| For the above demonstration has established the fact that it is merely the product of a dialectical and illusory opposition, which arises from the application of the idea of absolute totality--admissible only as a condition of things in themselves--to phenomena, which exist only in our representations, and--when constituting a series--in a successive regress. |
| This antinomy of reason may, however, be really profitable to our speculative interests, not in the way of contributing any dogmatical addition, but as presenting to us another material support in our critical investigations. |
| For it furnishes us with an indirect proof of the transcendental ideality of phenomena, if our minds were not completely satisfied with the direct proof set forth in the Trancendental Aesthetic. |
| The proof would proceed in the following dilemma. |
| If the world is a whole existing in itself, it must be either finite or infinite. |
| But it is neither finite nor infinite--as has been shown, on the one side, by the thesis, on the other, by the antithesis. |
| Therefore the world--the content of all phenomena--is not a whole existing in itself. |
| It follows that phenomena are nothing, apart from our representations. |
| And this is what we mean by transcendental ideality. |
| This remark is of some importance. |
| It enables us to see that the proofs of the fourfold antinomy are not mere sophistries--are not fallacious, but grounded on the nature of reason, and valid--under the supposition that phenomena are things in themselves. |
| The opposition of the judgements which follow makes it evident that a fallacy lay in the initial supposition, and thus helps us to discover the true constitution of objects of sense. |
| This transcendental dialectic does not favour scepticism, although it presents us with a triumphant demonstration of the advantages of the sceptical method, the great utility of which is apparent in the antinomy, where the arguments of reason were allowed to confront each other in undiminished force. |
| And although the result of these conflicts of reason is not what we expected--although we have obtained no positive dogmatical addition to metaphysical science--we have still reaped a great advantage in the correction of our judgements on these subjects of thought. |
| SECTION VIII. Regulative Principle of Pure Reason in relation to the Cosmological Ideas. |
| The cosmological principle of totality could not give us any certain knowledge in regard to the maximum in the series of conditions in the world of sense, considered as a thing in itself. |
| The actual regress in the series is the only means of approaching this maximum. |
| This principle of pure reason, therefore, may still be considered as valid--not as an axiom enabling us to cogitate totality in the object as actual, but as a problem for the understanding, which requires it to institute and to continue, in conformity with the idea of totality in the mind, the regress in the series of the conditions of a given conditioned. |
| For in the world of sense, that is, in space and time, every condition which we discover in our investigation of phenomena is itself conditioned; because sensuous objects are not things in themselves (in which case an absolutely unconditioned might be reached in the progress of cognition), but are merely empirical representations the conditions of which must always be found in intuition. |
| The principle of reason is therefore properly a mere rule--prescribing a regress in the series of conditions for given phenomena, and prohibiting any pause or rest on an absolutely unconditioned. |
| It is, therefore, not a principle of the possibility of experience or of the empirical cognition of sensuous objects--consequently not a principle of the understanding; for every experience is confined within certain proper limits determined by the given intuition. |