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ThinkSpam
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 above rule does not prescribe an unceasing regress in one kind of phenomena. It may, therefore, be thought, that in the case of allegiance our moral obligation of duty will not cease, even though the natural obligation of interest, which is its cause, has ceased; and that men may be bound by conscience to submit to a tyrannical government against their own and the public interest. A violent cough in another gives us uneasiness; though in itself it does not in the least affect us. In order to clear up this difficulty, we shall suppose a person to take a dye, formed after such a manner as that four of its sides are marked with one figure, or one number of spots, and two with another; and to put this dye into the box with an intention of throwing it: It is plain, he must conclude the one figure to be more probable than the other, and give the preference to that which is inscribed on the greatest number of sides. Laws do not exist except by relation to the subject in which the phenomena inhere, in so far as it possesses understanding, just as phenomena have no existence except by relation to the same existing subject in so far as it has senses. [Footnote 22 This proposition must hold strictly true, with regard to every quality, that is determin'd merely by sentiment. To maintain a simply negative position in relation to propositions which rest on an insecure foundation, well befits the moderation of a true philosopher; but to uphold the objections urged against an opponent as proofs of the opposite statement is a proceeding just as unwarrantable and arrogant as it is to attack the position of a philosopher who advances affirmative propositions regarding such a subject. This property of quantities, according to which no part of them is the smallest possible (no part simple), is called their continuity. If, now, we take the above propositions--as they must be accepted as valid for all thinking beings in the system of rational psychology--in synthetical connection, and proceed, from the category of relation, with the proposition; "All thinking beings are, as such, substances," backwards through the series, till the circle is completed; we come at last to their existence, of which, in this system of rational psychology, substances are held to be conscious, independently of external things; nay, it is asserted that, in relation to the permanence which is a necessary characteristic of substance, they can of themselves determine external things.