Oyonale - 3D art and graphic experiments
ThinkSpam
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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- Consequently, the determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of real things external to me.
But, it will be asked again, can we on these grounds, admit the existence of a wise and omnipotent author of the world? But if they had regarded matter, not relatively--as the substratum of phenomena, but absolutely and in itself--as an independent existence, this idea of absolute necessity would have immediately disappeared. The objects of experience then are not things in themselves, but are given only in experience, and have no existence apart from and independently of experience. But when we compare experiments, and reason a little upon them, we quickly perceive, that the doctrine of the independent existence of our sensible perceptions is contrary to the plainest experience. The only question, therefore, which remains, is, by what relations this uninterrupted progress of our thought is produced, when we consider the successive existence of a mind or thinking person. For it is evident our pains and pleasures, our passions and affections, which we never suppose to have any existence beyond our perception, operate with greater violence, and are equally involuntary, as the impressions of figure and extension, colour and sound, which we suppose to be permanent beings. It runs thus; "Changes are real" (this the continual change in our own representations demonstrates, even though the existence of all external phenomena, together with their changes, is denied).