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FOURTH CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS.
THESIS.
There exists either in, or in connection with the world- either as a
part of it, or as the cause of it-an absolutely necessary being.
PROOF.
The world of sense, as the sum total of all phenomena, contains a
series of changes. For, without such a series, the mental
representation of the series of time itself, as the condition of the
possibility of the sensuous world, could not be presented to us.*
But every change stands under its condition, which precedes it in time
and renders it necessary. Now the existence of a given condition
presupposes a complete series of conditions up to the absolutely
unconditioned, which alone is absolutely necessary. It follows that
something that is absolutely necessary must exist, if change exists as
its consequence. But this necessary thing itself belongs to the
sensuous world. For suppose it to exist out of and apart from it,
the series of cosmical changes would receive from it a beginning,
and yet this necessary cause would not itself belong to the world of
sense.


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