We cannot even conceive how it is possible that God can create
free beings; for it appears as if all their future actions, being
predetermined by that first act, would be contained in the chain of
natural necessity, and that, therefore, they could not be free. But as
men we are free in fact, as is proved by the categorical imperative in
the moral and practical relation as an authoritative decision of
reason; yet reason cannot make the possibility of such a relation of
cause to effect conceivable from the theoretical point of view,
because they are both suprasensible. All that can be demanded of
reason under these conditions would merely be to prove that there is
no contradiction involved in the conception of a creation of free
beings; and this may be done by showing that contradiction only arises
when, along with the category of causality, the condition of time is
transferred to the relation of suprasensible things. This condition,
as implying that the cause of an effect must precede the effect as its
reason, is inevitable in thinking the relation of objects of sense
to one another; and if this conception of causality were to have
objective reality given to it in the theoretical bearing, it would
also have to be referred to the suprasensible sphere. But the
contradiction vanishes when the pure category, apart from any sensible
conditions, is applied from the moral and practical point of view, and
consequently as in a non-sensible relation to the conception of
creation.
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