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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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In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz, that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences.

 The simple but empirically determined consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of external objects in space. A beginning is an existence which is preceded by a time in which the thing does not exist. It is therefore by EXPERIENCE only, that we can infer the existence of one object from that of another. The pure cosmological proof demonstrates the existence of a necessary being, but at the same time leaves it quite unsettled, whether this being is the world itself, or quite distinct from it. Thus the physico-theological is based upon the cosmological, and this upon the ontological proof of the existence of a Supreme Being; and as besides these three there is no other path open to speculative reason, the ontological proof, on the ground of pure conceptions of reason, is the only possible one, if any proof of a proposition so far transcending the empirical exercise of the understanding is possible at all. We should also become aware that in the consciousness of our existence there was an a priori content, which would serve to determine our own existence--an existence only sensuously determinable--relatively, however, to a certain internal faculty in relation to an intelligible world. 

It is therefore by EXPERIENCE only, that we can infer the existence of one object from that of another.

 It were easy for me to shew the weakness of this reasoning, were I willing to make use of those observations, I have already made, that the idea of production is the same with that of causation, and that no existence certainly and demonstratively implies a power in any other object; or were it proper to anticipate what I shall have occasion to remark afterwards concerning the idea we form of power and efficacy. For otherwise succession, which is always found in perceptions as apprehensions, would be predicated of external objects, and their representation of their coexistence be thus impossible.