our external perceptions, it is sufficient to consider
that external perception proves immediately a reality
in space, which space, though in itself a mere [p. 377]
form of representations, possesses nevertheless objec-
tive reality with respect to all external phenomena
(which themselves are mere representations only).
Besides, without perception, even the creations of
fancy and dreams would not be possible, so that our
external senses, with reference to the data from
which experience can spring, must have real objects
corresponding to them in space.



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 327

[There are two kinds of idealists, the dogmatic, who
denies the existence of matter, and the sceptical, who
doubts it, because he thinks it impossible to prove it.
At present we have nothing to do with the former,
who is an idealist, because he imagines he finds con-
tradictions in the possibility of matter in general.
This is a difficulty which we shall have to deal with
in the following section on dialectical syllogisms, treat-
ing of reason in its internal struggle with reference
to the concepts of the possibility of all that belongs
to the connection of experience. The sceptical ideal-
ist, on the contrary, who attacks only the ground of
our assertion, and declares our conviction of the
existence of matter, which we founded on immediate
perception, as insufficient, is in reality a benefactor of
human reason, because he obliges us, even in the
smallest matter of common experience, to [p. 378]
keep our eyes well open and not to consider as a
well-earned possession what may have come to us by
mistake only. We now shall learn to understand
the great advantage of these idealistic objections.
They drive us by main force, unless we mean to con-
tradict ourselves in our most ordinary propositions,
to consider all perceptions, whether we call them in-
ternal or external, as a consciousness only of what
affects our sensibility, and to look on the external
objects of them, not as things by themselves, but only
as representations of which, as of every other repre-
sentation, we can become immediately conscious, and
which are called external, because they affect what
we call the external sense with its intuition of space,
being itself nothing but an internal kind of repre-



328 TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.

[sentation in which certain perceptions become asso-
ciated,

If we were to admit external objects to be things
by themselves, it would be simply impossible to un-
derstand how we can arrive at a knowledge of their
reality outside us, considering that we always depend
on representations which are inside us. It is surely
impossible that we should feel outside us, and not
inside us, and the whole of our self-consciousness
cannot give us anything but our own determinations.
Thus sceptical idealism forces us to take refuge in the
only place that is left to us, namely, in the ideality
of all phenomena : the very ideality which, though
as yet unprepared for its consequences, we estab-
lished in our own transcendental iEsthetic. [p. 379]
If then we are asked whether, consequently, dualism
only must be admitted in psychology, we answer,
certainly, but only in its empirical acceptation.
In the connection of experience matter, as the sub-
stance of phenomena, is really given to the external
sense in the same manner as the thinking I, the
substance of phenomena, is given to the internal
sense ; and it is according to the rules which this
category introduces into the empirical connection of
our external as well as internal perceptions, that
phenomena on both sides must be connected among
themselves. If, on the contrary, as often happens,
we were to extend the concept of dualism and take
it in its transcendental acceptation, then neither it,
nor on one side the pneumatism which is opposed to
it, or on the other side the materialism, would have
the smallest foundation; we should have missed the



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 329

[determination of our concepts, and have mistaken the
difference in our mode of representing objects, which,
with regard to what they are in themselves, remain
always unknown to us, for a difference of the things
themselves. No doubt I, as represented by the in-
ternal sense in time, and objects in space outside me,
are two specifically different phenomena, but they
are not therefore conceived as different things. The
transcendental object, which forms the foundation
of external phenomena, and the other, which forms
the foundation of our internal intuition, is [p. 380]
therefore neither matter, nor a thinking being by
itself, but simply an unknown cause of pheno-
mena that supplied to us the empirical concept of
both.

If therefore, as evidently forced to do by this very
criticism, we remain faithful to the old rule, never
to push questions beyond where possible experience
can supply us with an object, we shall never dream
of going beyond the objects of our senses and asking
what they may be by themselves, that is, without
any reference to our senses. But if the psychologist
likes to take phenomena for things by themselves,
then, whether he admit into his system, as a ma-
terialist, matter only, or, as a spiritualist, thinking
beings only (according to the form of our own in-
ternal sense), or, as a dualist, both, as things exist-
ing in themselves, he will always be driven by his
mistake to invent theories as to how that which
is not a thing by itself, but a phenomenon only, could
exist by itself.



330 TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.

[ CONSIDERATION [p. 381]

on the whole of pure Psychology, as affected by these
Paralogisms.

