Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/203

 experience. For want of this method, and from the fancy that it was possible to discover a dogmatical proof of the synthetical propositions which are requisite in the empirical employment of the understanding, has it happened that a proof of the principle of sufficient reason has been so often attempted, and always in vain. The other two analogies nobody has ever thought of, although they have always been silently employed by the mind, because the guiding thread furnished by the categories was wanting, the guide which alone can enable us to discover every hiatus, both in the system of conceptions and of principles.

4. THE POSTULATES OF EMPIRICAL THOUGHT.

 * 1) That which agrees with the formal conditions (intuition and conception) of experience, is possible.
 * 2) That which coheres with the material conditions of experience (sensation), is real.
 * 3) That whose coherence with the real is determined according to universal conditions of experience is (exists) necessary.

Explanation.

The categories of modality possess this peculiarity, that they do not in the least determine the object, or enlarge the conception to which they are annexed as predicates, but only express its relation to the faculty of cognition. Though my conception of a thing is in itself complete, I am still entitled to ask whether the object of it is merely possible, or whether it is also real, or, if the latter, whether it is also necessary. But hereby the object itself is not more definitely determined