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 376 KANT. enon of things, whose "in itself" is unknowable), the an- tinomies would be insoluble. How is reason to act in view of the conflict? The grounds for the antitheses are just as conclusive as those for the theses ; on neither side is there a preponderance which could decide the result. Ought reason to agree with both parties or with neither? The solution distinguishes the first two antinomies, as the mathematical, from the second two, as the dynamical antinomies ; in the former, since it is a question of the composition and division of quanta, the conditions may be homogeneous with the conditioned, in the latter, hetero- geneous. In the former, thesis and antithesis are alike false, since both start from the inadmissible assumption that the universe (the complete series of phenomena) is given, while in fact it is only required of us (is an Idea). The world does not exist in itself, but only in the empirical regress of phenomenal conditions, in which we never can reach infinity and never the limitation of the world by an empty space or an antecedent empty time, for infinite space, like empty space (and the same holds in regard to time), is not perceivable. Consequently the quantity of the w^orld is neither finite nor infinite. The question of the quantity of the world is unanswerable, because the concept of a sense-world existing by itself {before the regress) is self- contradictory. Similarly the problem whetherthe composite consists of simple elements is insoluble, because the assump- tion that the phenomenon of body is a thing in itself, which, antecedent to all experience, contains all the parts that can be reached in experience — in other words, that representations exist outside of the representative faculty — is absurd. Matter is infinitely divisible, no doubt, yet it does not consist of infinitely numerous parts, and just as little of a definite number of simple parts, but the parts exist merely in the representation of them, in the division (decomposition), and this goes as far as possible ex- perience extends. The case is different with the dynamical antinomies, where thesis and antithesis can both be true, in J so far as the former is referred to things in themselves and the latter to phenomena. The contradiction vanishes if we take that which the thesis asserts and the antithesis denies