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

Therefore it exists also as such only, that is, as a substance.

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In the major they speak of a being that can be thought in every respect, and therefore also as it may be given in intuition. In the minor, however, they speak of it only so far as it considers itself, as subject, with respect to the thinking and the unity of consciousness only, but not at the same time in respect to the intuition whereby this unity is given as an object of thinking. The conclusion, therefore, has been drawn by a sophism, and more especially by sophisina figurae dictionis}

That we are perfectly right in thus resolving that famous argument into a paralogism, will be clearly seen by referring to the general note on the systematical representation of the principles, and to the section on the noumena, for it has been proved there that the concept of a thing, which can exist by itself as a subject, and not as a mere predicate, carries as yet no objective reahty, that is, that we cannot know whether any object at all belongs to it, it being impossible for us to understand the possibility of such a mode of existence. It yields us therefore no knowledge at all. If such a concept is to indicate, under the name of a substance, an object that can be given, and thus become knowledge, it must be made to rest on a permanent intuition, as the indispensable condition of the objective reality of a concept, that is, as that by which alone the object can be given. In internal intuition, however, we have nothing permanent, for the Ego is only the consciousness of my thinking; and if we do not go beyond this thinking, we are without the necessary condition for applying the concept of sub-

^ The thinking is taken in each of the two premisses in a totally different meaning: — in the major, as it refers to an object in general (and therefore also as it may be given in intuition), but in the minor, only as it exists in its relation to self-consciousness, where no object is thought of, but where we only represent the relation to the self as the subject (as the form of thought). In the former, things are spoken of that cannot be conceived otherwise than as subjects; while in the second we do not speak of things, but of the thinking (abstraction being made of all objects), wherein the Ego always serves as the subject of consciousness. The conclusion, therefore, ought not to be that I cannot exist otherwise than as a subject, but only, that in thinking my existence I can use myself as the subject of a judgment only. This is an identical proposition, and teaches us nothing whatever as to the mode of our existence.

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stance, that is, of an independent subject, to the self, as a thinking being. Thus the simpHcity of the substance entirely disappears with the objective reality of the concept : and is changed into a purely logical qualitative unity of self-consciousness in thinking in general, whether the subject be composite or not.

Refutation of Mendelssohn's Proof of the Permanence of the Soul

This acute philosopher perceived very quickly how the ordinary argument that the soul (if it is once admitted to be a simple being) cannot cease to exist by decoi7iposition, was insufficient to prove its necessary continuance, because it might cease to exist by simply vanishing. He therefore tried, in his Phaedon, to prove that the soul was not liable to that kind of perishing which would be a real annihilation, by endeavouring to show that a simple being cannot cease to exist, because as it could not be diminished, and thus gradually lose something of its existence, and be changed, by little and little, into nothing (it having no parts, and therefore no plurality in itself), there could be no time between the one moment in which it exists, and the other in which it exists no longer ; and this would be impossible.

He did not consider, however, that, though we might allow to the soul this simple nature, namely, that it contains nothing manifold, nothing by the side of each other, and therefore no extensive quantity, yet we could not deny to it, as little as to any other existing thing, intensive quantity, i.e. a degree of reality with respect to all its faculties, nay, to all which constitutes its existence. Such a degree of reality might diminish by an infinite number of smaller degrees, and thus the supposed substance (the thing, the permanence of which has not yet been established), might be changed into nothing, not indeed through decomposition, but through a gradual remission of its powers, or, if I may say so, through elanguescence. For even consciousness has always a degree, which admits of being diminished,^ and therefore also