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Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.
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Now we must admit that the doctrine of the existence of God belongs to doctrinal belief. But if we cogitate existence by the pure category alone, it is not to be wondered at, that we should find ourselves unable to present any criterion sufficient to distinguish it from mere possibility. It is certainly allowable to admit the existence of an all-sufficient being--a cause of all possible effects--for the purpose of enabling reason to introduce unity into its mode and grounds of explanation with regard to phenomena. The proposition, "I think," is, in the present case, understood in a problematical sense, not in so far as it contains a perception of an existence (like the Cartesian "Cogito, ergo sum"),[Footnote; "I think, therefore I am."] but in regard to its mere possibility--for the purpose of discovering what properties may be inferred from so simple a proposition and predicated of the subject of it. We must therefore look still higher for this unity (as qualitative, SS 8), in that, namely, which contains the ground of the unity of diverse conceptions in judgements, the ground, consequently, of the possibility of the existence of the understanding, even in regard to its logical use. We never can imagine or make a representation to ourselves of the non-existence of space, though we may easily enough think that no objects are found in it. But the substratum of all reality, that is, of all that pertains to the existence of things, is substance; all that pertains to existence can be cogitated only as a determination of substance.