Oyonale - Créations 3D et expériences graphiques
ThinkSpam
Cliquer sur les phrases pour les voir dans leur contexte. Les textes de Immanuel Kant et David Hume sont disponibles auprès du Projet Gutenberg.
.
It is not in the least more difficult to conceive how the laws of the phenomena of nature must harmonize with the understanding and with its a priori form--that is, its faculty of conjoining the manifold-- than it is to understand how the phenomena themselves must correspond with the a priori form of our sensuous intuition. This connection can be hoped for only on the assumption that the cause of nature is a supreme reason, which governs according to moral laws. For his natural gifts--not merely as regards the talents and motives that may incite him to employ them, but especially the moral law in him--stretch so far beyond all mere earthly utility and advantage, that he feels himself bound to prize the mere consciousness of probity, apart from all advantageous consequences-- even the shadowy gift of posthumous fame--above everything; and he is conscious of an inward call to constitute himself, by his conduct in this world--without regard to mere sublunary interests--the citizen of a better. Where the public good does not evidently demand a change; it is certain, that the concurrence of all those titles, original contract, long possession, present possession, succession, and positive laws, forms the strongest title to sovereignty, and is justly regarded as sacred and inviolable. The first is the conjunction of a particular state with another preceding it in the world of sense, the former following the latter by virtue of a law. Now we have demonstrated this necessity of a free first beginning of a series of phenomena, only in so far as it is required for the comprehension of an origin of the world, all following states being regarded as a succession according to laws of nature alone. [*Footnote; So the central laws of the movements of the heavenly bodies established the truth of that which Copernicus, first, assumed only as a hypothesis, and, at the same time, brought to light that invisible force (Newtonian attraction) which holds the universe together. Nor is the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature; if by natural we understand what is common to any species, or even if we confine it to mean what is inseparable from the species. Secondly, because, if men had been endowed with such a strong regard for public good, they would never have restrained themselves by these rules; so that the laws of justice arise from natural principles in a manner still more oblique and artificial.