Immanuel Kant's

trans. by Norman Kemp Smith

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THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC
BOOK II
THE DIALECTICAL INFERENCES OF PURE REASON
ALTHOUGH a purely transcendental idea is, in accordance
with the original laws of reason, a quite necessary product of
reason, its object, it may yet be said, is something of which
we have no concept. For in respect of an object which is
adequate to the demands of reason, it is not, in fact, possible
that we should ever be able to form a concept of the understanding,
that is, a concept that allows of being exhibited and
intuited in a possible experience. But we should be better
advised and less likely to be misunderstood if we said that
although we cannot have any knowledge of the object which
corresponds to an idea, we yet have a problematic concept
of it.
The transcendental (subjective) reality of the pure concepts
of reason depends on our having been led to such ideas by a
necessary syllogism. There will therefore be syllogisms which
contain no empirical premisses, and by means of which we
conclude from something which we know to something else of
which we have no concept, and to which, owing to an inevitable
illusion, we yet ascribe objective reality. These conclusions
are, then, rather to be called pseudo-rational than rational,
although in view of their origin they may well lay claim to
the latter title, since they are not fictitious and have not arisen
fortuitously, but have sprung from the very nature of reason.
They are sophistications not of men but of pure reason itself.
Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them. After
long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against
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actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the
illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
There are, then, only three kinds of dialectical syllogisms
-- just so many as there are ideas in which their conclusions
result. In the first kind of syllogism I conclude from the
transcendental concept of the subject, which contains nothing
manifold, the absolute unity of this subject itself, of which,
however, even in so doing, I possess no concept whatsoever.
This dialectical inference I shall entitle the transcendental
paralogism. The second kind of pseudo-rational inference is
directed to the transcendental concept of the absolute totality
of the series of conditions for any given appearance. From the
fact that my concept of the unconditioned synthetic unity of the
series, as thought in a certain way, is always self-contradictory,
I conclude that there is really a unity of the opposite kind,
although of it also I have no concept. The position of reason in
these dialectical inferences I shall entitle the antinomy of pure
reason. Finally, in the third kind of pseudo-rational inference,
from the totality of the conditions under which objects in
general, in so far as they can be given me, have to be thought,
I conclude to the absolute synthetic unity of all conditions of
the possibility of things in general, i.e. from things which I do
not know through the merely transcendental concept of them
I infer an ens entium, which I know even less through any
transcendental concept, and of the unconditioned necessity
of which I can form no concept whatsoever. This dialectical
syllogism I shall entitle the ideal of pure reason.
SECOND BOOK OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL
DIALECTIC
CHAPTER I
THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON
A logical paralogism is a syllogism which is fallacious in
form, be its content what it may. A transcendental paralogism
is one in which there is a transcendental ground, constraining
us to draw a formally invalid conclusion. Such a fallacy is
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therefore grounded in the nature of human reason, and gives
rise to an illusion which cannot be avoided, although it may,
indeed, be rendered harmless.
We now come to a concept which was not included in the
general list of transcendental concepts but which must yet be
counted as belonging to that list, without, however, in the least
altering it or declaring it defective. This is the concept or, if the
term be preferred, the judgment, 'I think'. As is easily seen,
this is the vehicle of all concepts, and therefore also of 
transcendental concepts, and so is always included in the conceiving
of these latter, and is itself transcendental. But it can have
no special designation, because it serves only to introduce all our
thought, as belonging to consciousness. Meanwhile, however
free it be of empirical admixture (impressions of the senses),
it yet enables us to distinguish, through the nature of our
faculty of representation, two kinds of objects. 'I', as 
thinking, am an object of inner sense, and am called 'soul'. That
which is an object of the outer senses is called 'body'. 
Accordingly the expression 'I', as a thinking being, signifies the
object of that psychology which may be entitled the 'rational
doctrine of the soul', inasmuch as I am not here seeking to
learn in regard to the soul anything more than can be 
inferred, independently of all experience (which determines me
more specifically and in concreto), from this concept 'I', so
far as it is present in all thought.
The rational doctrine of the soul is really an undertaking
of this kind; for if in this science the least empirical element
of my thought, or any special perception of my inner state,
were intermingled with the grounds of knowledge, it would
no longer be a rational but an empirical doctrine of the soul.
Thus we have here what professes to be a science built upon
the single proposition 'I think'. Whether this claim be well or
ill grounded, we may, very fittingly, in accordance with the
nature of a transcendental philosophy, proceed to investigate.
The reader must not object that this proposition, which
expresses the perception of the self, contains an inner experience,
and that the rational doctrine of the soul founded upon
it is never pure and is therefore to that extent based upon an
empirical principle. For this inner perception is nothing more
than the mere apperception 'I think', by which even 
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transcendental concepts are made possible; what we assert in them
is 'I think substance, cause', etc. For inner experience in
general and its possibility, or perception in general and its
relation to other perception, in which no special distinction
or empirical determination is given, is not to be regarded as
empirical knowledge but as knowledge of the empirical in
general, and has to be reckoned with the investigation of the
possibility of any and every experience, which is certainly a
transcendental enquiry. The least object of perception (for 
example, even pleasure or displeasure), if added to the universal
representation of self-consciousness, would at once transform
rational psychology into empirical psychology.
'I think' is, therefore, the sole text of rational psychology,
and from it the whole of its teaching has to be developed.
Obviously, if this thought is to be related to an object (myself),
it can contain none but transcendental predicates of that 
object, since the least empirical predicate would destroy the
rational purity of the science and its independence of all
experience.
 All that is here required is that we follow the guidance of
the categories, with this difference only, that since our starting-
point is a given thing, 'I' as thinking being, we begin with the
category of substance, whereby a thing in itself is represented,
and so proceed backwards through the series, without, however,
otherwise changing the order adopted in the table of the
categories. The topic of the rational doctrine of the soul, from
which everything else that it contains must be derived, is
accordingly as follows:
I
The soul is substance.
2
As regards its quality it is
simple.
3
As regards the different
times in which it exists, it is
numerically identical, that
is, unity (not plurality).
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4
It is in relation to possible objects in space.
All the concepts of pure psychology arise from these 
elements, simply by way of combination, without admission of
any other principle. This substance, merely as object of inner
sense, gives the concept of immateriality; as simple substance,
that of incorruptibility; its identity, as intellectual substance,
personality; all these three together, spirituality; while the
relation to objects in space gives commercium with bodies,
and so leads us to represent the thinking substance as the
principle of life in matter, that is, as soul (anima), and as the
ground of animality. This last, in turn, as limited by 
spirituality, gives the concept of immortality.
In connection with these concepts we have four paralogisms
of a transcendental psychology -- which is wrongly regarded as
a science of pure reason -- concerning the nature of our thinking
being. We can assign no other basis for this teaching than the
simple, and in itself completely empty, representation 'I'; and we
cannot even say that this is a concept, but only that it is a bare
consciousness which accompanies all concepts. Through this
I or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing further is 
represented than a transcendental subject of the thoughts = X. It
is known only through the thoughts which are its predicates,
and of it, apart from them, we cannot have any concept 
whatsoever, but can only revolve in a perpetual circle, since any
judgment upon it has always already made use of its 
representation. 
++ The reader who has difficulty in guessing the psychological
meaning of these expressions taken in their transcendental abstractness,
and in discovering why the last-mentioned attribute of the soul
belongs to the category of existence, will find the terms sufficiently
explained and justified in the sequel. Further, I have to apologise
for the Latin expressions which, contrary to good taste, have usurped
the place of their German equivalents, both in this section and in the
work as a whole. My excuse is that I have preferred to lose somewhat
in elegance of language rather than to increase, in however minor
a degree, the reader's difficulties.
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And the reason why this inconvenience is inseparably
bound up with it, is that consciousness in itself is not a
representation distinguishing a particular object, but a form
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of representation in general, that is, of representation in so far
as it is to be entitled knowledge; for it is only of knowledge
that I can say that I am thereby thinking something.
It must, on first thoughts, seem strange that the condition
under which alone I think, and which is therefore merely a 
property of myself as subject, should likewise be valid for 
everything that thinks, and that on a seemingly empirical proposition
we can presume to base an apodeictic and universal judgment,
namely, that that which thinks must, in all cases, be constituted
as the voice of self-consciousness declares it to be constituted
in my own self. The reason is this: we must assign to things,
necessarily and a priori, all the properties that constitute the
conditions under which alone we think them. Now I cannot
have any representation whatsoever of a thinking being,
through any outer experience, but only through self-consciousness.
Objects of this kind are, therefore, nothing more than
the transference of this consciousness of mine to other things,
which in this way alone can be represented as thinking beings.
