EXAMINATION OF ANTINOMIES. 527 
ment of a Quantum can never be completed.* Hence, 
it follows quite certainly that an eternity of real 
states following upon one another can never have 
elapsed up toa given (the present) point of time,— 
consequently, the world must have a beginning. 
“Tn regard to the second part of the thesis, the diffi- 
culty certainly disappears of an infinite and yet elapsed 
series, for the diversity of an infinite world, as to ex- 
tension, is given coewistently. But in order to think 
the Totality of such a multiplicity, since we cannot ap- 
peal to limits which constitute the totality in itself in 
the intuition, we must render an account of our con- 
ception, which, in such a ease, cannot go from the 
whole to the determined multiplicity of the parts, but 
must show the possibility of a whole by means of the 
successive synthesis of the parts. And as this syn- 
thesis must form a never to be completed series, we 
cannot thus think a totality prior to it (che synthesis), 
and consequently, also, not through it. For this con- 
ception of totality itself is, in this case, the representa- 
tion of a completed synthesis of parts, and this com- 
pletion, and consequently the conception thereof, is 
impossible.” 
* “This (the Quantum) thereby contains a multiplicity (of 
given unity), which is greater than all number, which is the 
mathematical conception of the infinite.” 
the world, provided we admit a limit to the world 
whether in respect of space or time. 
“ For as to what regards the subterfuge whereby we 
strive to avoid the consequence, agreeably to which we 
say that if the world (according to time and space) 
has limits, the infinite void must determine the exis- 
tence of real things in respect of their quantity; it 
consists thus only in this, that we think to ourselves 
instead of a sensible world, some sort of an intellectual 
world, and instead of a first beginning (an existence 
previous to which a time of non-being precedes), an 
existence generally is imagined, which presupposes no 
other condition in the world, and instead of boundaries 
of extension, limits are conceived of the universe, and 
thereby avoidance is made of time and space. But 
here the question is only as to mundus phenomenon 
and its quantity, in respect of which we can, by no 
means, make abstraction of the stated conditions of 
sensibility without annihilating the being of it. The 
sensible world, if it be limited, lies necessarily in the 
infinite void. If we will omit this, and consequently 
space in general as condition of the possibility of phe- 
nomena a@ priort, the whole sensible world then dis- 
appears. In our problem this alone is given us. The 
mundus tntelligibilis is nothing but the universal con- 
ception of a world in general, in which conception we 
make abstraction of all conditions of the intuition of 
this world, and in respect of this conception, no syn- 
thetic proposition, either affirmative or negative, is 
possible.” 
CHAPTER VIII. 
EXAMINATION OF ANTINOMIES. 
253. Tue first ambiguity that presents itself in the foregoing antinomy, is in the mean- 
ing of the term “ world.” 
Kant says, “The ideas with which we now concern ourselves 
I have before termed Cosmological ideas, partly on this account, because under world the 
complex of all phenomena is understood, and our ideas also are only directed to the un- 
VOL. XI1.—67 
