94. It would seem, therefore, that there is no real distinction in things corresponding to the distinction between essence and existence in our conceptions. Essence is not distinguished from existence, but it does not therefore cease to be finite, nor existence to be contingent. In God existence is identified with essence; but in such a manner, that his non-existence implies contradiction, and his essence is infinite.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
KANT'S OPINION OF REALITY AND NEGATION.
95. Kant numbers among his categories reality and negation, or existence and non-existence, and, conformably to his principles, defines them thus: "Reality is a pure conception of the understanding; it is what corresponds, in general, to any sensation whatever, consequently that whose conception denotes a being in itself, in time. Negation is that whose conception represents a not-being in time. The opposition of these two things consists in the difference of the same time, as full or void. Since then, time consists solely in the form of the intuition, and consequently in the form of the objects as phenomena, it follows that that which in them corresponds to the sensation, is the transcendental matter of all objects, as things in themselves, essential reality. Every sensation has a degree or intensity, by which it may fill more or less the same time, that is, the inward sense relatively to the representation of an object, until it be reduced to nothing = 0 = negation."
There is in this passage a fundamental error which ruins the whole basis of all intelligence: there is also much confusion in his application of the idea of time.
96. According to Kant, reality alone refers to sensations; therefore the idea of being will be the idea of the phenomena of sensibility in general; this idea will mean nothing, if applied to the non-sensible; the very principle of contradiction will necessarily be limited to the sphere of sensibility; and we neither shall know, or be able to know any thing without the sensible order. Such are the consequences of this doctrine; let us now examine the solidity of the principle from which they flow.
97. Were the idea of reality only the idea of the sensible in general, we could never apply it to non-sensible things, which, however, experience teaches we can do. We speak incessantly of the possibility and even of the existence of non-sensible beings, and we even distinguish the phenomena of our mind into those belonging to sensibility, and those which correspond to the purely intellectual order. The idea of being, therefore, for us, denotes a general conception non-circumscribed by the sensible order.
98. Kant will answer that the applications we make of this idea, extending it beyond the sphere of sensibility, are vain illusions expressed in unmeaning words. To this we reply.
I. There is now no question of ascertaining whether the applications of the idea of being or reality beyond the sensible order be founded or unfounded; there is question only of ascertaining what it is that this idea represents to us, whether the object represented be illusory or not. Kant, when defining reality, regards it as one of his categories, and consequently, as one of the pure conceptions of the understanding. To make his definition good, he ought to employ this conception in its greatest possible extent: but as he has demonstrated that conception, in itself, is not limited to the sphere of sensibility, it must follow that his definition is inadmissible. Had he said that the applications of the conception beyond the sensible order were unfounded, he would indeed have erred, but would not have destroyed conception itself; yet he equivocates not only in the uses of conception, but also in its nature, which he can only ruin, if he limit it to the sphere of sensibility.