Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/142

phænomena, consequently to nature as the complex of all phænomena (natura materialiter spectata). And now the question arises—inasmuch as these categories are not derived from nature, and do not regulate themselves according to her as their model (for in that case they would be empirical)—how it is conceivable that nature must regulate herself according to them, in other words, how the categories can determine à priori the synthesis of the manifold of nature, and yet not derive their origin from her. The following is the solution of this enigma.

It is not in the least more difficult to conceive how the laws of the phænomena of nature must harmonize with the understanding and with its à priori form—that is, its faculty of conjoining the manifold—than it is to understand how the phænomena themselves must correspond with the à priori form of our sensuous intuition. For laws do not exist in the phænomena any more than the phænomena exist as things in themselves. Laws do not exist except by relation to the subject in which the phænomena inhere, in so far as it possesses understanding, just as phænomena have no existence except by relation to the same existing subject in so far as it has senses. To things as things in themselves, conformability to law must necessarily belong independently of an understanding to cognize them. But phænomena are only representations of things which are utterly unknown in respect to what they are in themselves. But as mere representations, they stand under no law of conjunction except that which the conjoining faculty prescribes. Now that which conjoins the manifold of sensuous intuition is imagination, a mental act to which understanding contributes unity of intellectual synthesis, and sensibility, manifoldness of apprehension. Now as all possible perception depends on the synthesis of apprehension, and this empirical synthesis itself on the transcendental, consequently on the categories, it is evident that all possible perceptions, and therefore everything that can attain to empirical consciousness, that is, all phænomena of nature, must, as regards their conjunction, be subject to the categories. And nature (considered merely as nature in general) is dependent on them as the original ground of her necessary conformability to law (as natura formaliter spectata). But the pure faculty (of the understanding) of prescribing laws