The proposition, 'I think', is, however, here taken only 
problematically, not in so far as it may contain perception of an
existent (the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum), but in respect of its
mere possibility, in order to see what properties applicable to
its subject (be that subject actually existent or not) may follow
from so simple a proposition.
If our knowledge of thinking beings in general, by means
of pure reason, were based on more than the cogito, if we
likewise made use of observations concerning the play of our
thoughts and the natural laws of the thinking self to be derived
from these thoughts, there would arise an empirical psychology,
which would be a kind of physiology of inner sense,
capable perhaps of explaining the appearances of inner sense,
but never of revealing such properties as do not in any way
belong to possible experience (e.g. the properties of the simple),
nor of yielding any apodeictic knowledge regarding the nature
of thinking beings in general. It would not, therefore, be a
rational psychology.
 Since the proposition 'I think' (taken problematically) 
contains the form of each and every judgment of the understanding
and accompanies all categories as their vehicle, it is evident
that the inferences from it admit only of a transcendental
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employment of the understanding. And since this employment
excludes any admixture of experience, we cannot, after what
has been shown above, entertain any favourable anticipations
in regard to its methods of procedure. We therefore propose to
follow it, with a critical eye, through all the predicaments of
pure psychology.
THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON
FIRST PARALOGISM: OF SUBSTANTIALITY
That, the representation of which is the absolute subject of
our judgments and cannot therefore be employed as 
determination of another thing, is substance.
I, as a thinking being, am the absolute subject of all my
possible judgments, and this representation of myself cannot
be employed as predicate of any other thing.
Therefore I, as thinking being (soul), am substance.
Critique of the First Paralogism of Pure Psychology
In the analytical part of the Transcendental Logic we have
shown that pure categories, and among them that of substance,
have in themselves no objective meaning, save in so far
as they rest upon an intuition, and are applied to the manifold
of this intuition, as functions of synthetic unity. In the 
absence of this manifold, they are merely functions of a 
judgment, without content. I can say of any and every thing that
it is substance, in the sense that I distinguish it from mere
predicates and determinations of things. Now in all our
thought the 'I' is the subject, in which thoughts inhere only
as determinations; and this 'I' cannot be employed as the
determination of another thing. Everyone must, therefore,
necessarily regard himself as substance, and thought as [consisting]
only [in] accidents of his being, determinations of his
state.
But what use am I to make of this concept of a substance?
That I, as a thinking being, persist for myself, and do not in
any natural manner either arise or perish, can by no means be
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deduced from it. Yet there is no other use to which I can put
the concept of the substantiality of my thinking subject, and
apart from such use I could very well dispense with it.
So far from being able to deduce these properties merely
from the pure category of substance, we must, on the contrary,
take our start from the permanence of an object given in 
experience as permanent. For only to such an object can the
concept of substance be applied in a manner that is empirically
serviceable. In the above proposition, however, we have
not taken as our basis any experience; the inference is merely
from the concept of the relation which all thought has to the
'I' as the common subject in which it inheres. Nor should we, in
resting it upon experience, be able, by any sure observation, to
demonstrate such permanence. The 'I' is indeed in all thoughts,
but there is not in this representation the least trace of 
intuition, distinguishing the 'I' from other objects of intuition.
Thus we can indeed perceive that this representation is invariably
present in all thought, but not that it is an abiding and
continuing intuition, wherein the thoughts, as being transitory,
give place to one another.
It follows, therefore, that the first syllogism of transcendental
psychology, when it puts forward the constant logical
subject of thought as being knowledge of the real subject
in which the thought inheres, is palming off upon us what is
a mere pretence of new insight. We do not have, and cannot
have, any knowledge whatsoever of any such subject. 
Consciousness is, indeed, that which alone makes all representations
to be thoughts, and in it, therefore, as the transcendental
subject, all our perceptions must be found; but beyond this
logical meaning of the 'I', we have no knowledge of the subject
in itself, which as substratum underlies this 'I', as it does
all thoughts. The proposition, 'The soul is substance', may,
however, quite well be allowed to stand, if only it be 
recognised that this concept [of the soul as substance] does not
carry us a single step further, and so cannot yield us any of the
usual deductions of the pseudo-rational doctrine of the soul,
as, for instance, the everlasting duration of the human soul in
all changes and even in death -- if, that is to say, we recognise
that this concept signifies a substance only in idea, not in reality.
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SECOND PARALOGISM: OF SIMPLICITY
That, the action of which can never be regarded as the
concurrence of several things acting, is simple.
Now the soul, or the thinking 'I', is such a being. 
Therefore, etc.
Critique of the Second Paralogism of Transcendental
Psychology
This is the Achilles of all dialectical inferences in the pure
doctrine of the soul. It is no mere sophistical play, contrived
by a dogmatist in order to impart to his assertions a superficial
plausibility, but an inference which appears to withstand
even the keenest scrutiny and the most scrupulously
exact investigation. It is as follows.
Every composite substance is an aggregate of several substances,
and the action of a composite, or whatever inheres in
it as thus composite, is an aggregate of several actions or 
accidents, distributed among the plurality of the substances. Now
an effect which arises from the concurrence of many acting
substances is indeed possible, namely, when this effect is
external only (as, for instance, the motion of a body is the
combined motion of all its parts). But with thoughts, as internal
accidents belonging to a thinking being, it is different.
For suppose it be the composite that thinks: then every part of
it would be a part of the thought, and only all of them taken
together would contain the whole thought. But this cannot 
consistently be maintained. For representations (for instance, the
single words of a verse), distributed among different beings,
never make up a whole thought (a verse), and it is therefore
impossible that a thought should inhere in what is essentially
composite. It is therefore possible only in a single substance,
which, not being an aggregate of many, is absolutely simple.
++ This proof can very easily be given the customary syllogistic
correctness of form. But for my purpose it is sufficient to have made
clear, though in popular fashion, the bare ground of proof.
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The so-called nervus probandi of this argument lies in the
proposition, that if a multiplicity of representations are to
form a single representation, they must be contained in the
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absolute unity of the thinking subject. No one, however, can prove this
proposition from concepts. For how should he set about the task of 
achieving this? The proposition, 'A thought can only be the effect
of the absolute unity of the thinking being', cannot be treated
as analytic. For the unity of the thought, which consists of
many representations, is collective, and as far as mere concepts
can show, may relate just as well to the collective unity
of different substances acting together (as the motion of a
body is the composite motion of all its parts) as to the absolute
unity of the subject. Consequently, the necessity of presupposing,
in the case of a composite thought, a simple substance,
cannot be demonstrated in accordance with the principle of
identity. Nor will anyone venture to assert that the 
proposition allows of being known synthetically and completely
a priori from mere concepts -- not, at least, if he understands
the ground of the possibility of a priori synthetic propositions,
as above explained.
It is likewise impossible to derive this necessary unity of
the subject, as a condition of the possibility of every thought,
from experience. For experience yields us no knowledge of
necessity, apart even from the fact that the concept of absolute
unity is quite outside its province. Whence then are we to
derive this proposition upon which the whole psychological
syllogism depends?
It is obvious that, if I wish to represent to myself a thinking
being, I must put myself in his place, and thus substitute,
as it were, my own subject for the object I am seeking to
consider (which does not occur in any other kind of investigation),
and that we demand the absolute unity of the subject of
a thought, only because otherwise we could not say, 'I think'
(the manifold in a representation). For although the whole of
the thought could be divided and distributed among many
subjects, the subjective 'I' can never be thus divided and
distributed, and it is this 'I' that we presuppose in all
thinking.
Here again, as in the former paralogism, the formal proposition
of apperception, 'I think', remains the sole ground to
which rational psychology can appeal when it thus ventures
upon an extension of its knowledge. This proposition, however,
is not itself an experience, but the form of apperception,
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which belongs to and precedes every experience; and as such
it must always be taken only in relation to some possible
knowledge, as a merely subjective condition of that knowledge.
We have no right to transform it into a condition of the
possibility of a knowledge of objects, that is, into a concept of
thinking being in general. For we are not in a position to 
represent such being to ourselves save by putting ourselves,
with the formula of our consciousness, in the place of every
other intelligent being.
Nor is the simplicity of myself (as soul) really inferred
from the proposition, 'I think'; it is already involved in every
thought. The proposition, 'I am simple', must be regarded as
an immediate expression of apperception, just as what is
referred to as the Cartesian inference, cogito, ergo sum, is
really a tautology, since the cogito (sum cogitans) asserts my
existence immediately. 'I am simple' means nothing more
than that this representation, 'I', does not contain in itself the
least manifoldness and that it is absolute (although merely
logical) unity.
