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

The possibility, nay the necessity of these categories rests on the relation between our whole sensibility, and therefore all possible phenomena, and that original apperception in which everything must be necessarily subject to the conditions of the permanent unity of self-consciousness, that is, must submit to the general functions [p. 1 1 2] of that synthesis which we call synthesis according to concepts, by which alone our apperception can prove its permanent and necessary identity a priori. Thus the concept of cause is nothing but a synthesis of that which follows in temporal succession, with other phenomena, but a synthesis according to concepts: and without such a unity which rests on a rule a priori^ and subjects all phenomena to itself, no permanent and general, and therefore necessary unity of consciousness would be formed in the manifold of our perceptions. Such perceptions would then belong to no experience at all, they would be without an object, a blind play of representations, — less even than a dream.

All attempts therefore at deriving those pure concepts of the understanding from experience, and ascribing to them a purely empirical origin, are perfectly vain and useless. I shall not dwell here on the fact that a concept of cause, for instance, contains an element of necessity, which no experience can ever supply, because experience, though it teaches us that after one phenomenon something else follows habitually, can never teach us that it follows necessarily, nor that we could a priori^ and without any

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limitation, derive from it, as a condition, any conclusion as to what must follow. And thus I ask with reference to that empirical rule of association, which must always be admitted if we say that everything in the succession of events is so entirely subject to rules that nothing [p. 113] ever happens without something preceding it on which it always follows, — What does it rest on, if it is a law of nature, nay, how is that very association possible ? You call the ground for the possibility of the association of the manifold, so far as it is contained in the objects themselves, the affinity of the manifold. I ask, therefore, how do you make that permanent affinity by which phenomena stand, nay, must stand, under permanent laws, conceivable to yourselves }

According to my principles it is easily conceivable. All possible phenomena belong, as representations, to the whole of our possible self-consciousness. From this, as a transcendental representation, numerical identity is inseparable and a priori certain, because nothing can become knowledge except by means of that original apperception. As this identity must necessarily enter into the synthesis of the whole of the manifold of phenomena, if that synthesis is to become empirical knowledge, it follows that the phenomena are subject to conditions a priori to which their synthesis (in apprehension) must always conform. The representation of a general condition according to which something manifold caji be arranged (with uniformity) is called a rule, if it must be so arranged, a law. All phenomena therefore stand in a permanent connection according to necessary laws, and thus possess [p. 114] that transcendental affinity of which the empirical is a mere consequence.

94 Ti'ajtsceiidental A^ta lytic

It sounds no doubt very strange and absurd that nature should have to conform to our subjective ground of apperception, nay, be dependent on it, with respect to her laws. But if we consider that what we call nature is nothing but a whole of phenomena, not a thing by itself, but a number of representations in our soul, we shall no longer be surprised that we only see her through the fundamental faculty of all our knowledge, namely, the transcendental apperception, and in that unity without which it could not be called the object (or the whole) of all possible experience, that is, nature. We shall thus also understand why we can recognise this unity a priori, and therefore as necessary, which would be perfectly impossible if it were given by itself and independent of the first sources of our own thinking. In that case I could not tell whence we should take the synthetical propositions of such general unity of nature. They would have to be taken from the objects of nature themselves, and as this could be done empirically only, we could derive from it none but an accidental unity, which is ver}^ different from that necessary connection which we mean when speaking of nature.

DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING [P- 115]

Section III

Of the Relation of tJie Understanding to Objects in General, and the Possibility of Knozving Them a priori

What in the preceding section we have discussed singly and separately we shall now try to treat in connection with each other and as a whole. We saw that there are three subjective sources of knowledge on

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