Oyonale - Créations 3D et expériences graphiques
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Cliquer sur les phrases pour les voir dans leur contexte. Les textes de Immanuel Kant et David Hume sont disponibles auprès du Projet Gutenberg.
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If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only by being connected together. Such an existence is, in this case, too large for our empirical conception, and unattainable by the continued regress of any synthesis. [*Footnote; The reader, who may not so easily perceive the psychological sense of these expressions, taken here in their transcendental abstraction, and cannot guess why the latter attribute of the soul belongs to the category of existence, will find the expressions sufficiently explained and justified in the sequel. The notion of a Supreme Being is in many respects a highly useful idea; but for the very reason that it is an idea, it is incapable of enlarging our cognition with regard to the existence of things. It will first be proper to observe a few of those experiments, which convince us, that our perceptions are not possest of any independent existence. To demonstrate the existence of a necessary being, I cannot be permitted in this place to employ any other than the cosmological argument, which ascends from the conditioned in phenomena to the unconditioned in conception--the unconditioned being considered the necessary condition of the absolute totality of the series. It follows that this necessary existence must be regarded as the highest member of the cosmical series. We shall now proceed to investigate the sources of all these attempts of reason to establish the existence of a Supreme Being.