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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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But it is no stumbling-block in the way, even assuming the idea to be a pure fiction, to admit that there are some natural causes in the possession of a faculty which is not empirical, but intelligible, inasmuch as it is not determined to action by empirical conditions, but purely and solely upon grounds brought forward by the understanding--this action being still, when the cause is phenomenized, in perfect accordance with the laws of empirical causality.

 
  • But here it is remarkable, that though a positive law can only derive its force from these principles, yet it acquires not all the force of the principle from whence it is derived, but loses considerably in the transition; as it is natural to imagine.
 The laws of freedom or of free will are hence termed practical laws. There is no condition--determining man and his volition in conformity with this character--which does not itself form part of the series of effects in nature, and is subject to their law--the law according to which an empirically undetermined cause of an event in time cannot exist. This law must, consequently, be based upon pure transcendental, and not upon empirical, considerations. If the empirical law of causality is to conduct us to a Supreme Being, this being must belong to the chain of empirical objects--in which case it would be, like all phenomena, itself conditioned. The present king of France makes Hugh Capet a more lawful prince than Cromwell; as the established liberty of the Dutch is no inconsiderable apology for their obstinate resistance to Philip the second.