Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/378
the cause, (which cannot always have existed, but must be itself an event, for it precedes in time some effect which it has originated), must have itself a phænomenal cause, by which it is determined, and, consequently, that all events are empirically determined in an order of nature—this law, I say, which lies at the foundation of the possibility of experience, and of a connected system of phænomena or nature, is a law of the understanding, from which no departure, and to which no exception, can be admitted. For to except even a single phænomenon from its operation, is to exclude it from the sphere of possible experience, and thus to admit it to be a mere fiction of thought or phantom of the brain.
Thus we are obliged to acknowledge the existence of a chain of causes, in which, however, absolute totality cannot be found. But we need not detain ourselves with this question, for it has already been sufficiently answered in our discussion of the antinomies into which reason falls, when it attempts to reach the unconditioned in the series of phænomena. If we permit ourselves to be deceived by the illusion of transcendental idealism, we shall find that neither nature nor freedom exists. Now the question is: Whether, admitting the existence of natural necessity in the world of phænomena, it is possible to consider an effect as at the same time an effect of nature and an effect of freedom—or, whether these two modes of causality are contradictory and incompatible?
No phænomenal cause can absolutely and of itself begin a series. Every action, in so far as it is productive of an event, is itself an event or occurrence, and presupposes another preceding state, in which its cause existed. Thus everything that happens is but a continuation of a series, and an absolute beginning is impossible in the sensuous world. The actions of natural causes are, accordingly, themselves effects, and presuppose causes preceding them in time. A primal action—an action which forms an absolute beginning, is beyond the causal power of phænomena.
Now, is it absolutely necessary that, granting that all effects are phænomena, the causality of the cause of these effects must also be a phænomenon, and belong to the empirical world? Is it not rather possible that, although every effect in the phænomenal world must be connected with an empirical cause, according to the universal law of nature, this empirical