If we compare the science of the soul, as the
physiology of the internal sense, with the science
of the body, as a physiology of the objects of external
senses, we find, besides many things which in both
must be known empirically, this important difference,
that in the latter many things can be known a priori
from the mere concept of an extended and imper-
meable being, while in the former nothing can be
known a priori and synthetically from the concept of
a thinking being. The cause is this. Though both
are phenomena, yet the phenomena of the external
sense have something permanent, which suggests a
substratum of varying determinations, and conse-
quently a synthetical concept, namely, that of space,
and of a phenomenon in space ; while time, the only
form of our internal intuition, has nothing permanent,
and makes us to know the change of determinations
only, but not the determinable object. For in what
we call soul there is a continuous flux, and nothing
permanent, except it may be (if people will so have
it) the simple J, so simple because this representa-
tion has no contents, consequently nothing manifold,
so that it seems to represent, or more accurately [p. 382]
to indicate, a simple object. This I or Ego would have
to be an intuition, which, being presupposed in all
thought (before all experience), might as an intuition
supply synthetical propositions a priori, supposing it
to be possible to get a knowledge by pure reason of



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 33 1

[the nature of a thinking being in general. But this
I is neither an intuition nor a concept of any object,
but tlie mere form of consciousness which can ac-
company both classes of representations, and impart
to them the character of knowledge, provided some-
thing else be given in intuition which supplies matter
for a representation of an object. Thus we see that
the whole of rational psychology is impossible as
transcending the powers of human reason, and
nothing remains to us but to study our soul under
the guidance of experience, and to keep ourselves
within the limits of questions which do not go
beyond the line where the material can be supplied
by possible internal experience.

But although rational psychology is of no use
in extending our knowledge, but as such made up of
paralogisms only, we cannot deny to it an important
negative utility, if it does not pretend to be more
than a critical investigation of our dialectical syllo-
gisms, as framed by our common and natural reason.

What purpose can be served by psycho- [p. 3 8 3]
logy, founded on pure principles of reason % Its chief
purpose is meant to be to guard our thinking self
against the danger of materialism. This purpose
however is answered, as we have shown, by the
concept which reason gives of our thinking self.
For, so far from there being any fear lest, if matter
be taken away, all thought, and even the existence
of thinking beings might vanish, it has been on the
contrary clearly shown that, if we take away the
thinking subject, the whole material world would
vanish, because it is nothing but a phenomenon in



332 TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.

[the sensibility of oar own subject, and a certain class
of its representations.

It is true that I do not know thus this thinking
self any better according to its qualities, nor can I
perceive its permanence, or even the independence of
its existence, from the problematical transcendental
substratum of external phenomena, both being neces-
sarily unknown to us. But as it is nevertheless
possible that I may find reason, from other than
purely speculative causes, to believe an independent,
and, during every possible change of my states, per-
manently abiding existence of my thinking nature,
much is gained if, though I freely confess my own
ignorance, I can nevertheless repel the dogmatical
attacks of a speculative opponent, showing [p. 384]
to him that he can never know more of the nature
of the subject, in order to deny the possibility of my
belief, than I can know, in order to cling to it.

Three dialectical questions, which form the real
object of all rational psychology, are founded on this
transcendental illusion of our psychological concepts,
and cannot be answered except by means of the
considerations in which we have just been engaged,
namely, (1) the question of the possibility of the
association of the soul with an organic body, that
is, of animality and the state of the soul in the life
of man ; (2) the question of the beginning of that
association of the soul at the time and before the
time of our birth ; (3) the question of the end of
that association of the soul at and after the time of
death (immortality).

What I maintain is, that all the difficulties which



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. $3$

[we imagine to exist in these questions, and with
which, as dogmatical objections, people wish to give
themselves an air of deeper insight into the nature of
things than the common understanding can ever
claim, rest on a mere illusion, which leads us to
hypostasise what exists in thought only, and to
accept it in the same quality in which it is thought
as a real object, outside the thinking subject, taking in
fact extension, which is phenomenal only, for a quality
of external things, existing without our sen- [p. 385]
sibility also, and movement as its effect, taking place
by itself, and independently of our senses. Matter,
the association of which with the soul causes so much
misgiving, is nothing but a mere form, or a certain
mode of representing an unknown object by that
intuition which we call the external sense. There
may, therefore, well be something outside us to which
the phenomenon which we call matter corresponds ;
but it cannot be outside us in its quality of pheno-
menon, but merely as a thought within us, although
that thought represents it through the external sense
as existing outside us. Matter, therefore, does not
signify a class of substances totally heterogeneous
and different from the object of the internal sense
(the soul), but only the different nature of the pheno-
menal appearance of objects (in themselves unknown
to us), the representations of which we call external,
as compared with those which we assign to the in-
ternal sense, although, like all other thoughts, they
only belong to the thinking subject. They possess
however this illusion that, as they represent objects
in space, they seem to separate themselves from the



334 TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.

[soul and to move outside it, although even the space,
in which they are seen, is nothing but a representation
of which no homogeneous original can ever be found
outside the soul. The question therefore is no longer
as to the possibility of an association of the soul with
other known and foreign substances outside [p. 386]
us, but only as to the connection of the representa-
tion of the internal sense with the modifications of.
our external sensibility, and how these can be con-
nected with each other according to constant laws,
and acquire cohesion in experience.

