objects of experience, but not to things, if taken in their second sense, we can, without any contradiction, think the same will when phenomenal (in visible actions) as necessarily [p. xxviii] conforming to the law of nature, and so far, 7iot free, and yet, on the other hand, when belonging to a thing by itself, as not subject to that law of nature, and therefore free.

Now it is quite true that I may not know my soul, as a thing by itself, by means of speculative reason (still less through empirical observation), and consequently may not know freedom either, as the quality of a being to which I attribute effects in the world of sense, because, in order to do this, I should have to know such a being as determined in its existence, and yet as not determined in time (which, as I •cannot provide my concept with any intuition, is impossible).

This, however, does not prevent me from thinking freedom ; that is, my representation of it contains at least no contradiction within itself, if only our critical distinction of the two modes of representation (the sensible and the intelligible), and the consequent Hmitation of the concepts of the pure understanding, and of the principles based on them, has been properly carried out. If, then, morahty necessarily presupposed freedom (in the strictest