Thus the renowned psychological proof is founded merely
on the indivisible unity of a representation, which governs
only the verb in its relation to a person. It is obvious that in
attaching 'I' to our thoughts we designate the subject of 
inherence only transcendentally, without noting in it any quality
whatsoever -- in fact, without knowing anything of it either by
direct acquaintance or otherwise. It means a something in
general (transcendental subject), the representation of which
must, no doubt, be simple, if only for the reason that there is
nothing determinate in it. Nothing, indeed, can be represented
that is simpler than that which is represented through the
concept of a mere something. But the simplicity of the representation
of a subject is not eo ipso knowledge of the simplicity
of the subject itself, for we abstract altogether from its 
properties when we designate it solely by the entirely empty
expression 'I', an expression which I can apply to every
thinking subject.
This much, then, is certain, that through the 'I', I always
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entertain the thought of an absolute, but logical, unity of the
subject (simplicity). It does not, however, follow that I thereby
know the actual simplicity of my subject. The proposition, 'I
am substance', signifies, as we have found, nothing but the
pure category, of which I can make no use (empirically) in
concreto; and I may therefore legitimately say: 'I am a simple
substance', that is, a substance the representation of which never
contains a synthesis of the manifold. But this concept, as also
the proposition, tells us nothing whatsoever in regard to myself
as an object of experience, since the concept of substance
is itself used only as a function of synthesis, without any 
underlying intuition, and therefore without an object. It concerns
only the condition of our knowledge; it does not apply to any
assignable object. We will test the supposed usefulness of the
proposition by an experiment.
Everyone must admit that the assertion of the simple nature
of the soul is of value only in so far as I can thereby 
distinguish this subject from all matter, and so can exempt it
from the dissolution to which matter is always liable. This is
indeed, strictly speaking, the only use for which the above
proposition is intended, and is therefore generally expressed
as 'The soul is not corporeal'. If, then, I can show that,
although we allow full objective validity -- the validity 
appropriate to a judgment of pure reason derived solely from
pure categories -- to this cardinal proposition of the rational
doctrine of the soul (that is, that everything which thinks is a
simple substance), we still cannot make the least use of this
proposition in regard to the question of its dissimilarity from
or relation to matter, this will be the same as if I had relegated
this supposed psychological insight to the field of mere ideas,
without any real objective use.
In the Transcendental Aesthetic we have proved, beyond
all question, that bodies are mere appearances of our outer
sense and not things in themselves. We are therefore justified
in saying that our thinking subject is not corporeal; in other
words, that, inasmuch as it is represented by us as object of
inner sense, it cannot, in so far as it thinks, be an object of
outer sense, that is, an appearance in space. This is equivalent
to saying that thinking beings, as such, can never be found by
us among outer appearances, and that their thoughts, consciousness,
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desires, etc. , cannot be outwardly intuited. All these
belong to inner sense. This argument does, in fact, seem to
be so natural and so popular that even the commonest 
understanding appears to have always relied upon it, and thus 
already, from the earliest times, to have regarded souls as quite
different entities from their bodies.
But although extension, impenetrability, cohesion, and
motion -- in short, everything which outer senses can give us
-- neither are nor contain thoughts, feeling, desire, or resolution,
these never being objects of outer intuition, nevertheless
the something which underlies the outer appearances and
which so affects our sense that it obtains the representations
of space, matter, shape, etc. , may yet, when viewed as 
noumenon (or better, as transcendental object), be at the same
time the subject of our thoughts. That the mode in which
our outer sense is thereby affected gives us no intuition of 
representations, will, etc. , but only of space and its 
determinations, proves nothing to the contrary. For this something is
not extended, nor is it impenetrable or composite, since all
these predicates concern only sensibility and its intuition, in
so far as we are affected by certain (to us otherwise unknown)
objects. By such statements we are not, however, enabled
to know what kind of an object it is, but only to recognise
that if it be considered in itself, and therefore apart from any
relation to the outer senses, these predicates of outer appearances
cannot be assigned to it. On the other hand, the predicates
of inner sense, representations and thought, are not
inconsistent with its nature. Accordingly, even granting the
human soul to be simple in nature, such simplicity by no
means suffices to distinguish it from matter, in respect of
the substratum of the latter -- if, that is to say, we consider
matter, as indeed we ought to, as mere appearance.
If matter were a thing in itself, it would, as a composite
being, be entirely different from the soul, as a simple being. But
matter is mere outer appearance, the substratum of which cannot
be known through any predicate that we can assign to it.
I can therefore very well admit the possibility that it is in itself
simple, although owing to the manner in which it affects our
senses it produces in us the intuition of the extended and so of
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the composite. I may further assume that the substance which
in relation to our outer sense possesses extension is in itself the
possessor of thoughts, and that these thoughts can by means of
its own inner sense be consciously represented. In this way,
what in one relation is entitled corporeal would in another
relation be at the same time a thinking being, whose thoughts
we cannot intuit, though we can indeed intuit their signs in
the [field of] appearance. Accordingly, the thesis that only
souls (as particular kinds of substances) think, would have
to be given up; and we should have to fall back on the
common expression that men think, that is, that the very
same being which, as outer appearance, is extended, is (in
itself) internally a subject, and is not composite, but is simple
and thinks.
But, without committing ourselves in regard to such hypotheses,
we can make this general remark. If I understand by
soul a thinking being in itself, the question whether or not it is
the same in kind as matter -- matter not being a thing in itself,
but merely a species of representations in us -- is by its very
terms illegitimate. For it is obvious that a thing in itself is of a
different nature from the determinations which constitute only
its state.
If, on the other hand, we compare the thinking 'I' not with
matter but with the intelligible that lies at the basis of the
outer appearance which we call matter, we have no knowledge
whatsoever of the intelligible, and therefore are in no position
to say that the soul is in any inward respect different from it.
The simple consciousness is not, therefore, knowledge of
the simple nature of the self as subject, such as might enable us
to distinguish it from matter, as from a composite being.
If, therefore, in the only case in which this concept can be
of service, namely, in the comparison of myself with objects of
outer experience, it does not suffice for determining what is
specific and distinctive in the nature of the self, then though
we may still profess to know that the thinking 'I', the soul (a
name for the transcendental object of inner sense), is simple,
such a way of speaking has no sort of application to real 
objects, and therefore cannot in the least extend our knowledge.
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Thus the whole of rational psychology is involved in the
collapse of its main support. Here as little as elsewhere can we
hope to extend our knowledge through mere concepts -- still
less by means of the merely subjective form of all our concepts,
consciousness -- in the absence of any relation to possible 
experience. For [as we have thus found], even the fundamental
concept of a simple nature is such that it can never be met
with in any experience, and such, therefore, that there is no
way of attaining to it, as an objectively valid concept.
THIRD PARALOGISM: OF PERSONALITY
That which is conscious of the numerical identity of itself
at different times is in so far a person.
Now the soul is conscious, etc.
Therefore it is a person.
Critique of the Third Paralogism of Transcendental
Psychology
If I want to know through experience, the numerical identity
of an external object, I shall pay heed to that permanent
element in the appearance to which as subject everything else
is related as determination, and note its identity throughout the
time in which the determinations change. Now I am an object
of inner sense, and all time is merely the form of inner sense.
Consequently, I refer each and all of my successive determinations
to the numerically identical self, and do so throughout
time, that is, in the form of the inner intuition of myself. This
being so, the personality of the soul has to be regarded not as
inferred but as a completely identical proposition of self-consciousness
in time; and this, indeed, is why it is valid a priori.
For it really says nothing more than that in the whole time in
which I am conscious of myself, I am conscious of this time as
belonging to the unity of myself; and it comes to the same
whether I say that this whole time is in me, as individual unity,
or that I am to be found as numerically identical in all this time.
In my own consciousness, therefore, identity of person is
unfailingly met with. But if I view myself from the standpoint
of another person (as object of his outer intuition), it is this
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outer observer who first represents me in time, for in the 
apperception time is represented, strictly speaking, only in me. 
Although he admits, therefore, the 'I', which accompanies, and
indeed with complete identity, all representations at all times
in my consciousness, he will draw no inference from this to the
objective permanence of myself. For just as the time in which
the observer sets me is not the time of my own but of his 
sensibility, so the identity which is necessarily bound up with my
consciousness is not therefore bound up with his, that is, with
the consciousness which contains the outer intuition of my
subject.
The identity of the consciousness of myself at different
times is therefore only a formal condition of my thoughts and
their coherence, and in no way proves the numerical identity of
my subject. Despite the logical identity of the 'I', such a change
may have occurred in it as does not allow of the retention of
its identity, and yet we may ascribe to it the same-sounding
'I', which in every different state, even in one involving change
of the [thinking] subject, might still retain the thought of the
preceding subject and so hand it over to the subsequent
subject.
