| It is, therefore, only in the category of causality that we can find a series of causes to a given effect, and in which we ascend from the latter, as the conditioned, to the former as the conditions, and thus answer the question of reason. |
| Fourthly, the conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the necessary do not conduct us to any series--excepting only in so far as the contingent in existence must always be regarded as conditioned, and as indicating, according to a law of the understanding, a condition, under which it is necessary to rise to a higher, till in the totality of the series, reason arrives at unconditioned necessity. |
| There are, accordingly, only four cosmological ideas, corresponding with the four titles of the categories. |
| For we can select only such as necessarily furnish us with a series in the synthesis of the manifold. |
| 1 The absolute Completeness of the COMPOSITION of the given totality of all phenomena. |
| 2 The absolute Completeness of the DIVISION of given totality in a phenomenon. |
| 3 The absolute Completeness of the ORIGINATION of a phenomenon. |
| 4 The absolute Completeness of the DEPENDENCE of the EXISTENCE of what is changeable in a phenomenon. |
| We must here remark, in the first place, that the idea of absolute totality relates to nothing but the exposition of phenomena, and therefore not to the pure conception of a totality of things. |
| Phenomena are here, therefore, regarded as given, and reason requires the absolute completeness of the conditions of their possibility, in so far as these conditions constitute a series- consequently an absolutely (that is, in every respect) complete synthesis, whereby a phenomenon can be explained according to the laws of the understanding. |
| Secondly, it is properly the unconditioned alone that reason seeks in this serially and regressively conducted synthesis of conditions. |
| It wishes, to speak in another way, to attain to completeness in the series of premisses, so as to render it unnecessary to presuppose others. |
| This unconditioned is always contained in the absolute totality of the series, when we endeavour to form a representation of it in thought. |
| But this absolutely complete synthesis is itself but an idea; for it is impossible, at least before hand, to know whether any such synthesis is possible in the case of phenomena. |
| When we represent all existence in thought by means of pure conceptions of the understanding, without any conditions of sensuous intuition, we may say with justice that for a given conditioned the whole series of conditions subordinated to each other is also given; for the former is only given through the latter. |
| But we find in the case of phenomena a particular limitation of the mode in which conditions are given, that is, through the successive synthesis of the manifold of intuition, which must be complete in the regress. |
| Now whether this completeness is sensuously possible, is a problem. |
| But the idea of it lies in the reason--be it possible or impossible to connect with the idea adequate empirical conceptions. |
| Therefore, as in the absolute totality of the regressive synthesis of the manifold in a phenomenon (following the guidance of the categories, which represent it as a series of conditions to a given conditioned) the unconditioned is necessarily contained--it being still left unascertained whether and how this totality exists; reason sets out from the idea of totality, although its proper and final aim is the unconditioned--of the whole series, or of a part thereof. |
| This unconditioned may be cogitated--either as existing only in the entire series, all the members of which therefore would be without exception conditioned and only the totality absolutely unconditioned--and in this case the regressus is called infinite; or the absolutely unconditioned is only a part of the series, to which the other members are subordinated, but which Is not itself submitted to any other condition.* In the former case the series is a parte priori unlimited (without beginning), that is, infinite, and nevertheless completely given. |
| But the regress in it is never completed, and can only be called potentially infinite. |