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.That is to say, his own declarations are doubted, for his objections were basedupon facta, which are contingent, and not upon principles, which can alone demonstrate the necessaryinvalidity of all dogmatical assertions.As Hume makes no distinction between the well-grounded claims of the understanding and the dialecticalpretensions of reason, against which, however, his attacks are mainly directed, reason does not feel itself shutout from all attempts at the extension of a priori cognition, and hence it refuses, in spite of a few checks inthis or that quarter, to relinquish such efforts.For one naturally arms oneself to resist an attack, and becomesmore obstinate in the resolve to establish the claims he has advanced.But a complete review of the powers ofreason, and the conviction thence arising that we are in possession of a limited field of action, while we mustadmit the vanity of higher claims, puts an end to all doubt and dispute, and induces reason to rest satisfiedwith the undisturbed possession of its limited domain.To the uncritical dogmatist, who has not surveyed the sphere of his understanding, nor determined, inaccordance with principles, the limits of possible cognition, who, consequently, is ignorant of his ownpowers, and believes he will discover them by the attempts he makes in the field of cognition, these attacks ofscepticism are not only dangerous, but destructive.For if there is one proposition in his chain of reasoningwhich be he cannot prove, or the fallacy in which be cannot evolve in accordance with a principle, suspicionfalls on all his statements, however plausible they may appear.And thus scepticism, the bane of dogmatical philosophy, conducts us to a sound investigation into theunderstanding and the reason.When we are thus far advanced, we need fear no further attacks; for the limitsof our domain are clearly marked out, and we can make no claims nor become involved in any disputesregarding the region that lies beyond these limits.Thus the sceptical procedure in philosophy does not presentany solution of the problems of reason, but it forms an excellent exercise for its powers, awakening itscircumspection, and indicating the means whereby it may most fully establish its claims to its legitimatepossessions.SECTION II.The Discipline of Pure Reason in Polemics.247 The Critique of Pure ReasonSECTION III.The Discipline of Pure Reason in Hypothesis.This critique of reason has now taught us that all its efforts to extend the bounds of knowledge, by means ofpure speculation, are utterly fruitless.So much the wider field, it may appear, lies open to hypothesis; as,where we cannot know with certainty, we are at liberty to make guesses and to form suppositions.Imagination may be allowed, under the strict surveillance of reason, to invent suppositions; but, these must bebased on something that is perfectly certain- and that is the possibility of the object.If we are well assuredupon this point, it is allowable to have recourse to supposition in regard to the reality of the object; but thissupposition must, unless it is utterly groundless, be connected, as its ground of explanation, with that which isreally given and absolutely certain.Such a supposition is termed a hypothesis.It is beyond our power to form the least conception a priori of the possibility of dynamical connection inphenomena; and the category of the pure understanding will not enable us to ex.cogitate any suchconnection, but merely helps us to understand it, when we meet with it in experience.For this reason wecannot, in accordance with the categories, imagine or invent any object or any property of an object notgiven, or that may not be given in experience, and employ it in a hypothesis; otherwise, we should be basingour chain of reasoning upon mere chimerical fancies, and not upon conceptions of things.Thus, we have noright to assume the existence of new powers, not existing in nature- for example, an understanding with anon-sensuous intuition, a force of attraction without contact, or some new kind of substances occupyingspace, and yet without the property of impenetrability- and, consequently, we cannot assume that there is anyother kind of community among substances than that observable in experience, any kind of presence than thatin space, or any kind of duration than that in time.In one word, the conditions of possible experience are forreason the only conditions of the possibility of things; reason cannot venture to form, independently of theseconditions, any conceptions of things, because such conceptions, although not self-contradictory, are withoutobject and without application.The conceptions of reason are, as we have already shown, mere ideas, and do not relate to any object in anykind of experience.At the same time, they do not indicate imaginary or possible objects.They are purelyproblematical in their nature and, as aids to the heuristic exercise of the faculties, form the basis of theregulative principles for the systematic employment of the understanding in the field of experience.If weleave this ground of experience, they become mere fictions of thought, the possibility of which is quiteindemonstrable; and they cannot, consequently, be employed as hypotheses in the explanation of realphenomena.It is quite admissible to cogitate the soul as simple, for the purpose of enabling ourselves toemploy the idea of a perfect and necessary unity of all the faculties of the mind as the principle of all ourinquiries into its internal phenomena, although we cannot cognize this unity in concreto [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]