Instead, however, of the deduction of the supreme principle of
pure practical reason, that is, the explanation of the possibility
of such a knowledge a priori, the utmost we were able to do was to
show that if we saw the possibility of the freedom of an efficient
cause, we should also see not merely the possibility, but even the
necessity, of the moral law as the supreme practical law of rational
beings, to whom we attribute freedom of causality of their will;
because both concepts are so inseparably united that we might define
practical freedom as independence of the will on anything but the
moral law. But we cannot perceive the possibility of the freedom of an
efficient cause, especially in the world of sense; we are fortunate if
only we can be sufficiently assured that there is no proof of its
impossibility, and are now, by the moral law which postulates it,
compelled and therefore authorized to assume it. However, there are
still many who think that they can explain this freedom on empirical
principles, like any other physical faculty, and treat it as a
psychological property, the explanation of which only requires a
more exact study of the nature of the soul and of the motives of the
will, and not as a transcendental predicate of the causality of a
being that belongs to the world of sense (which is really the
point).
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