extension of speculative, that is, we cannot make any positive use
of it in a theoretical point of view. For as nothing is accomplished
in this by practical reason, further than that these concepts are real
and actually have their (possible) objects, and nothing in the way
of intuition of them is given thereby (which indeed could not be
demanded), hence the admission of this reality does not render any
synthetical proposition possible. Consequently, this discovery does
not in the least help us to extend this knowledge of ours in a
speculative point of view, although it does in respect of the
practical employment of pure reason. The above three ideas of
speculative reason are still in themselves not cognitions; they are
however (transcendent) thoughts, in which there is nothing impossible.
Now, by help of an apodeictic practical law, being necessary
conditions of that which it commands to be made an object, they
acquire objective reality; that is, we learn from it that they have
objects, without being able to point out how the conception of them is
related to an object, and this, too, is still not a cognition of these
objects; for we cannot thereby form any synthetical judgement about
them, nor determine their application theoretically; consequently,
we can make no theoretical rational use of them at all, in which use
all speculative knowledge of reason consists. Nevertheless, the
theoretical knowledge, not indeed of these objects, but of reason
generally, is so far enlarged by this, that by the practical
postulates objects were given to those ideas, a merely problematical
thought having by this means first acquired objective reality. There
is therefore no extension of the knowledge of given supersensible
objects, but an extension of theoretical reason and of its knowledge
in respect of the supersensible generally; inasmuch as it is compelled
to admit that there are such objects, although it is not able to
define them more closely, so as itself to extend this knowledge of the
objects (which have now been given it on practical grounds, and only
for practical use). For this accession, then, pure theoretical reason,
for which all those ideas are transcendent and without object, has
simply to thank its practical faculty. In this they become immanent
and constitutive, being the source of the possibility of realizing the
necessary object of pure practical reason (the summum bonum);
whereas apart from this they are transcendent, and merely regulative
principles of speculative reason, which do not require it to assume
a new object beyond experience, but only to bring its use in
experience nearer to completeness. But when once reason is in
possession of this accession, it will go to work with these ideas as
speculative reason (properly only to assure the certainty of its
practical use) in a negative manner: that is, not extending but
clearing up its knowledge so as on one side to keep off
anthropomorphism, as the source of superstition, or seeming