On the other side
it is equally necessary that everything that takes place should be
fixedly determined according to laws of nature. This necessity of
nature is likewise not an empirical conception, just for this
reason, that it involves the motion of necessity and consequently of a
priori cognition. But this conception of a system of nature is
confirmed by experience; and it must even be inevitably presupposed if
experience itself is to be possible, that is, a connected knowledge of
the objects of sense resting on general laws. Therefore freedom is
only an idea of reason, and its objective reality in itself is
doubtful; while nature is a concept of the understanding which proves,
and must necessarily prove, its reality in examples of experience.
There arises from this a dialectic of reason, since the freedom
attributed to the will appears to contradict the necessity of
nature, and placed between these two ways reason for speculative
purposes finds the road of physical necessity much more beaten and
more appropriate than that of freedom; yet for practical purposes
the narrow footpath of freedom is the only one on which it is possible
to make use of reason in our conduct; hence it is just as impossible
for the subtlest philosophy as for the commonest reason of men to
argue away freedom.
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