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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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Thus, the law of succession of time is in all instances the only empirical criterion of effect in relation to the causality of the antecedent cause. Thus, we have no right to assume the existence of new powers, not existing in nature--for example, an understanding with a non-sensuous intuition, a force of attraction without contact, or some new kind of substances occupying space, and yet without the property of impenetrability--and, consequently, we cannot assume that there is any other kind of community among substances than that observable in experience, any kind of presence than that in space, or any kind of duration than that in time. But though this generosity must be acknowledged to the honour of human nature, we may at the same time remark, that so noble an affection, instead of fitting men for large societies, is almost as contrary to them, as the most narrow selfishness. It is indeed evident, that when we sympathize with the passions and sentiments of others, these movements appear at first in our mind as mere ideas, and are conceived to belong to another person, as we conceive any other matter of fact. By this reflection we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition. If this were not the case, the causality of reason would be subservient to the natural law of phenomena, which determines them according to time, and as a series of causes and effects in time; it would consequently cease to be freedom and become a part of nature. IV. In natural theology, where we think of an object--God--which never can be an object of intuition to us, and even to himself can never be an object of sensuous intuition, we carefully avoid attributing to his intuition the conditions of space and time--and intuition all his cognition must be, and not thought, which always includes limitation. This synthetical and a priori determined unity in relation of perceptions in time is therefore the rule; "All empirical determinations of time must be subject to rules of the general determination of time"; and the analogies of experience, of which we are now about to treat, must be rules of this nature. I leave this to the reader's own observation; desiring him at the same time to consider the additional force this bestows on the present system.