Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/174

The quality of sensation is in all cases merely empirical, and cannot be represented à priori (for example, colours, taste, &c). But the real—that which corresponds to sensation—in opposition to negation = 0, only represents something the conception of which in itself contains a being (ein seyn), and signifies nothing but the synthesis in an empirical consciousness. That is to say, the empirical consciousness in the internal sense can be raised from 0 to every higher degree, so that the very same extensive quantity of intuition, an illuminated surface, for example, excites as great a sensation as an aggregate of many other surfaces less illuminated. We can therefore make complete abstraction of the extensive quantity of a phænomenon, and represent to ourselves in the mere sensation in a certain momentum,^[1] a synthesis of homogeneous ascension from 0 up to the given empirical consciousness. All sensations therefore as such are given only à posteriori, but this property thereof, namely, that they have a degree, can be known à priori. It is worthy of remark, that in respect to quantities in general, we can cognize à priori only a single quality, namely, continuity; but in respect to all quality (the real in phænomena), we cannot cognize à priori any thing more than the intensive quantity thereof, namely, that they have a degree. All else is left to experience.

The principle of these is: Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions.

Experience is an empirical cognition; that is to say, a cognition which determines an object by means of perceptions. It is therefore a synthesis of perceptions, a synthesis which is not itself contained in perception, but which contains the synthetical unity of the manifold of perception in a consci-