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

We use it here in the latter sense : as a dynamical communion without which even the local commtmio spatii could never be known empirically. We can easily perceive in our experience, that continuous influences only can lead our senses in all parts of space from one object to another ; that the light which plays between our eyes and celestial bodies produces a mediate communion between us and them, and proves the coexistence of the latter ; that we cannot change any place empirically (perceive such a change) unless matter itself renders the perception of our own place possible to us, and that by means of its reciprocal influence only matter can evince its simultaneous existence, and thus (though mediately only) its coexistence, even to the most distant objects. Without this communion every perception (of any phe- [p. 214] nomenon in space) is separated from the others, and the chain of empirical representations, that is, experience itself, would have to begin de novo with every new object, without the former experience being in the least connected with it, or standing to it in any temporal relation. I do not want to say anything here against empty space. Empty space may exist where perception cannot reach, and where therefore no empirical knowledge of coexistence takes place, but, in that case, it is no object for any possible experience.

The following remarks may elucidate this. It is necessary that in our mind all phenomena, as being contained in a possible experience, must share a communion of apperception, and if the objects are to be represented as connected in coexistence, they must reciprocally determine their place in time, and thus constitute a whole. If this subjective communion is to rest on an objective ground, or

Transcendental Analytic 175

is to refer to phenomena as substances, then the perception of the one as cause must render possible the perception of the other, and vice versa: so that the succession which always exists in perceptions, as apprehensions, may not be attributed to the objects, but that the objects should be represented as existing simultaneously. This is a reciprocal influence, that is a real cominerciitm of substances, without which the empirical relation of co-exist- [p. 215] ence would be impossible in our experience. Through this commercium, phenomena as being apart from each other and yet connected, constitute a compound {compositum reale), and such compounds become possible in many ways. The three dynamical relations, therefore, from which all others are derived, are inherencCy conseque7tce, and composition.

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These are the three analogies of experience. They are nothing but principles for determining the existence of phenomena in time, according to its three modes. First, the relation of time itself, as to a quantity (quantity of existence, that is duration). Secondly, the relation in time, as in a series (successively). And thirdly, likewise in time, as the whole of all existence (simultaneously). This unity in the determination of time is dynamical only, that is, time is not looked upon as that in which experience assigns immediately its place to every existence, for this would be impossible ; because absolute time is no object of perception by which phenomena could be held together ; but the rule of the understanding through which alone the existence of phenomena can receive synthetical unity in time determines the place of each of them in time, therefore a priori and as valid for all time.

176 Transcendental Analytic

By nature (in the empirical sense of the word) [p. 216] we mean the coherence of phenomena in their existence, according to necessary rules, that is, laws. There are therefore certain laws, and they exist a priori, which themselves make nature possible, while the empirical laws exist and are discovered through experience, but in accordance with those original laws which first render experience possible. Our analogies therefore represent the unity of nature in the coherence of all phenomena, under certain exponents, which express the relation of time (as comprehending all existence) to the unity of apperception, which apperception can only take place in the synthesis according to rules. The three analogies, therefore, simply say, that all phenomena exist in one nature, and must so exist because, without such unity a priori no unity of experience, and therefore no determination of objects in experience, would be possible.

With regard to the mode of proof, by which we have arrived at these transcendental laws of nature and its peculiar character, a remark must be made which will become important as a rule for any other attempt to prove intelligible, and at the same time synthetical propositions a priofi. If we had attempted to prove these analogies dogmatically, that is from concepts, showing that all which exists is found only in that which is permanent, that every event [p. 217] presupposes something in a previous state on which it follows by rule, and lastly, that in the manifold which is coexistent, states coexist in relation to each other by rule, all our labour would have been in vain. For we may analyse as much as we like, we shall never arrive from one object and its existence at the existence

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