PROLEGOMENA TOANYFUTUREMETAPHYSICS 827
Objects of the senses therefore exist only in experience, whereas to give them a self-
subsisting existence apart from experience or before it is merely to represent to ourselves
that experience actually exists apart from experience or before it.
Now if I inquire into the magnitude of the world, as to space and time, it is equally
impossible, as regards all my concepts, to declare it infinite or to declare it finite. For
neither assertion can be contained in experience, because experience either of an infinite
space or of an infinite elapsed time, or again, of the boundary of the world by a void space
or by an antecedent void time, is impossible; these are mere Ideas. The magnitude of the
world, decided either way, would therefore have to exist in the world itself apart from all
experience. But this contradicts the concept of a world of sense, which is merely a
complex of the appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our represen-
tations, that is, in experience; since this latter is not an object in itself but a mere mode of
representation. Hence it follows that, as the concept of an absolutely existing world of
sense is self-contradictory, the solution of the problem concerning its magnitude, whether
attempted affirmatively or negatively, is always false.
The same holds of the second antinomy, which relates to the division of appearances.
For these are mere representations; and the parts exist merely in their representation,
consequently in the division—that is, in a possible experience in which they are given—
and the division reaches only as far as the possible experience reaches. To assume that an
appearance, for example, that of body, contains in itself before all experience all the parts
which any possible experience can ever reach is to impute to a mere appearance, which can
exist only in experience, an existence previous to experience. In other words, it would mean
that mere representations exist before they can be found in our faculty of representation.
Such an assertion is self-contradictory, as also every solution of our misunderstood
problem, whether we maintain that bodies in themselves consist of an infinite number of
parts or of a finite number of simple parts.
§ 53. In the first (the mathematical) class of antinomies the falsehood of the
presupposition consists in representing in one concept something self-contradictory as
if it were compatible (that is, an appearance as a thing in itself). But, as to the second
(the dynamical) class of antinomies, the falsehood of the presupposition consists in
representing as contradictory what is compatible; so that while in the former case the
opposed assertions were both false, in this case, on the other hand, where they are
opposed to one another by mere misunderstanding, they may both be true.
Any mathematical connection necessarily presupposes homogeneity of what is
connected (in the concept of magnitude), while the dynamical one by no means requires
this. When we have to deal with extended magnitudes all the parts must be homoge-
neous with one another and with the whole, whereas in the connection of cause and
effect homogeneity may indeed likewise be found but is not necessary; for the concept
of causality (by means of which something is posited through something else quite dif-
ferent from it) does not in the least require it.
If the objects of the world of sense are taken for things in themselves and the above
laws of nature for laws of things in themselves, the contradiction would be unavoidable.
So also, if the subject of freedom were, like other objects, represented as mere appear-
ance, the contradiction would be just as unavoidable; for the same predicate would at
once be affirmed and denied of the same kind of object in the same sense. But if natural
necessity is referred merely to appearances and freedom merely to things in themselves,
no contradiction arises if we at the same time assume or admit both kinds of causality,
however difficult or impossible it may be to make the latter kind conceivable.
In appearance every effect is an event, or something that happens in time; it must,
according to the universal law of nature, be preceded by a determination of the causal
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