efficient causes. I should then be unable to assert, with regard to
one and the same being, e.g., the human soul, that its will is free,
and yet, at the same time, subject to natural necessity, that is,
not free, without falling into a palpable contradiction, for in both
propositions I should take the soul in the same signification, as a
thing in general, as a thing in itself--as, without previous
criticism, I could not but take it. Suppose now, on the other hand,
that we have undertaken this criticism, and have learnt that an object
may be taken in two senses, first, as a phenomenon, secondly, as a
thing in itself; and that, according to the deduction of the
conceptions of the understanding, the principle of causality has
reference only to things in the first sense. We then see how it does
not involve any contradiction to assert, on the one hand, that the
will, in the phenomenal sphere--in visible action--is necessarily
obedient to the law of nature, and, in so far, not free; and, on the
other hand, that, as belonging to a thing in itself, it is not subject
to that law, and, accordingly, is free. Now, it is true that I cannot,
by means of speculative reason, and still less by empirical
observation, cognize my soul as a thing in itself and consequently,
cannot cognize liberty as the property of a being to which I ascribe
effects in the world of sense. For, to do so, I must cognize this
being as existing, and yet not in time, which--since I cannot
support my conception by any intuition--is impossible. At the same
time, while I cannot cognize, I can quite well think freedom, that
is to say, my representation of it involves at least no contradiction,
if we bear in mind the critical distinction of the two modes of
representation (the sensible and the intellectual) and the
consequent limitation of the conceptions of the pure understanding
and of the principles which flow from them. Suppose now that morality
necessarily presupposed liberty, in the strictest sense, as a property