On the other hand, if the difficulties are intentionally
concealed, or merely removed by palliatives, then sooner or later they
burst out into incurable mischiefs, which bring science to ruin in
an absolute scepticism.
Since it is, properly speaking, the notion of freedom alone
amongst all the ideas of pure speculative reason that so greatly
enlarges our knowledge in the sphere of the supersensible, though only
of our practical knowledge, I ask myself why it exclusively
possesses so great fertility, whereas the others only designate the
vacant space for possible beings of the pure understanding, but are
unable by any means to define the concept of them. I presently find
that as I cannot think anything without a category, I must first
look for a category for the rational idea of freedom with which I am
now concerned; and this is the category of causality; and although
freedom, a concept of the reason, being a transcendent concept, cannot
have any intuition corresponding to it, yet the concept of the
understanding- for the synthesis of which the former demands the
unconditioned- (namely, the concept of causality) must have a sensible
intuition given, by which first its objective reality is assured.
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