 Although the dictum of certain ancient schools, that everything
in the world is in a flux and nothing is permanent and
abiding, cannot be reconciled with the admission of substances,
it is not refuted by the unity of self-consciousness.
++ An elastic ball which impinges on another similar ball in a
straight line communicates to the latter its whole motion, and therefore
its whole state (that is, if we take account only of the positions
in space). If, then, in analogy with such bodies, we postulate 
substances such that the one communicates to the other representations
together with the consciousness of them, we can conceive a whole
series of substances of which the first transmits its state together
with its consciousness to the second, the second its own state with
that of the preceding substance to the third, and this in turn the
states of all the preceding substances together with its own 
consciousness and with their consciousness to another. The last substance
would then be conscious of all the states of the previously changed
substances, as being its own states, because they would have been
transferred to it together with the consciousness of them. And yet it
would not have been one and the same person in all these states.
P 343
For we are unable from our own consciousness to determine
whether, as souls, we are permanent or not. Since we reckon
as belonging to our identical self only that of which we are
conscious, we must necessarily judge that we are one and the
same throughout the whole time of which we are conscious.
We cannot, however, claim that this judgment would be valid
from the standpoint of an outside observer. For since the only
permanent appearance which we encounter in the soul is the
representation 'I' that accompanies and connects them all, we
are unable to prove that this 'I', a mere thought, may not be
in the same state of flux as the other thoughts which, by
means of it, are linked up with one another.
It is indeed strange that personality, and its presupposition,
permanence, and therefore the substantiality of the soul,
should have to be proved at this stage and not earlier. For
could we have presupposed these latter [permanence and 
substantiality], there would follow, not indeed the continuance of
consciousness, yet at least the possibility of a continuing 
consciousness in an abiding subject, and that is already sufficient
for personality. For personality does not itself at once cease
because its activity is for a time interrupted. This permanence,
however, is in no way given prior to that numerical identity
of our self which we infer from identical apperception, but
on the contrary is inferred first from the numerical identity.
(If the argument proceeded aright, the concept of substance,
which is applicable only empirically, would first be brought
in after such proof of numerical identity. ) Now, since this
identity of person [presupposing, as it does, numerical identity]
in nowise follows from the identity of the 'I' in the 
consciousness of all the time in which I know myself, we could
not, earlier in the argument, have founded upon it the 
substantiality of the soul.
Meanwhile we may still retain the concept of personality
just as we have retained the concept of substance and of the
simple -- in so far as it is merely transcendental, that is, 
concerns the unity of the subject, otherwise unknown to us,
in the determinations of which there is a thoroughgoing
connection through apperception. Taken in this way, the concept
is necessary for practical employment and is sufficient for
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such use; but we can never parade it as an extension of our
self-knowledge through pure reason, and as exhibiting to us
from the mere concept of the identical self an unbroken 
continuance of the subject. For this concept revolves perpetually
in a circle, and does not help us in respect to any question
which aims at synthetic knowledge. What matter may be as a
thing in itself (transcendental object) is completely unknown
to us, though, owing to its being represented as something 
external, its permanence as appearance can indeed be observed.
But if I want to observe the mere 'I' in the change of all 
representations, I have no other correlatum to use in my comparisons
except again myself, with the universal conditions of my 
consciousness. Consequently, I can give none but tautological
answers to all questions, in that I substitute my concept and
its unity for the properties which belong to myself as object,
and so take for granted that which the questioner has desired
to know.
THE FOURTH PARALOGISM: OF IDEALITY
(IN REGARD TO OUTER RELATION)
That, the existence of which can only be inferred as a cause
of given perceptions, has a merely doubtful existence.
 Now all outer appearances are of such a nature that their
existence is not immediately perceived, and that we can only
infer them as the cause of given perceptions.
Therefore the existence of all objects of the outer senses is
doubtful. This uncertainty I entitle the ideality of outer 
appearances, and the doctrine of this ideality is called idealism, as
distinguished from the counter-assertion of a possible certainty
in regard to objects of outer sense, which is called dualism.
Critique of the Fourth Paralogism of Transcendental
Psychology
Let us first examine the premisses. We are justified, [it is
argued], in maintaining that only what is in ourselves can be
perceived immediately, and that my own existence is the sole
object of a mere perception. The existence, therefore, of an
actual object outside me (if this word 'me' be taken in the
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intellectual [not in the empirical] sense) is never given directly
in perception. Perception is a modification of inner sense, and
the existence of the outer object can be added to it only in
thought, as being its outer cause, and accordingly as being
inferred. For the same reason, Descartes was justified in
limiting all perception, in the narrowest sense of that term, to
the proposition, 'I, as a thinking being, exist. ' Obviously, since
what is without is not in me, I cannot encounter it in my
apperception, nor therefore in any perception, which, properly
regarded, is merely the determination of apperception.
I am not, therefore, in a position to perceive external things,
but can only infer their existence from my inner perception,
taking the inner perception as the effect of which something
external is the proximate cause. Now the inference from a
given effect to a determinate cause is always uncertain, since
the effect may be due to more than one cause. Accordingly, as
regards the relation of the perception to its cause, it always
remains doubtful whether the cause be internal or external;
whether, that is to say, all the so-called outer perceptions are
not a mere play of our inner sense, or whether they stand in
relation to actual external objects as their cause. At all events,
the existence of the latter is only inferred, and is open to all
the dangers of inference, whereas the object of inner sense (I
myself with all my representations) is immediately perceived,
and its existence does not allow of being doubted.
The term 'idealist' is not, therefore, to be understood as
applying to those who deny the existence of external objects
of the senses, but only to those who do not admit that their
existence is known through immediate perception, and who
therefore conclude that we can never, by way of any possible
experience, be completely certain as to their reality.
Before exhibiting our paralogism in all its deceptive
illusoriness, I have first to remark that we must necessarily
distinguish two types of idealism, the transcendental and the
empirical. By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine
that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all,
representations only, not things in themselves, and that time
and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition,
not determinations given as existing by themselves, nor conditions
of objects viewed as things in themselves. To this idealism
P 346
there is opposed a transcendental realism which regards
time and space as something given in themselves, independently
of our sensibility. The transcendental realist thus interprets
outer appearances (their reality being taken as granted)
as things-in-themselves, which exist independently of us and of
our sensibility, and which are therefore outside us -- the phrase
'outside us' being interpreted in conformity with pure concepts
of understanding. It is, in fact, this transcendental realist
who afterwards plays the part of empirical idealist. After
wrongly supposing that objects of the senses, if they are to be
external, must have an existence by themselves, and independently
of the senses, he finds that, judged from this point
of view, all our sensuous representations are inadequate to
establish their reality.
 The transcendental idealist, on the other hand, may be an
empirical realist or, as he is called, a dualist; that is, he may
admit the existence of matter without going outside his mere
self-consciousness, or assuming anything more than the certainty
of his representations, that is, the cogito, ergo sum. For
he considers this matter and even its inner possibility to be
appearance merely; and appearance, if separated from our
sensibility, is nothing. Matter is with him, therefore, only a
species of representations (intuition), which are called external,
not as standing in relation to objects in themselves external,
but because they relate perceptions to the space in which all
things are external to one another, while yet the space itself is
in us.
From the start, we have declared ourselves in favour of
this transcendental idealism; and our doctrine thus removes
all difficulty in the way of accepting the existence of matter
on the unaided testimony of our mere self-consciousness, or of
declaring it to be thereby proved in the same manner as the
existence of myself as a thinking being is proved. There can
be no question that I am conscious of my representations;
these representations and I myself, who have the representations,
therefore exist. External objects (bodies), however, are
mere appearances, and are therefore nothing but a species of
my representations, the objects of which are something only
through these representations. Apart from them they are
nothing. Thus external things exist as well as I myself, and
P 347
both indeed, upon the immediate witness of my self-consciousness.
The only difference is that the representation of myself,
as the thinking subject, belongs to inner sense only, while
the representations which mark extended beings belong also
to outer sense. In order to arrive at the reality of outer objects
I have just as little need to resort to inference as I have in 
regard to the reality of the object of my inner sense, that is, in
regard to the reality of my thoughts. For in both cases alike the
objects are nothing but representations, the immediate 
perception (consciousness) of which is at the same time a 
sufficient proof of their reality.
The transcendental idealist is, therefore, an empirical realist,
and allows to matter, as appearance, a reality which does
not permit of being inferred, but is immediately perceived.
Transcendental realism, on the other hand, inevitably falls
into difficulties, and finds itself obliged to give way to empirical
idealism, in that it regards the objects of outer sense as
something distinct from the senses themselves, treating mere
appearances as self-subsistent beings, existing outside us. On
such a view as this, however clearly we may be conscious of
our representation of these things, it is still far from certain
that, if the representation exists, there exists also the object
corresponding to it. In our system, on the other hand, these
external things, namely matter, are in all their configurations
and alterations nothing but mere appearances, that is, 
representations in us, of the reality of which we are immediately
conscious.
