| Following this, Kant argued we were only capable of perceiving phenomenon, or appearances, while the noumena, or spiritual essence, lay eternally beyond our reach. |
| Kant insisted that we can never know the noumena, for we can never get beyond phenomena. |
| The noumena are the external sources of experience that are not themselves knowable and can only be inferred from experience of specific moments, of deep spiritual phenomena. |
| Though it reappears in the chapter on phenomena and noumena, it does so in a passage which Kant excised in the second edition. |
| Nor have we any right to reason from phenomena to noumena, or to say that the former authenticate the latter. |
| In other words, it attempts to form a positive conception of noumena. |
