Space and Time

The pure form of phenomena is space and time.

• This is the only passive-knowing confined-to-mind

An active-knowing of space and time as quanta may be presented within-the-mind passively. It can be constructed:

• alone with their quality (figure) or
• as number
  • This is the mere synthesis of the homogeneous

Number is pure quantity.

The matter of phenomena happens in space and time.

• This can be presented only in perception, a posteriori.

The only idea which represents the sensory-content of the phenomena is the idea of the thing in general.

The idea of the thing in general is:

• confined-to-mind
• a product of active-thinking

The idea of the thing in general:

• gives us the rule for the synthesis of the ideas which may be contained in the corresponding sense-based perception.
• is utterly inadequate to give a confined-to-mind passive-knowing of the real object.

Active-thinking propositions which relate to things in general, of which confined-to-mind passive-knowings are impossible, are transcendental.

This is why transcendental propositions:

• cannot be framed through the construction of active-knowings.
• are confined-to-mind
• based entirely on ideas themselves

Transcendental propositions contain merely the rule of how we are to seek in the real world the active-thinking unity of things which cannot be passively-known within the mind.

Transcendental propositions cannot present any of the conceptions which appear in them in a passive-knowing confined-to-mind.

These can be given only by experience.

This expereince is possible only through these active-knowing principles.

To form an active-knowing judgement of an idea, we must go beyond it to the passive-knowing that gives it.

The judgement is merely passive if it keeps to what is contained in the idea.

• In this case, it is merely an explanation of that idea.

But I can go from the idea to the abstract or real passive-knowing that it comes from.

I can proceed to examine my conception in concreto, and to cognize, either a priori or a posterio, what I find in the object of the conception.

Confined-to-mind cognition is rational.

• It becomes a mathematical cognition through the construction of the idea.

External-mind cognition is purely a sense-based cognition.

It does not have relation and imposition.

Thus I may analyse the idea of gold.

But I gain no new information from this analysis.

I merely enumerate the different properties connected with the notion of gold.

But if I take real gold and examine it with my senses, I can create several active-mind propositions, though sense-based.

I can passively create a mathematical idea of a triangle confined-to-mind. In this way, I attain rational-active-knowing.

But when the transcendental active-knowing of anything is presented to my mind, it does not indicate either a sensory or abstract passive-knowing.

Instead, it indicates merely the active-thinking of senory passive-knowings which cannot be given confined-to-mind.

The synthesis in such an idea cannot proceed within-the-mind without the aid of experience—to the intuition which corresponds to the conception;

This is why none of these active-knowings can produce a determinative active-thinking proposition.

They can never present more than a principle of the synthesis* of possible sense-based passive-knowings.

A transcendental proposition is, therefore, an active cognition of reason by means of pure ideas and the discursive method.

It renders possible all active unity in sense-based cognition, though it cannot present us with any passive-knowings confined-to-mind.

[*Footnote: In the case of the conception of cause, I do really go beyond the empirical conception of an event—but not to the intuition which presents this conception in concreto, but only to the time-conditions, which may be found in experience to correspond to the conception. My procedure is, therefore, strictly according to conceptions; I cannot in a case of this kind employ the construction of conceptions, because the conception is merely a rule for the synthesis of perceptions, which are not pure intuitions, and which, therefore, cannot be given a priori.]