Since, so far as I know, all psychologists who adopt empirical
idealism are transcendental realists, they have certainly
proceeded quite consistently in ascribing great importance
to empirical idealism, as one of the problems in regard to
which the human mind is quite at a loss how to proceed. For
if we regard outer appearances as representations produced in
us by their objects, and if these objects be things existing in
themselves outside us, it is indeed impossible to see how we can
come to know the existence of the objects otherwise than by 
inference from the effect to the cause; and this being so, it must
always remain doubtful whether the cause in question be in
us or outside us. We can indeed admit that something, which
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may be (in the transcendental sense) outside us, is the cause of
our outer intuitions, but this is not the object of which we are
thinking in the representations of matter and of corporeal
things; for these are merely appearances, that is, mere kinds of
representation, which are never to be met with save in us, and
the reality of which depends on immediate consciousness, just
as does the consciousness of my own thoughts. The transcendental
object is equally unknown in respect to inner and to
outer intuition. But it is not of this that we are here speaking,
but of the empirical object, which is called an external object
if it is represented in space, and an inner object if it is 
represented only in its time-relations. Neither space nor time, 
however, is to be found save in us.
The expression 'outside us' is thus unavoidably ambiguous
in meaning, sometimes signifying what as thing in itself exists
apart from us, and sometimes what belongs solely to outer
appearance. In order, therefore, to make this concept, in the
latter sense -- the sense in which the psychological question as
to the reality of our outer intuition has to be understood --
quite unambiguous, we shall distinguish empirically external
objects from those which may be said to be external in the
transcendental sense, by explicitly entitling the former 'things
which are to be found in space'.
Space and time are indeed a priori representations, which
dwell in us as forms of our sensible intuition, before any real
object, determining our sense through sensation, has enabled
us to represent the object under those sensible relations. But
the material or real element, the something which is to be
intuited in space, necessarily presupposes perception. Perception
exhibits the reality of something in space; and in the
absence of perception no power of imagination can invent and
produce that something. It is sensation, therefore, that indicates
a reality in space or in time, according as it is related to the one
or to the other mode of sensible intuition. (Once sensation is
given -- if referred to an object in general, though not as determining
that object, it is entitled perception -- thanks to its 
manifoldness we can picture in imagination many objects which have
no empirical place in space or time outside the imagination. )
P 349
This admits of no doubt; whether we take pleasure and pain,
or the sensations of the outer senses, colours, heat, etc. , 
perception is that whereby the material required to enable us to
think objects of sensible intuition must first be given. This
perception, therefore (to consider, for the moment, only outer
intuitions), represents something real in space. For, in the first
place, while space is the representation of a mere possibility
of coexistence, perception is the representation of a reality.
Secondly, this reality is represented in outer sense, that is, in
space. Thirdly, space is itself nothing but mere representation,
and therefore nothing in it can count as real save only what
is represented in it; and conversely, what is given in it, that
is, represented through perception, is also real in it. For if it
were not real, that is, immediately given through empirical
intuition, it could not be pictured in imagination, since what
is real in intuitions cannot be invented a priori.
All outer perception, therefore, yields immediate proof of
something real in space, or rather is the real itself. In this
sense empirical realism is beyond question; that is, there
corresponds to our outer intuitions something real in space.
Space itself, with all its appearances, as representations, is,
indeed, only in me, but nevertheless the real, that is, the
material of all objects of outer intuition, is actually given in this
space, independently of all imaginative invention. Also, it is
impossible that in this space anything outside us (in the 
transcendental sense) should be given, space itself being nothing
outside our sensibility. Even the most rigid idealist cannot,
therefore, require a proof that the object outside us (taking
'outside' in the strict [transcendental] sense) corresponds to
our perception.
++ We must give full credence to this paradoxical but correct proposition,
that there is nothing in space save what is represented in it.
For space is itself nothing but representation, and whatever is in it
must therefore be contained in the representation. Nothing whatsoever
is in space, save in so far as it is actually represented in it. It is
a proposition which must indeed sound strange, that a thing can exist
only in the representation of it, but in this case the objection falls,
inasmuch as the things with which we are here concerned are not
things in themselves, but appearances only, that is, representations.
P 349
For if there be any such object, it could not be
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represented and intuited as outside us, because such representation
and intuition presuppose space, and reality in space,
being the reality of a mere representation, is nothing other
than perception itself. The real of outer appearances is therefore
real in perception only, and can be real in no other way.
From perceptions knowledge of objects can be generated,
either by mere play of imagination or by way of experience;
and in the process there may, no doubt, arise illusory 
representations to which the objects do not correspond, the 
deception being attributable sometimes to a delusion of imagination
(in dreams) and sometimes to an error of judgment in so-called
sense-deception). To avoid such deceptive illusion, we have
to proceed according to the rule: Whatever is connected with a
perception according to empirical laws, is actual. But such
deception, as well as the provision against it, affects idealism
quite as much as dualism, inasmuch as we are concerned only
with the form of experience. Empirical idealism, and its 
mistaken questionings as to the objective reality of our outer
perceptions, is already sufficiently refuted, when it has been
shown that outer perception yields immediate proof of something
actual in space, and that this space, although in itself
only a mere form of representations, has objective reality in
relation to all outer appearances, which also are nothing else
than mere representations; and when it has likewise been
shown that in the absence of perception even imagining and
dreaming are not possible, and that our outer senses, as regards
the data from which experience can arise, have therefore their
actual corresponding objects in space.
The dogmatic idealist would be one who denies the existence
of matter, the sceptical idealist one who doubts its existence,
because holding it to be incapable of proof. The former
must base his view on supposed contradictions in the possibility
of there being such a thing as matter at all -- a view
with which we have not yet been called upon to deal. The
following section on dialectical inferences, which represents
reason as in strife with itself in regard to the concepts which
it makes for itself of the possibility of what belongs to the
P 351
connection of experience, will remove this difficulty. The
sceptical idealist, however, who merely challenges the ground
of our assertion and denounces as insufficiently justified our
conviction of the existence of matter, which we thought to
base on immediate perception, is a benefactor of human
reason in so far as he compels us, even in the smallest 
advances of ordinary experience, to keep on the watch, lest we
consider as a well-earned possession what we perhaps obtain
only illegitimately. We are now in a position to appreciate
the value of these idealist objections. Unless we mean to
contradict ourselves in our commonest assertions, they drive
us by main force to view all our perceptions, whether we
call them inner or outer, as a consciousness only of what is
dependent on our sensibility. They also compel us to view the
outer objects of these perceptions not as things in themselves,
but only as representations, of which, as of every other 
representation, we can become immediately conscious, and which
are entitled outer because they depend on what we call 'outer
sense', whose intuition is space. Space itself, however, is 
nothing but an inner mode of representation in which certain
perceptions are connected with one another.
If we treat outer objects as things in themselves, it is quite
impossible to understand how we could arrive at a knowledge
of their reality outside us, since we have to rely merely on
the representation which is in us. For we cannot be sentient
[of what is] outside ourselves, but only [of what is] in us, and
the whole of our self-consciousness therefore yields nothing
save merely our own determinations. Sceptical idealism thus
constrains us to have recourse to the only refuge still open,
namely, the ideality of all appearances, a doctrine which
has already been established in the Transcendental Aesthetic
independently of these consequences, which we could not at
that stage foresee. If then we ask, whether it follows that in the
doctrine of the soul dualism alone is tenable, we must answer:
'Yes, certainly; but dualism only in the empirical sense'. That
is to say, in the connection of experience matter, as substance
in the [field of] appearance, is really given to outer sense, just as
the thinking 'I', also as substance in the [field of] appearance,
is given to inner sense. Further, appearances in both fields
P 352
must be connected with each other according to the rules which
this category introduces into that connection of our outer as
well as of our inner perceptions whereby they constitute one 
experience. If, however, as commonly happens, we seek to extend
the concept of dualism, and take it in the transcendental sense,
neither it nor the two counter-alternatives -- pneumatism on
the one hand, materialism on the other -- would have any sort
of basis, since we should then have misapplied our concepts,
taking the difference in the mode of representing objects, which,
as regards what they are in themselves, still remain unknown
to us, as a difference in the things themselves. Though the 'I',
as represented through inner sense in time, and objects in space
outside me, are specifically quite distinct appearances, they
are not for that reason thought as being different things.
