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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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Hence, as the paralogisms of pure reason laid the foundation for a dialectical psychology, the antinomy of pure reason will present us with the transcendental principles of a pretended pure (rational) cosmology--not, however, to declare it valid and to appropriate it, but--as the very term of a conflict of reason sufficiently indicates, to present it as an idea which cannot be reconciled with phenomena and experience. But this illusion--which we may hinder from imposing upon us--is necessary and unavoidable, if we desire to see, not only those objects which lie before us, but those which are at a great distance behind us; that is to say, when, in the present case, we direct the aims of the understanding, beyond every given experience, towards an extension as great as can possibly be attained. For this reason, it is not a dogma; although from another point of view, that of experience, it is capable of being proved to demonstration. In accordance with this principle, homogeneity is necessarily presupposed in the variety of phenomena (although we are unable to determine a priori the degree of this homogeneity), because without it no empirical conceptions, and consequently no experience, would be possible. This proposition lies out of the field of possible experience, and, therefore, beyond the limits of human cognition. But I am conscious, through internal experience, of my existence in time (consequently, also, of the determinability of the former in the latter), and that is more than the simple consciousness of my representation. The nature of experience is this. It is therefore by experience they infer one from another. Either experience makes these conceptions possible, or the conceptions make experience possible. But as it is frequently found, that one observation is contrary to another, and that causes and effects follow not in the same order, of which we have I had experience, we are obliged to vary our reasoning on, account of this uncertainty, and take into consideration the contrariety of events.