812 IMMANUELKANT
And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, con-
fess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing
as it is in itself but only know its appearances, namely, the way in which our senses
are affected by this unknown something. The understanding, therefore, by assuming
appearances, grants the existence of things in themselves also; and to this extent
we may say that the representation of such things as are the basis of appearances,
consequently of mere beings of the understanding, is not only admissible but
unavoidable.
Our critical deduction by no means excludes things of that sort (noumena), but rather
limits the principles of the Aesthetic* to this, that they shall not extend to all things—as
everything would then be turned into mere appearance—but that they shall hold good only
of objects of possible experience. Hereby, then, beings of the understanding are granted,
but with the inculcation of this rule which admits of no exception: that we neither know nor
can know anything at all definite of these pure beings of the understanding, because our
pure concepts of the understanding as well as our pure intuitions extend to nothing but
objects of possible experience, consequently to mere things of sense; and as soon as we
leave this sphere, these concepts retain no meaning whatever.
§ 33. There is indeed something seductive in our pure concepts of the under-
standing which tempts us to a transcendent use—a use which transcends all possible
experience. Not only are our concepts of substance, of power, of action, of reality, and
others, quite independent of experience, containing nothing of sense appearance, and
so apparently applicable to things in themselves (noumena), but, what strengthens
this conjecture, they contain a necessity of determination in themselves, which expe-
rience never attains. The concept of cause implies a rule according to which one state
follows another necessarily; but experience can only show us that one state of things
often or, at most, commonly follows another, and therefore affords neither strict uni-
versality nor necessity.
Hence the concepts of the understanding seem to have a deeper meaning and
import than can be exhausted by their merely empirical use, and so the understanding
inadvertently adds for itself to the house of experience a much more extensive wing,
which it fills with nothing but beings of thought, without ever observing that it has
transgressed with its otherwise legitimate concepts the bounds of their use.
§ 34. Two important and even indispensable, though very dry, investigations
therefore became indispensable in the Critique of Pure Reason[namely, the chapters
“The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding” and “On the Ground of
the Distinction of All Objects as Phenomena and Noumena.”] In the former it is
shown that the senses furnish, not the pure concepts of the understanding in concreto,
but only the schema for their use, and that the object conformable to it occurs only in
experience (as the product of the understanding from materials of the sensibility). In
the latter it is shown that, although our pure concepts of the understanding and our
principles are independent of experience, and despite the apparently greater sphere of
their use, still nothing whatever can be thought by them beyond the field of experi-
ence, because they can do nothing but merely determine the logical form of the judg-
ment relatively to given intuitions. But as there is no intuition at all beyond the field
of the sensibility, these pure concepts, as they cannot possibly be exhibited in con-
creto,are void of all meaning; consequently all these noumena,together with their316
315
*[That is, the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason,establishing space and time as pure intuitions.—
L.W.B.]