Neither the transcendental object which underlies outer 
appearances nor that which underlies inner intuition, is in itself
either matter or a thinking being, but a ground (to us 
unknown) of the appearances which supply to us the empirical
concept of the former as well as of the latter mode of 
existence. 
If then, as this critical argument obviously compels us to
do, we hold fast to the rule above established, and do not push
our questions beyond the limits within which possible experience
can present us with its object, we shall never dream of
seeking to inform ourselves about the objects of our senses as
they are in themselves, that is, out of all relation to the senses.
But if the psychologist takes appearances for things in 
themselves, and as existing in and by themselves, then whether he
be a materialist who admits into his system nothing but matter
alone, or a spiritualist who admits only thinking beings (that
is, beings with the form of our inner sense), or a dualist who
accepts both, he will always, owing to this misunderstanding,
be entangled in pseudo-rational speculations as to how that
which is not a thing in itself, but only the appearance of a
thing in general, can exist by itself.
 Consideration of Pure Psychology as a whole,
in view of these Paralogisms
If we compare the doctrine of the soul as the physiology of
inner sense, with the doctrine of the body as a physiology of
P 353
the object of the outer senses, we find that while in both much
can be learnt empirically, there is yet this notable difference
In the latter science much that is a priori can be synthetically
known from the mere concept of an extended impenetrable
being, but in the former nothing whatsoever that is a priori
can be known synthetically from the concept of a thinking
being. The cause is this. Although both are appearances,
the appearance to outer sense has something fixed or abiding
which supplies a substratum as the basis of its transitory
determinations and therefore a synthetic concept, namely,
that of space and of an appearance in space; whereas time,
which is the sole form of our inner intuition, has nothing
abiding, and therefore yields knowledge only of the change
of determinations, not of any object that can be thereby 
determined. For in what we entitle 'soul', everything is in 
continual flux and there is nothing abiding except (if we must so
express ourselves) the 'I', which is simple solely because its
representation has no content, and therefore no manifold, and
for this reason seems to represent, or (to use a more correct
term) denote, a simple object. In order that it should be possible,
by pure reason, to obtain knowledge of the nature of a thinking
being in general, this 'I' would have to be an intuition which,
in being presupposed in all thought (prior to all experience),
might as intuition yield a priori synthetic propositions. This
'I' is, however, as little an intuition as it is a concept of any
object; it is the mere form of consciousness, which can accompany
the two kinds of representation and which is in a position
to elevate them to the rank of knowledge only in so far as 
something else is given in intuition which provides material for a
representation of an object. Thus the whole of rational 
psychology, as a science surpassing all powers of human reason,
proves abortive, and nothing is left for us but to study our soul
under the guidance of experience, and to confine ourselves
to those questions which do not go beyond the limits within
which a content can be provided for them by possible inner
experience.
But although rational psychology cannot be used to extend
knowledge, and when so employed is entirely made up of
value, if it is taken as nothing more than a critical treatment
P 354
of our dialectical inferences, those that arise from the common
and natural reason of men.
 Why do we have resort to a doctrine of the soul founded
exclusively on pure principles of reason? Beyond all doubt,
chiefly in order to secure our thinking self against the danger
of materialism. This is achieved by means of the pure concept
of our thinking self which we have just given. For by
this teaching so completely are we freed from the fear that on
the removal of matter all thought, and even the very existence
of thinking beings, would be destroyed, that on the contrary
it is clearly shown, that if I remove the thinking subject the
whole corporeal world must at once vanish: it is nothing save
an appearance in the sensibility of our subject and a mode
of its representations.
I admit that this does not give me any further knowledge
of the properties of this thinking self, nor does it enable me to
determine its permanence or even that it exists independently
of what we may conjecture to be the transcendental substratum
of outer appearances; for the latter is just as unknown
to me as is the thinking self. But it is nevertheless
possible that I may find cause, on other than merely 
speculative grounds, to hope for an independent and continuing
existence of my thinking nature, throughout all possible change
of my state. In that case much will already have been gained
if, while freely confessing my own ignorance, I am yet in a
position to repel the dogmatic assaults of a speculative 
opponent, and to show him that he can never know more of the
nature of the self in denying the possibility of my expectations
than I can know in clinging to them.
Three other dialectical questions, constituting the real
goal of rational psychology, are grounded on this transcendental
illusion in our psychological concepts, and cannot be
decided except by means of the above enquiries: namely (1) of
the possibility of the communion of the soul with an organised
body, i.e. concerning animality and the state of the soul in the
life of man; (2) of the beginning of this communion, that is, of
the soul in and before birth; (3) of the end of this communion,
that is, of the soul in and after death (the question of 
immortality). 
P 355
Now I maintain that all the difficulties commonly found in
these questions, and by means of which, as dogmatic objections,
men seek to gain credit for a deeper insight into the nature of
things than any to which the ordinary understanding can
properly lay claim, rest on a mere delusion by which they
hypostatise what exists merely in thought, and take it as a real
object existing, in the same character, outside the thinking 
subject. In other words, they regard extension, which is nothing
but appearance, as a property of outer things that subsists
even apart from our sensibility, and hold that motion is
due to these things and really occurs in and by itself, apart
from our senses. For matter, the communion of which with
the soul arouses so much questioning, is nothing but a mere
form, or a particular way of representing an unknown object
by means of that intuition which is called outer sense. There
may well be something outside us to which this appearance,
which we call matter, corresponds; in its character of appearance
it is not, however, outside us, but is only a thought in us,
although this thought, owing to the above-mentioned outer
sense, represents it as existing outside us. Matter, therefore,
does not mean a kind of substance quite distinct and heterogeneous
from the object of inner sense (the soul), but only the
distinctive nature of those appearances of objects -- in 
themselves unknown to us -- the representations of which we call
outer as compared with those which we count as belonging to
inner sense, although like all other thoughts these outer 
representations belong only to the thinking subject. They have,
indeed, this deceptive property that, representing objects in
space, they detach themselves as it were from the soul and
appear to hover outside it. Yet the very space in which they
are intuited is nothing but a representation, and no counterpart
of the same quality is to be found outside the soul. 
Consequently, the question is no longer of the communion of the
soul with other known substances of a different kind outside us,
but only of the connection of the representations of inner sense
with the modifications of our outer sensibility -- as to how these
can be so connected with each other according to settled laws
that they exhibit the unity of a coherent experience.
As long as we take inner and outer appearances together
as mere representations in experience, we find nothing absurd
P 356
and strange in the association of the two kinds of senses. But
as soon as we hypostatise outer appearances and come to regard
them not as representations but as things existing by themselves
outside us, with the same quality as that with which they
exist in us, and as bringing to bear on our thinking subject the
activities which they exhibit as appearances in relation to each
other, then the efficient causes outside us assume a character
which is irreconcilable with their effects in us. For the cause relates
only to outer sense, the effect to inner sense -- senses which,
although combined in one subject, are extremely unlike each
other. In outer sense we find no other outer effects save changes
of place, and no forces except mere tendencies which issue in
spatial relations as their effects. Within us, on the other hand,
the effects are thoughts, among which is not to be found any
relation of place, motion, shape, or other spatial determination,
and we altogether lose the thread of the causes in the
effects to which they are supposed to have given rise in inner
sense. We ought, however, to bear in mind that bodies are
not objects in themselves which are present to us, but a mere
appearance of we know not what unknown object; that motion
is not the effect of this unknown cause, but only the appearance
of its influence on our senses. Neither bodies nor motions are
anything outside us; both alike are mere representations in us;
and it is not, therefore, the motion of matter that produces 
representations in us; the motion itself is representation only, as
also is the matter which makes itself known in this way. Thus
in the end the whole difficulty which we have made for 
ourselves comes to this, how and why the representations of our
sensibility are so interconnected that those which we entitle
outer intuitions can be represented according to empirical
laws as objects outside us -- a question which is not in any
way bound up with the supposed difficulty of explaining
the origin of our representations from quite heterogeneous
efficient causes outside us. That difficulty has arisen from
our taking the appearances of an unknown cause as being
the cause itself outside us, a view which can result in 
nothing but confusion. In the case of judgments in which a
misapprehension has taken deep root through long custom,
it is impossible at once to give to their correction that clarity
P 357
which can be achieved in other cases where no such inevitable
illusion confuses the concept. Our freeing of reason from
sophistical theories can hardly, therefore, at this stage have
the clearness which is necessary for its complete success.
The following comments will, I think, be helpful as 
contributing towards this ultimate clarity.
All objections can be divided into dogmatic, critical, and
sceptical. A dogmatic objection is directed against a proposition,
a critical objection against the proof of a proposition.
