Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
For this reason it might seem that we ought to call these concepts concepts of comparison (conceptus comparationis).
But as, when the contents of concepts and not their logical form must be considered, that is, whether the things themselves are identical or different, in agreement or in opposition, etc., all things may have a twofold relation to our faculty of knowledge, namely, either to sensibility or to the understanding, and as the manner in which they belong to one another depends on the place to which they belong, it follows that the transcendental reflection, that is the power of determining the relation of given representations to one or the other class of knowledge, can alone determine their mutual relation.
Whether the things are identical or different, in agreement or opposition, etc., cannot be established at once by the concepts themselves by means of a mere comparison {comparatid)^ but first of all by a proper discrimination of that class of knowledge to which they belong, that is, by transcendental reflection.
It might therefore be said, that logical reflection is a mere comparison, because it takes no account of the faculty of knowledge to which any given representations belong, and treats [p. 263] them, so far as they are all found in the mind, as homogeneous, while transcendental reflection (which refers to the objects themselves) supplies the possibility of an objective comparison of representations among themselves, and is therefore very different from the other, the faculty of knowledge to which they belong not being the same.
This transcendental reflection is a duty from which no one can escape who wishes to form judgments a priori. We shall now take it in hand, and may hope thus to throw not a little light on the real business of the understanding.
Transcendental Analytic 215
I. Identity and Difference
When an object is presented to us several times, but each time with the same internal determinations {qualitas et quantitas), it is, so long as it is considered as an object of the pure understanding, always one and the same, one thing, not many {numerica identitas). But if it is a phenomenon, a comparison of the concepts is of no consequence, and though everything may be identical with regard to the concepts, yet the difference of the place of this phenomenon at the same time is a sufficient ground for admitting the numerical difference of the object (of the senses). Thus, though there may be no internal difference whatever (either in quality or quantity) between two drops of water, yet the fact that they may be seen [p. 264] at the same time in different places is sufficient to establish their numerical difference. Leibniz took phenomena to be things by themselves, intelligibilia, that is, objects of the pure understanding (though, on account of the confused nature of their representations, he assigned to them the name of phenomena), and from that point of view his principle of their indiscernibility {principiunt identitas indiscernibi litem) could not be contested. As, however, they are objects of sensibility, and the use of the understanding with regard to them is not pure, but only empirical, their plurality and numerical diversity are indicated by space itself, as the condition of external phenomena. For one part of space, though it may be perfectly similar and equal to another, is still outside it, and for this very reason a part of space different from the first which, added to it, makes a larger space : and this applies to all things which exist at the same time in
2i6 Transcendental Analytic different parts of space, however similar or equal they may be in other respects.
11. Agreement and Opposition
When reality is represented by the pure understanding only {realitas noiimenon), no opposition can be conceived between realities, that is, no such relation that, if connected in one subject, they should annihilate the effects one of the other, as for instance 3 — 3 = 0. The real in [p. 265] the phenomena, on the contrary {realitas phenomenon)^ may very well be in mutual opposition, and if connected in one subject, one may annihilate completely or in part the effect of the other, as in the case of two forces moving in the same straight line, either drawing or impelling a point in opposite directions, or in the case of pleasure, counterbalancing a certain amount of pain.
III. The Internal and the External
In an object of the pure understanding that only is internal which has no relation whatever (as regards its existence) to anything different from itself. The inner relations, on the contrary, of a substantia phenomenon in space are nothing but relations, and the substance itself a complex of mere relations. We only know substances in space through the forces which are active in a certain space, by either drawing others near to it (attraction) or by preventing others from penetrating into it (repulsion and impenetrability). Other properties constituting thej concept of a substance appearing in space, and which wej call matter, are unknown to us. As an object of the pure] understanding, on the contrary, every substance must have
Transcendental Analytic 217
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