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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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With this purpose, we reason from an actual existence--an experience in general, to an absolutely necessary condition of that existence.

 Now the nature and effects of experience have been already sufficiently examined and explained. Nay it is not only possible we may have such an experience, but it is certain we have it; since every one may perceive, that the different dispositions of his body change his thoughts and sentiments. It therefore has subjective reality, in reference to our internal experience, that is, I have really the representation of time and of my determinations therein. By exposition, I mean the clear, though not detailed, representation of that which belongs to a conception; and an exposition is metaphysical when it contains that which represents the conception as given a priorI. 1. Space is not a conception which has been derived from outward experiences. 

Such fictitious conceptions derive their character of possibility not, like the categories, a priori, as conceptions on which all experience depends, but only, a posteriori, as conceptions given by means of experience itself, and their possibility must either be cognized a posteriori and empirically, or it cannot be cognized at all.

 If we thought to free ourselves from the labour of these investigations by saying; "Experience is constantly offering us examples of the relation of cause and effect in phenomena, and presents us with abundant opportunity of abstracting the conception of cause, and so at the same time of corroborating the objective validity of this conception"; we should in this case be overlooking the fact, that the conception of cause cannot arise in this way at all; that, on the contrary, it must either have an a priori basis in the, understanding, or be rejected as a mere chimera. For speculative cognition cannot find an objective basis any other where than in experience; and, when we overstep its limits our synthesis, which requires ever new cognitions independent of experience, has no substratum of intuition upon which to build. It follows that I am not entitled to make any assertion at all respecting the whole object of experience--the world of sense; I must limit my declarations to the rule according to which experience or empirical knowledge is to be attained. Beyond the sphere of experience there are no objects which it can cognize; nay, even questions regarding such supposititious objects relate only to the subjective principles of a complete determination of the relations which exist between the understanding-conceptions which lie within this sphere.