conceptions a priori, of which the corresponding objects may be
given in experience--the certain course of science. For by this new
method we are enabled perfectly to explain the possibility of a priori
cognition, and, what is more, to demonstrate satisfactorily the laws
which lie a priori at the foundation of nature, as the sum of the
objects of experience--neither of which was possible according to
the procedure hitherto followed. But from this deduction of the
faculty of a priori cognition in the first part of metaphysics, we
derive a surprising result, and one which, to all appearance,
militates against the great end of metaphysics, as treated in the
second part. For we come to the conclusion that our faculty of
cognition is unable to transcend the limits of possible experience;
and yet this is precisely the most essential object of this science.
The estimate of our rational cognition a priori at which we arrive
is that it has only to do with phenomena, and that things in
themselves, while possessing a real existence, lie beyond its
sphere. Here we are enabled to put the justice of this estimate to
the test. For that which of necessity impels us to transcend the limits
of experience and of all phenomena is the unconditioned, which reason
absolutely requires in things as they are in themselves, in order to
complete the series of conditions. Now, if it appears that when, on
the one hand, we assume that our cognition conforms to its objects
as things in themselves, the unconditioned cannot be thought without
contradiction, and that when, on the other hand, we assume that our
representation of things as they are given to us, does not conform
to these things as they are in themselves, but that these objects,
as phenomena, conform to our mode of representation, the contradiction
disappears: we shall then be convinced of the truth of that which we
began by assuming for the sake of experiment; we may look upon it as
established that the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know