This presupposition of the Judgement is, however, at the same time so
indeterminate as to how far that ideal purposiveness of nature for
our cognitive faculty should be extended, that if we were told that
a deeper or wider knowledge of nature derived from observation must
lead at last to a variety of laws, which no human Understanding could
reduce to a principle, we should at once acquiesce. But still we more
gladly listen to one who offers hope that the more we know nature
internally, and can compare it with external members now unknown to
us, the more simple shall we find it in its principles, and that the
further our experience reaches the more uniform shall we find it amid
the apparent heterogeneity of its empirical laws. For it is a mandate
of our Judgement to proceed according to the principle of the harmony
of nature with our cognitive faculty so far as that reaches, without
deciding (because it is not the determinant Judgement which gives us
this rule) whether or not it is bounded anywhere. For although in
respect of the rational use of our cognitive faculty we can determine
such bounds, this is not possible in the empirical field.
VII. OF THE AESTHETICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE.
That which in the representation of an Object is merely subjective,
_i.e._ which decides its reference to the subject, not to the object,
is its aesthetical character; but that which serves or can be used
for the determination of the object (for cognition), is its logical
validity. In the cognition of an object of sense both references
present themselves. In the sense-representation of external things
the quality of space wherein we intuite them is the merely subjective
[element] of my representation (by which it remains undecided what
they may be in themselves as Objects), on account of which reference
the object is thought thereby merely as phenomenon. But space,
notwithstanding its merely subjective quality, is at the same time
an ingredient in the cognition of things as phenomena. _Sensation_,
again (_i.e._ external sensation), expresses the merely subjective
[element] of our representations of external things, but it is also the
proper material (reale) of them (by which something existing is given),
just as space is the mere form _a priori_ of the possibility of their
intuition. Nevertheless, however, sensation is also employed in the
cognition of external Objects.
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