So long as we connect internal and external
phenomena with each other as mere representa-
tions in our experience, there is nothing irrational,
nor anything to make the association of both senses
to appear strange. As soon however as we hypostatise
the external phenomena, looking upon them no longer
as representations, but as things existing by themselves
and outside us, with the same quality in which they
exist inside us, and referring to our own thinking
subject their acts which they, as phenomena, show in
their mutual relation, the effective causes outside us
assume a character which will not harmonise with
their effects within us, because that character refers
to the external senses only, but the effects to the
internal sense, both being entirely unhomogeneous,
though united in the same subject. We then have
no other external effects but changes of place, and no
forces but tendencies, which have for their effects
relations in space only. Within us, on the con-
trary, those effects are mere thoughts, without any
relations of space, movement, shape, or local [p. 387]



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 335

[determination between them ; and we entirely lose
the thread of the causes in the effects which ought
to show themselves in the internal sense. We ought
to consider therefore that bodies are not objects by
themselves which are present to us, but a mere ap-
pearance of we do not know what unknown object,
and that movement likewise is not the effect of
that unknown cause, but only the appearance of
its influence on our senses. Both are not something
outside us, but only representations within us,
and consequently it is not the movement of matter
which produces representations within us, but that
motion itself (and matter also, which makes itself
known through it) is representation only. Our whole
self-created difficulty turns on this, how and why the
representations of our sensibility are so connected
with each other that those which we call external
intuitions can, according to empirical laws, be repre-
sented as objects outside us ; a question which is
entirely free from the imagined difficulty of ex-
plaining the origin of our representations from
totally heterogeneous efficient causes, existing out-
side us, the confusion arising from our mistaking
the phenomenal appearance of an unknown cause
for a cause outside us. In judgments in which
there is a misapprehension confirmed by long habit,
it is impossible to bring its correction at once [p. 3 88 ]
to that clearness which can be produced in other cases,
where no inevitable illusion confuses our concept.
Our attempt therefore at freeing reason from these
sophistical theories can hardly claim as yet that per-
spicuity which would render it perfectly satisfactory.



336 TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.

[I hope however to arrive at greater lucidity in the
following manner.

All objections may be divided into dogmatical,
critical, and. sceptical. The dogmatical attacks the
proposition, the critical the proof of a proposition.
The former presupposes an insight into the peculiar
nature of the object in order to be able to assert the
contrary of what the proposition asserts. It is there-
fore itself dogmatical, and pretends to know the
peculiar nature of the object in question better than
the opponent. The critical objection, as it says
nothing about the worth or worthlessness of the
proposition, and attacks the proof only, need not
know the object itself better, or claim a better know-
ledge of it. All it wants to show is, that a proposition
is not well grounded, not that it is false. The sceptical
objection, lastly, places assertion and denial side by
side, as of equal value, taking one or the other now
as dogma, and now as denial ; and being thus in
appearance dogmatical on both sides, it renders [p. 389]
every judgment on the object impossible. Both the
dogmatical and sceptical objections must pretend to
so much knowledge of their object as is necessary in
order to assert or deny anything about it. The
critical objection, on the contrary, wishes only to
show that something purely futile and fanciful has
been used in support of a proposition, and thus
upsets a theory by depriving it of its pretended
foundation, without wishing to establish itself any-
thing else about the nature of the object.

According to the ordinary concepts of our reason
with regard to the association between our thinking



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 337

[subject and the things outside us, we are dogma-
tical, and look upon them as real objects, existing in-
dependently of ourselves, in accordance with a certain
transcendental dualism which does not reckon ex-
ternal phenomena as representations belonging to
the subject, but places them, as they are given us in
sensuous intuition, as objects outside us and entirely
separated from the thinking subject. This mere as-
sumption is the foundation of all theories on the as-
sociation between soul and body. It is never asked
whether this objective reality of phenomena is abso-
lutely true, but it is taken for granted, and the only
question seems to be, how it is to be explained and
understood. The three systems which are [p. 390]
commonly suggested, and which in fact are alone
possible, are those, 1st, of physical influence, 2nd, of
pre-established harmony, and 3rd, of supernatural
assistance.

