Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/176

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TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE.

unity in relation of perceptions in time is therefore the rule: “All empirical determinations of time must be subject to rules of the general determination of time;” and the analogies of experience, of which we are now about to treat, must be rules of this nature.

These principles have this peculiarity, that they do not concern phænomena, and the synthesis of the empirical intuition thereof, but merely the existence of phænomena and their relation to each other in regard to this existence. Now the mode in which we apprehend a thing in a phænomenon can be determined à priori in such a manner, that the rule of its synthesis can give, that is to say, can produce this à priori intuition in every empirical example. But the existence of phænomena cannot be known à priori, and although we could arrive by this path at a conclusion of the fact of some existence, we could not cognize that existence determinately, that is to say, we should be incapable of anticipating in what respect the empirical intuition of it would be distinguishable from that of others.

The two principles above mentioned, which I called mathematical, in consideration of the fact of their authorizing the application of mathematic to phænomena, relate to these phænomena only in regard to their possibility, and instruct us how phænomena, as far as regards their intuition or the real in their perception, can be generated according to the rules of a mathematical synthesis. Consequently, numerical quantities, and with them the determination of a phænomenon as a quantity, can be employed in the one case as well as in the other. Thus, for example, out of 200,000 illuminations by the moon, I might compose, and give à priori, that is construct, the degree of our sensations of the sun-light.^[1] We may therefore entitle these two principles constitutive.

The case is very different with those principles whose province it is to subject the existence of phænomena to rules à priori. For as existence does not admit of being con-

↑ Kant’s meaning is: The two principles enunciated under the heads of “Axioms of Intuition,” and “Anticipations of Perception,” authorize the application to phænomena of determinations of size and number, that is, of mathematic. For example, I may compute the light of the sun, and say, that its quantity is a certain number of times greater than that of the moon. In the same way, heat is measured by the comparison of its different effects on water, &c., and on mercury in a thermometer.—Tr.

[1] Kant’s meaning is: The two principles enunciated under the heads of “Axioms of Intuition,” and “Anticipations of Perception,” authorize the application to phænomena of determinations of size and number, that is, of mathematic. For example, I may compute the light of the sun, and say, that its quantity is a certain number of times greater than that of the moon. In the same way, heat is measured by the comparison of its different effects on water, &c., and on mercury in a thermometer.—Tr.

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