Now since we are here talking about a thing only as an object of a possible experience and not as a thing in itself, the answer to the transcendent cosmological question cannot lie anywhere outside the idea, for it does not have to do with any object in itself; and in regard to possible experience, the question asks not about what can be given in concreto in any experience, but rather about what lies in the idea which the empirical synthesis is merely supposed to approximate: therefore, this question must be able to be resolved from the idea alone; for this idea is merely a creature of reason, which therefore cannot refuse the responsibility and pass it on to the unknown object.