It teaches us to consider this refusal of our reason to give any
satisfactory answer to questions which reach beyond the limits of this
our human life, as a hint to abandon fruitless speculation; and to
direct, to a practical use, our knowledge of ourselves- which,
although applicable only to objects of experience, receives its
principles from a higher source, and regulates its procedure as if our
destiny reached far beyond the boundaries of experience and life.
From all this it is evident that rational psychology has its
origin in a mere misunderstanding. The unity of consciousness, which
lies at the basis of the categories, is considered to be an
intuition of the subject as an object; and the category of substance
is applied to the intuition. But this unity is nothing more than the
unity in thought, by which no object is given; to which therefore
the category of substance- which always presupposes a given intuition-
cannot be applied. Consequently, the subject cannot be cognized. The
subject of the categories cannot, therefore, for the very reason
that it cogitates these, frame any conception of itself as an object
of the categories; for, to cogitate these, it must lay at the
foundation its own pure self-consciousness- the very thing that it
wishes to explain and describe.
Pages:
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517