Hence this way of grounding an unconditioned existence would be distinguished from the empirically unconditioned causality (of freedom) in the previous article in that in the case of freedom, the thing itself as cause (substantia phaenomenon)a would nevertheless belong to the series of conditions, and only its causality would be thought as intelligible, but here the necessary being would have to be thought of as entirely outside the series of the world of sense (as an ens extramundanum)b and merely intelligible; this is the only way of preventing it from being subjected to the law of the contingency and dependence of all appearances.