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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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Accordingly we find in common life, that men are principally concerned about those objects, which are not much removed either in space or time, enjoying the present, and leaving what is afar off to the care of chance and fortune. The cause of the superiority which, in this respect, transcendental philosophy possesses above all other sciences except mathematics, lies in this; it treats of conceptions which must relate a priori to their objects, whose objective validity consequently cannot be demonstrated a posteriori, and is, at the same time, under the obligation of presenting in general but sufficient tests, the conditions under which objects can be given in harmony with those conceptions; otherwise they would be mere logical forms, without content, and not pure conceptions of the understanding. It is impossible for the mind to preserve any notion of difference betwixt two bodies of the same nature existing in the same place at the same time. Moral good and evil are certainly distinguished by our sentiments, not by reason: But these sentiments may arise either from the mere species or appearance of characters and passions, or from reflections on their tendency to the happiness of mankind, and of particular persons. Now I assert, that where we esteem a person upon account of his riches, we must enter into this sentiment of the proprietor, and that without such a sympathy the idea of the agreeable objects, which they give him the power to produce, would have but a feeble influence upon us. But if this relation is sensuous, and belongs to the possible empirical employment of understanding, the supreme condition or cause must close the regressive series according to the laws of sensibility and consequently, must belong to the series of time. But, as regards space, there exists in it no distinction between progressus and regressus; for it is an aggregate and not a series--its parts existing together at the same time. Now space and time contain an infinite diversity of determinations of pure a priori intuition, but are nevertheless the condition of the mind's receptivity, under which alone it can obtain representations of objects, and which, consequently, must always affect the conception of these objects. There must also be some passion or sentiment on the other side; and this passion can proceed from nothing but sympathy.