The practical value, which a merely speculative science may have, lies
without the bounds of this science, and can therefore be considered as
a scholion merely, and like all scholia does not form part of the
science itself. This application however surely lies within the bounds
of philosophy, especially of philosophy drawn from the pure sources of
reason, where its speculative use in metaphysics must necessarily be
at unity with its practical use in morals. Hence the unavoidable
dialectics of pure reason, considered in metaphysics, as a natural
tendency, deserves to be explained not as an illusion merely, which is
to be removed, but also, if possible, as a natural provision as
regards its end, though this duty, a work of supererogation, cannot
justly be assigned to metaphysics proper.
The solutions of these questions which are treated in the chapter on
the Regulative Use of the Ideas of Pure Reason{43} should be considered
a second scholion which however has a greater affinity with the
subject of metaphysics. For there certain rational principles are
expounded which determine a priori the order of nature or rather of
the understanding, which seeks nature's laws through experience. They
seem to be constitutive and legislative with regard to experience,
though they spring from pure reason, which cannot be considered, like
the understanding, as a principle of possible experience. Now whether
or not this harmony rests upon the fact, that just as nature does not
inhere in appearances or in their source (the sensibility) itself, but
only in so far as the latter is in relation to the understanding, as
also a systematic unity in applying the understanding to bring about
an entirety of all possible experience can only belong to the
understanding when in relation to reason; and whether or not
experience is in this way mediately subordinate to the legislation of
reason: may be discussed by those who desire to trace the nature of
reason even beyond its use in metaphysics, into the general principles
of a history of nature; I have represented this task as important, but
not attempted its solution, in the book itself.{44}
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{43} Critique of Pure Reason, II., chap. III., section 7.
{44} Throughout in the Critique I never lost sight of the plan not to
neglect anything, were it ever so recondite, that could render the
inquiry into the nature of pure reason complete. Everybody may
afterwards carry his researches as far as he pleases, when he has been
merely shown what yet remains to be done. It is this a duty which must
reasonably be expected of him who has made it his business to survey
the whole field, in order to consign it to others for future
cultivation and allotment. And to this branch both the scholia belong,
which will hardly recommend themselves by their dryness to amateurs,
and hence are added here for connoisseurs only.
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