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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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The regulative principle directs us to presuppose systematic unity absolutely and, consequently, as following from the essential nature of things--but only as a unity of nature, not merely cognized empirically, but presupposed a priori, although only in an indeterminate manner. Here is just a short list representing just a small fraction of their skills and talents. Without their original applicability and relation to all possible experience, in which all objects of cognition present themselves, the relation of the categories to objects, of whatever nature, would be quite incomprehensible. And now the question arises-- inasmuch as these categories are not derived from nature, and do not regulate themselves according to her as their model (for in that case they would be empirical)--how it is conceivable that nature must regulate herself according to them, in other words, how the categories can determine a priori the synthesis of the manifold of nature, and yet not derive their origin from her. They are consequently a very improper foundation for such rigid inflexible rules as the laws of nature; and it is evident these laws can only be derived from human conventions, when men have perceived the disorders that result from following their natural and variable principles. In proximity with such a lawless faculty of freedom, a system of nature is hardly cogitable; for the laws of the latter would be continually subject to the intrusive influences of the former, and the course of phenomena, which would otherwise proceed regularly and uniformly, would become thereby confused and disconnected. Suppose a German, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard to come into a room, where there are placed upon the table three bottles of wine, Rhenish, Burgundy and Port; and suppose they shoued fall a quarrelling about the division of them; a person, who was chosen for umpire would naturally, to shew his impartiality, give every one the product of his own country: And this from a principle, which, in some measure, is the source of those laws of nature, that ascribe property to occupation, prescription and accession.