Accordingly, we are accustomed to say that the former is a
cognition which represents the object itself, whilst the latter
presents only a particular appearance or phenomenon thereof. This
distinction, however, is only empirical. If we stop here (as is
usual), and do not regard the empirical intuition as itself a mere
phenomenon (as we ought to do), in which nothing that can appertain to
a thing in itself is to be found, our transcendental distinction is
lost, and we believe that we cognize objects as things in
themselves, although in the whole range of the sensuous world,
investigate the nature of its objects as profoundly as we may, we have
to do with nothing but phenomena. Thus, we call the rainbow a mere
appearance of phenomenon in a sunny shower, and the rain, the
reality or thing in itself; and this is right enough, if we understand
the latter conception in a merely physical sense, that is, as that
which in universal experience, and under whatever conditions of
sensuous perception, is known in intuition to be so and so determined,
and not otherwise. But if we consider this empirical datum
generally, and inquire, without reference to its accordance with all
our senses, whether there can be discovered in it aught which
represents an object as a thing in itself (the raindrops of course are
not such, for they are, as phenomena, empirical objects), the question
of the relation of the representation to the object is transcendental;
and not only are the raindrops mere phenomena, but even their circular
form, nay, the space itself through which they fall, is nothing in
itself, but both are mere modifications or fundamental dispositions of
our sensuous intuition, whilst the transcendental object remains for
us utterly unknown.
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