The second and third explanations of the association
between soul and matter arise from objections to the
first, which is that of the ordinary understanding,
the objection being, that what appears as matter
cannot by its immediate influence be the cause of
representations, these being a totally heterogeneous
class of effects. Those who start this objection
cannot understand by the objects of the external
senses matter, conceived as phenomenon only, and
therefore itself a mere representation produced by
whatever external objects. For in that case they
would really say that the representations of external
objects (phenomena) cannot be the external causes of
the representations in our mind, which would be a

VOL. 11. z



338 TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.

[meaningless objection, because nobody would think
of taking for an external cause what he knows to be
a mere representation. According to our principles
the object of their theory can only be, that that which
is the true (transcendental) object of our external
senses cannot be the cause of those representations
(phenomena) which we mean by the name of matter.
As no one has any right to say that he [p. 39 J ]
knows anything of the transcendental cause of the
representations of our external senses, their assertion
is entirely groundless. And if the pretended reformers
of the doctrine of physical influence represent, ac-
cording to the ordinary views of transcendental
dualism, matter, as such, as a thing by itself (not
simply as a mere phenomenal appearance of an un-
known thing), and then proceed in their objections
to show that such an external object, which shows
no causality but that of movements, can never be
the efficient cause of representations, but that a third
being must intervene in order to produce, if not
reciprocal action, at least correspondence and harmony
between the two, they would really begin their re-
futation by admitting in their dualism the irpwrov
y^revSos of a physical influence, and thus refute by their
objection, ,not so much the physical influence as
their own dualistic premisses. For all the difficulties
with regard to a possible connection between a
thinking nature and matter arise, without exception,
from that too readily-admitted dualistic representation,
namely, that matter, as such, is not phenomenal, that
is, a mere representation of the mind to which an
unknown object corresponds, but the object itself,



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 339

[such as it exists outside us, and independent of all
sensibility. [p. 392]

It is impossible, therefore, to start a dogmatical
objection against the commonly received theory of a
physical influence. For if the opponent were to say
that matter and its movements are purely phenomenal
and therefore mere representations, the only difficulty
remaining to him would be that the unknown object
of our senses could not be the cause of our repre-
sentations, and this he has no right to say, because
no one is able to determine what an unknown object
may or may not be able to effect ; and, according to
our former argument, he must necessarily admit this
transcendental idealism, unless he wishes to hyposta-
sise representations and place them outside himself
as real things.

What is quite possible, however, is to raise a well-
founded critical objection to the commonly received
opinion of a physical influence. For the pretended
association between two kinds of substances, the one
thinking, the other extended, rests on a coarse
dualism, and changes the latter, though they are
nothing but representations of the thinking subjects,
into things existing by themselves. Thus the mis-
understood physical influence may be entirely upset
by showing that the proof which was to establish it,
was surreptitiously obtained, and therefore, valueless.

The notorious problem, therefore, as to a pos-
sible association between the thinking and the
extended, would, when all that is purely [p. 393]
imaginative is deducted, come to this, how external
intuition, namely, that of space (or what fills space,

z 2



340 TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.

[namely, form and movement), is possible in any
thinking subject? To this question, however, no
human being can return an answer, and instead of
attempting to fill this gap in our knowledge, all we
can do is to indicate it by ascribing external phe-
nomena to a transcendental object as the cause of
this class of representations, but which we shall
never know, nor be able to form any concept of. In
all practical questions we treat phenomena as objects
by themselves, without troubling ourselves about the
first cause of their possibility (as phenomena). But
as soon as we go beyond, the concept of a transcen-
dental object becomes inevitable.

The decision of all the discussions on the state
of a thinking being, before this association with
matter (life) or after the ceasing of such association
(death), depends on the remarks which we have
just made on the association between the thinking
and the extended. The opinion that the thinking
subject was able to think before any association with
bodies, would assume the following form, that before
the beginning of that kind of sensibility [p. 394]
through which something appears to us in space, the
same transcendental objects, which in our present state
appear as bodies, could have been seen in a totally
different way. The other opinion that, after the
cessation of its association with the material world,
the soul could continue to think, would be expressed
as follows : that, if that kind of sensibility through
which transcendental and, for the present, entirely
unknown objects appear to us as a material world,
should cease, it would not follow that thereby all



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 34 1

[intuition of them would be removed : it being quite
possible that the same unknown objects should con-
tinue to be known by the thinking subject, although
no longer in the quality of bodies.

Now it is quite true that no one can produce from
speculative principles the smallest ground for such an
assertion, or do more than presuppose its possibility,
but neither can any valid dogmatical objection be
raised against it. For whoever would attempt to
do so, would know neither more nor less than I my-
self, or anybody else, about the absolute and internal
cause of external and material phenomena. As he
cannot pretend to know on what the reality of ex-
ternal phenomena in our present state (in life) really
rests, neither can he know that the condition of all