On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Chapter IV — On the First Class of Objects for the Subject, and That Form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason Which Predominates in It

§ 17 General Account of This Class of Objects

The first class of objects possible to our representative faculty, is that of intuitive, complete, empirical representations. They are intuitive as opposed to mere thoughts, i.e. abstract conceptions; they are complete, inasmuch as, according to Kant’s distinction, they not only contain the formal, but also the material part of phenomena; and they are empirical, partly as proceeding, not from a mere connection of thoughts, but from an excitation of feeling in our sensitive organism, as their origin, to which they constantly refer for evidence as to their reality: partly also because they are linked together, according to the united laws of Space, Time and Causality, in that complex without beginning or end which forms our Empirical Reality. As, nevertheless, according to the result of Kant’s teaching, this Empirical Reality does not annul their Transcendental Ideality, we shall consider them here, where we have only to do with the formal elements of knowledge, merely as representations.