| These questions relate solely to the cosmological ideas. |
| For the object must be given in experience, and the question relates to the adequateness of the object to an idea. |
| If the object is transcendental and therefore itself unknown; if the question, for example, is whether the object--the something, the phenomenon of which (internal--in ourselves) is thought--that is to say, the soul, is in itself a simple being; or whether there is a cause of all things, which is absolutely necessary--in such cases we are seeking for our idea an object, of which we may confess that it is unknown to us, though we must not on that account assert that it is impossible.* The cosmological ideas alone posses the peculiarity that we can presuppose the object of them and the empirical synthesis requisite for the conception of that object to be given; and the question, which arises from these ideas, relates merely to the progress of this synthesis, in so far as it must contain absolute totality--which, however, is not empirical, as it cannot be given in any experience. |
| Now, as the question here is solely in regard to a thing as the object of a possible experience and not as a thing in itself, the answer to the transcendental cosmological question need not be sought out of the idea, for the question does not regard an object in itself. |
| The question in relation to a possible experience is not, "What can be given in an experience in concreto" but "what is contained in the idea, to which the empirical synthesis must approximate." The question must therefore be capable of solution from the idea alone. |
| For the idea is a creation of reason itself, which therefore cannot disclaim the obligation to answer or refer us to the unknown object. |
| [*Footnote; The question, "What is the constitution of a transcendental object?" is unanswerable--we are unable to say what it is; but we can perceive that the question itself is nothing; because it does not relate to any object that can be presented to us. |
| For this reason, we must consider all the questions raised in transcendental psychology as answerable and as really answered; for they relate to the transcendental subject of all internal phenomena, which is not itself phenomenon and consequently not given as an object, in which, moreover, none of the categories--and it is to them that the question is properly directed--find any conditions of its application. |
| Here, therefore, is a case where no answer is the only proper answer. |
| For a question regarding the constitution of a something which cannot be cogitated by any determined predicate, being completely beyond the sphere of objects and experience, is perfectly null and void.] |
| It is not so extraordinary, as it at first sight appears, that a science should demand and expect satisfactory answers to all the questions that may arise within its own sphere (questiones domesticae), although, up to a certain time, these answers may not have been discovered. |
| There are, in addition to transcendental philosophy, only two pure sciences of reason; the one with a speculative, the other with a practical content--pure mathematics and pure ethics. |
| Has any one ever heard it alleged that, from our complete and necessary ignorance of the conditions, it is uncertain what exact relation the diameter of a circle bears to the circle in rational or irrational numbers? |
| By the former the sum cannot be given exactly, by the latter only approximately; and therefore we decide that the impossibility of a solution of the question is evident. |
| Lambert presented us with a demonstration of this. |
| In the general principles of morals there can be nothing uncertain, for the propositions are either utterly without meaning, or must originate solely in our rational conceptions. |
| On the other hand, there must be in physical science an infinite number of conjectures, which can never become certainties; because the phenomena of nature are not given as objects dependent on our conceptions. |
| The key to the solution of such questions cannot, therefore, be found in our conceptions, or in pure thought, but must lie without us and for that reason is in many cases not to be discovered; and consequently a satisfactory explanation cannot be expected. |
| The questions of transcendental analytic, which relate to the deduction of our pure cognition, are not to be regarded as of the same kind as those mentioned above; for we are not at present treating of the certainty of judgements in relation to the origin of our conceptions, but only of that certainty in relation to objects. |
| We cannot, therefore, escape the responsibility of at least a critical solution of the questions of reason, by complaints of the limited nature of our faculties, and the seemingly humble confession that it is beyond the power of our reason to decide, whether the world has existed from all eternity or had a beginning--whether it is infinitely extended, or enclosed within certain limits--whether anything in the world is simple, or whether everything must be capable of infinite divisibility--whether freedom can originate phenomena, or whether everything is absolutely dependent on the laws and order of nature--and, finally, whether there exists a being that is completely unconditioned and necessary, or whether the existence of everything is conditioned and consequently dependent on something external to itself, and therefore in its own nature contingent. |
| For all these questions relate to an object, which can be given nowhere else than in thought. |