The former requires an insight into the nature of the object
such that we can maintain the opposite of what the proposition
has alleged in regard to this object. It is therefore itself
dogmatic, claiming acquaintance with the constitution of the
object fuller than that of the counter-assertion. A critical objection,
since it leaves the validity or invalidity of the proposition
unchallenged, and assails only the proof, does not presuppose
fuller acquaintance with the object or oblige us to claim
superior knowledge of its nature; it shows only that the assertion
is unsupported, not that it is wrong. A sceptical objection
sets assertion and counter-assertion in mutual opposition
to each other as having equal weight, treating each in turn as
dogma and the other as the objection thereto. And the conflict,
as the being thus seemingly dogmatic on both the opposing
sides, is taken as showing that all judgment in regard
to the object is completely null and void. Thus dogmatic
and sceptical objections alike lay claim to such insight into
their object as is required to assert or to deny something in
regard to it. A critical objection, on the other hand, confines
itself to pointing out that in the making of the assertion 
something has been presupposed that is void and merely fictitious;
and it thus overthrows the theory by removing its alleged
foundation without claiming to establish anything that
bears directly upon the constitution of the object.
So long as we hold to the ordinary concepts of our
reason with regard to the communion in which our thinking
subject stands with the things outside us, we are dogmatic,
looking upon them as real objects existing independently of
us, in accordance with a certain transcendental dualism which
does not assign these outer appearances to the subject as
representations, but sets them, just as they are given us in
P 358
sensible intuition, as objects outside us, completely 
separating them from the thinking subject. This subreption is
the basis of all theories in regard to the communion between
soul and body. The objective reality thus assigned to 
appearances is never brought into question. On the contrary,
it is taken for granted; the theorising is merely as to the
mode in which it has to be explained and understood. There
are three usual systems devised on these lines, and they are
indeed the only possible systems: that of physical influence,
that of predetermined harmony, and that of supernatural
intervention.
The two last methods of explaining the communion between
the soul and matter are based on objections to the first
view, which is that of common sense. It is argued, namely, that
what appears as matter cannot by its immediate influence be
the cause of representations, these being effects which are
quite different in kind from matter. Now those who take this
line cannot attach to what they understand by 'object of outer
senses' the concept of a matter which is nothing but 
appearance, and so itself a mere representation produced by
some sort of outer objects. For in that case they would be saying
that the representations of outer objects (appearances) cannot
be outer causes of the representations in our mind; and
this would be a quite meaningless objection, since no one could
dream of holding that what he has once come to recognise as
mere representation, is an outer cause. On our principles they
can establish their theory only by showing that that which is
the true (transcendental) object of our outer senses cannot be
the cause of those representations (appearances) which we
comprehend under the title 'matter'. No one, however, can
have the right to claim that he knows anything in regard to the
transcendental cause of our representations of the outer senses;
and their assertion is therefore entirely groundless. If, on the
other hand, those who profess to improve upon the doctrine of
physical influence keep to the ordinary outlook of transcendental
dualism, and suppose matter, as such, to be a thing-in-
itself (not the mere appearance of an unknown thing), they will
direct their objection to showing that such an outer object,
which in itself exhibits no causality save that of movements,
can never be the efficient cause of representations, but that a
P 359
third entity must intervene to establish, if not reciprocal 
interaction, at least correspondence and harmony between the two.
But in arguing in this way, they begin their refutation by 
admitting into their dualism the proton pseudos of [a doctrine of]
physical influence, and consequently their objection is not so
much a disproof of natural influence as of their own dualistic
presupposition. For the difficulties in regard to the connection
of our thinking nature with matter have their origin, one and
all, in the illicitly assumed dualistic view, that matter as such
is not appearance, that is, a mere representation of the mind
to which an unknown object corresponds, but is the object in
itself as it exists outside us independently of all sensibility.
As against the commonly accepted doctrine of physical 
influence, an objection of the dogmatic type is not, therefore,
practicable. For if the opponent of the doctrine accepts the
view that matter and its motion are mere appearances and so
themselves mere representations, his difficulty is then simply
this, that it is impossible that the unknown object of our 
sensibility should be the cause of the representations in us. He 
cannot, however, have the least justification for any such 
contention, since no one is in a position to decide what an unknown
object may or may not be able to do. And this transcendental
idealism, as we have just proved, he cannot but concede. His
only way of escape would be frankly to hypostatise 
representations, and to set them outside himself as real things.
The doctrine of physical influence, in its ordinary form,
is, however, subject to a well-founded critical objection. The
alleged communion between two kinds of substances, the
thinking and the extended, rests on a crude dualism, and
treats the extended substances, which are really nothing
but mere representations of the thinking subject, as existing
by themselves. This mistaken interpretation of physical 
influence can thus be effectively disposed of: we have shown
that the proof of it is void and illicit.
The much-discussed question of the communion between
the thinking and the extended, if we leave aside all that is
merely fictitious, comes then simply to this: how in a thinking
subject outer intuition, namely, that of space, with its filling-
in of shape and motion, is possible. And this is a question
which no man can possibly answer. This gap in our knowledge
P 360
can never be filled; all that can be done is to indicate it through
the ascription of outer appearances to that transcendental object
which is the cause of this species of representations, but of
which we can have no knowledge whatsoever and of which we
shall never acquire any concept. In all problems which may
arise in the field of experience we treat these appearances as
objects in themselves, without troubling ourselves about the
primary ground of their possibility (as appearances). But to
advance beyond these limits the concept of a transcendental
object would be indispensably required.
The settlement of all disputes or objections which concern
the state of the thinking nature prior to this communion (prior
to life), or after the cessation of such communion (in death),
rests upon these considerations regarding the communion
between thinking beings and extended beings. The opinion
that the thinking subject has been capable of thought prior to
any communion with bodies would now appear as an assertion
that, prior to the beginning of the species of sensibility in
virtue of which something appears to us in space, those 
transcendental objects, which in our present state appear as bodies,
could have been intuited in an entirely different manner. The
opinion that the soul after the cessation of all communion with
the corporeal world could still continue to think, would be
formulated as the view that, if that species of sensibility, in
virtue of which transcendental objects, at present quite unknown
to us, appear as a material world, should cease, all intuition
of the transcendental objects would not for that reason
be removed, and it would still be quite possible that those same
unknown objects should continue to be known by the thinking
subject, though no longer, indeed, in the quality of bodies.
Now on speculative principles no one can give the least
ground for any such assertion. Even the possibility of what is
asserted cannot be established; it can only be assumed. But it
is equally impossible for anyone to bring any valid dogmatic
objection against it. For whoever he may be, he knows just as
little of the absolute, inner cause of outer corporeal appearances
as I or anybody else. Since he cannot, therefore, offer
any justification for claiming to know on what the outer 
appearances in our present state (that of life) really rest,
neither can he know that the condition of all outer intuition
P 361
or the thinking subject itself, will cease with this state
(in death).
Thus all controversy in regard to the nature of the thinking
being and its connection with the corporeal world is merely a 
result of filling the gap where knowledge is wholly lacking to us
with paralogisms of reason, treating our thoughts as things and
hypostatising them. Hence originates an imaginary science,
imaginary both in the case of him who affirms and of him
who denies, since all parties either suppose some knowledge
of objects of which no human being has any concept, or treat
their own representations as objects, and so revolve in a 
perpetual circle of ambiguities and contradictions. Nothing but
the sobriety of a critique, at once strict and just, can free us from
this dogmatic delusion, which through the lure of an imagined
felicity keeps so many in bondage to theories and systems.
Such a critique confines all our speculative claims rigidly to
the field of possible experience; and it does this not by shallow
scoffing at ever-repeated failures or pious sighs over the limits
of our reason, but by an effective determining of these limits
in accordance with established principles, inscribing its nihil
ulterius on those Pillars of Hercules which nature herself has
erected in order that the voyage of our reason may be extended
no further than the continuous coastline of experience
itself reaches -- a coast we cannot leave without venturing
upon a shoreless ocean which, after alluring us with ever-
deceptive prospects, compels us in the end to abandon as
hopeless all this vexatious and tedious endeavour.
* * *
We still owe the reader a clear general exposition of the
transcendental and yet natural illusion in the paralogisms of
pure reason, and also a justification of the systematic ordering
of them which runs parallel with the table of the categories.
We could not have attempted to do so at the beginning of this
section without running the risk of becoming obscure or of
clumsily anticipating the course of our argument. We shall
now try to fulfil this obligation.
All illusion may be said to consist in treating the subjective
condition of thinking as being knowledge of the object. Further
in the Introduction to the Transcendental Dialectic we have
P 362
shown that pure reason concerns itself solely with the totality
of the synthesis of the conditions, for a given conditioned. Now
since the dialectical illusion of pure reason cannot be an 
empirical illusion, such as occurs in certain specific instances of
empirical knowledge, it will relate to what is universal in the
conditions of thinking, and there will therefore be only three
cases of the dialectical employment of pure reason.
