PROLEGOMENA TOANYFUTUREMETAPHYSICS 823
all materialistic explanations of the internal phenomena of the soul) occasions by a very
natural misunderstanding a very specious argument, which infers its nature from this
supposed knowledge of the substance of our thinking being. This is specious so far as
the knowledge of it falls quite without the complex of experience.
§ 47. But though we may call this thinking self (the soul) “substance,” as being the
ultimate subject of thinking which cannot be further represented as the predicate of another
thing, it remains quite empty and without significance if permanence—the quality which
renders the concept of substances in experience fruitful—cannot be proved of it.
But permanence can never be proved of the concept of a substance as a thing in
itself, but for the purposes of experience only. This is sufficiently shown by the first
Analogy of Experience,* and whoever will not yield to this proof may try for himself
whether he can succeed in proving, from the concept of a subject which does not exist
itself as the predicate of another thing, that its existence is absolutely permanent and
that it cannot either in itself or by any natural cause originate or be annihilated. These
synthetical a prioripropositions can never be proved in themselves, but only in refer-
ence to things as objects of possible experience.
§ 48. If, therefore, from the concept of the soul as a substance we would infer its
permanence, this can hold good as regards possible experience only, not of the soul as a
thing in itself and beyond all possible experience. Life is the subjective condition of all
our possible experience; consequently we can only infer the permanence of the soul in
life, for the death of a man is the end of all experience which concerns the soul as an
object of experience, except the contrary be proved—which is the very question in
hand. The permanence of the soul can therefore only be proved (and no one cares to do
that) during the life of man, but not, as we desire to do, after death. The reason for this
is that the concept of substance, so far as it is to be considered necessarily combined
with the concept of permanence, can be so combined only according to the principles of
possible experience, and therefore for the purposes of experience only.**
§ 49. That there is something real outside us which not only corresponds but must
correspond to our outer perceptions can likewise be proved to be, not a connection of
things in themselves, but for the sake of experience. This means that there is something
empirical, that is, some appearance in space without us, that admits of a satisfactory
proof; for we have nothing to do with other objects than those which belong to possible
experience, because objects which cannot be given us in any experience are nothing for
us. Empirically outside me is that which is intuited in space; and space, together with all
*In the Critique of Pure Reason.
**It is indeed very remarkable how carelessly metaphysicians have always passed over the principle
of the permanence of substances without ever attempting a proof of it; doubtless because they found them-
selves abandoned by all proofs as soon as they began to deal with the concept of substance. Common sense,
which felt distinctly that without this presupposition no union of perceptions in experience is possible, sup-
plied the want by a postulate. From experience itself it never could derive such a principle, partly because
material things (substances) cannot be so traced in all their alterations and dissolutions that the matter can
always be found undiminished, partly because the principle contains necessity,which is always the sign of an
a prioriprinciple. People then boldly applied this postulate to the concept of soul as a substance,and con-
cluded a necessary continuance of the soul after the death of man (especially as the simplicity of this sub-
stance, which is inferred from the indivisibility of consciousness, secured it from destruction by dissolution).
Had they found the genuine source of this principle—a discovery which requires deeper researches than they
were ever inclined to make—they would have seen that the law of the permanence of substances arises for the
purposes of experience only, and hence can hold good of things so far as they are to be known and conjoined
with others in experience, but never independently of all possible experience, and consequently cannot hold
good of the soul after death.
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