1. The synthesis of the conditions of a thought in general.
2. The synthesis of the conditions of empirical thinking.
3. The synthesis of the conditions of pure thinking.
In all these three cases pure reason occupies itself only
with the absolute totality of this synthesis, that is, with that
condition which is itself unconditioned. On this division is
founded the threefold transcendental illusion which gives
occasion for the three main sections of the Dialectic, and for
the three pretended sciences of pure reason -- transcendental
psychology, cosmology, and theology. Here we are concerned
only with the first.
Since, in thinking in general, we abstract from all relation
of the thought to any object (whether of the senses or of the
pure understanding), the synthesis of the conditions of a
thought in general (No. 1) is not objective at all, but merely a
synthesis of the thought with the subject, which is mistaken
for a synthetic representation of an object.
It follows from this that the dialectical inference to the
condition of all thought in general, which is itself 
unconditioned, does not commit a material error (for it abstracts
from all content or objects), but is defective in form alone, and
must therefore be called a paralogism.
Further, since the one condition which accompanies all
thought is the 'I' in the universal proposition 'I think',
reason has to deal with this condition in so far as it is itself
unconditioned. It is only the formal condition, namely, the
logical unity of every thought, in which I abstract from all
objects; but nevertheless it is represented as an object which I
think, namely, I myself and its unconditioned unity.
If anyone propounds to me the question, 'What is the constitution
P 363
of a thing which thinks? ', I have no a priori knowledge
wherewith to reply. For the answer has to be synthetic --
an analytic answer will perhaps explain what is meant by
thought, but beyond this cannot yield any knowledge of that
upon which this thought depends for its possibility. For a
synthetic solution, however, intuition is always required; and
owing to the highly general character of the problem, intuition
has been left entirely out of account. Similarly no one can answer
in all its generality the question, 'What must a thing be, to be
movable? ' For the question contains no trace of the answer,
viz. impenetrable extension (matter). But although I have no
general answer to the former question, it still seems as if I
could reply in the special case of the proposition which expresses
self-consciousness -- 'I think'. For this 'I' is the primary
subject, that is, substance; it is simple, etc. But these would
then have to be propositions derived from experience, and in
the absence of a universal rule which expresses the conditions
of the possibility of thought in general and a priori, they could
not contain any such non-empirical predicates. Suspicion is
thus thrown on the view, which at first seemed to me so
plausible, that we can form judgments about the nature of a
thinking being, and can do so from concepts alone. But the
error in this way of thinking has not yet been detected.
Further investigation into the origin of the attributes which
I ascribe to myself as a thinking being in general can, however,
show in what the error consists. These attributes are nothing
but pure categories, by which I do not think a determinate object
but only the unity of the representations -- in order to determine
an object for them. In the absence of an underlying intuition
the category cannot by itself yield a concept of an object; for
by intuition alone is the object given, which thereupon is thought
in accordance with the category. If I am to declare a thing to
be a substance in the [field of] appearance, predicates of its 
intuition must first be given me, and I must be able to distinguish
in these the permanent from the transitory and the substratum
(the thing itself) from what is merely inherent in it. If I call a
thing in the [field of] appearance simple, I mean by this that
the intuition of it, although a part of the appearance, is not
P 364
itself capable of being divided into parts, etc. But if I know
something as simple in concept only and not in the [field of]
appearance, I have really no knowledge whatsoever of the
object, but only of the concept which I make for myself of a
something in general that does not allow of being intuited. I
say that I think something as completely simple, only because
I have really nothing more to say of it than merely that it is
something.
Now the bare apperception, 'I', is in concept substance, in
concept simple, etc. ; and in this sense all those psychological
doctrines are unquestionably true. Yet this does not give us
that knowledge of the soul for which we are seeking. For since
none of these predicates are valid of intuition, they cannot
have any consequences which are applicable to objects of
experience, and are therefore entirely void. The concept of
substance does not teach me that the soul endures by itself,
nor that it is a part of outer intuitions which cannot itself be
divided into parts, and cannot therefore arise or perish by any
natural alterations. These are properties which would make
the soul known to me in the context of experience and might
reveal something concerning its origin and future state. But
if I say, in terms of the mere category, 'The soul is a simple
substance', it is obvious that since the bare concept of 
substance (supplied by the understanding) contains nothing 
beyond the requirement that a thing be represented as being
subject in itself, and not in turn predicate of anything else,
nothing follows from this as regards the permanence of the
'I', and the attribute 'simple' certainly does not aid in adding
this permanence. Thus, from this source, we learn nothing
whatsoever as to what may happen to the soul in the changes
of the natural world. If we could be assured that the soul is a
simple part of matter, we could use this knowledge, with the
further assistance of what experience teaches in this regard, to
deduce the permanence, and, as involved in its simple nature,
the indestructibility of the soul. But of all this, the concept
of the 'I', in the psychological principle 'I think', tells us
nothing.
That the being which thinks in us is under the impression
that it knows itself through pure categories, and precisely
P 365
through those categories which in each type of category
express absolute unity, is due to the following reason. Apperception
is itself the ground of the possibility of the categories,
which on their part represent nothing but the synthesis of the
manifold of intuition, in so far as the manifold has unity in
apperception. Self-consciousness in general is therefore the
representation of that which is the condition of all unity, and
itself is unconditioned. We can thus say of the thinking 'I'
(the soul) which regards itself as substance, as simple, as
numerically identical at all times, and as the correlate of all
existence, from which all other existence must be inferred,
that it does not know itself through the categories, but knows
the categories, and through them all objects, in the absolute
unity of apperception, and so through itself. Now it is, 
indeed, very evident that I cannot know as an object that which
I must presuppose in order to know any object, and that the
determining self (the thought) is distinguished from the self
that is to be determined (the thinking subject) in the same
way as knowledge is distinguished from its object. Nevertheless
there is nothing more natural and more misleading than
the illusion which leads us to regard the unity in the synthesis
of thoughts as a perceived unity in the subject of these thoughts.
We might call it the subreption of the hypostatised 
consciousness (apperceptionis substantiatae).
If we desire to give a logical title to the paralogism contained
in the dialectical syllogisms of the rational doctrine of
the soul, then in view of the fact that their premisses are 
correct, we may call it a sophisma figurae dictionis. Whereas the
major premiss, in dealing with the condition, makes a merely
transcendental use of the category, the minor premiss and the
conclusion, in dealing with the soul which has been subsumed
under this condition, use the same category empirically. Thus,
for instance, in the paralogism of substantiality, the concept
of substance is a pure intellectual concept, which in the
absence of the conditions of sensible intuition admits only of
transcendental use, that is, admits of no use whatsoever. But in
the minor premiss the very same concept is applied to the object
P 366
of all inner experience without our having first ascertained
and established the condition of such employment in concreto,
namely, the permanence of this object. We are thus making an
empirical, but in this case inadmissible, employment of the
category.
Finally, in order to show the systematic interconnection of
all these dialectical assertions of a pseudo-rational doctrine of
the soul in an order determined by pure reason, and so to show
that we have them in their completeness, we may note that
apperception has been carried through all the classes of the
categories but only in reference to those concepts of understanding
which in each class form the basis of the unity of the
others in a possible perception, namely, subsistence, reality,
unity (not plurality), and existence. Reason here represents all
of these as conditions, which are themselves unconditioned, of
the possibility of a thinking being. Thus the soul knows in
itself --
(1) the unconditioned unity of relation, i.e. that it itself is not
inherent [in something else] but self-subsistent.
(2) the unconditioned unity of quality, that is, that it is not a
real whole but simple.
(3) the unconditioned unity in the plurality in time, i.e. that
it is not numerically different at different times but one
and the very same subject.
(4) the unconditioned unity of existence in space, i.e. that it
is not the consciousness of many things outside it, but
the consciousness of the existence of itself only, and of
other things merely as its representations.
 Reason is the faculty of principles. The assertions of pure
psychology do not contain empirical predicates of the soul but
those predicates, if there be any such, which are meant to 
determine the object in itself independently of experience, and
so by mere reason. They ought, therefore, to be founded on
principles and universal concepts bearing on the nature of thinking beings in ge
neral.
++ How the simple here again corresponds to the category of
reality I am not yet in a position to explain. This will be shown in
the next chapter on the occasion of this same concept being put by
reason to yet another use.
P 367
But instead we find that the single
representation, 'I am', governs them all. This representation
just because it expresses the pure formula of all my experience
in general announces itself as a universal proposition valid
for all thinking beings; and since it is at the same time in all
respects unitary, it carries with it the illusion of an absolute
unity of the conditions of thought in general, and so extends
itself further than possible experience can reach.

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