Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/136

 the falling of the tile ; yet the order of their succession—that is, that my going out preceded the falling of the tile—is objectively determined in my apprehension, not subjectively by my will, by which that order would otherwise have most likely been inverted. The order in which tones follow each other in a musical composition is likewise objectively determined, not subjectively by me, the listener ; yet who would think of asserting that musical tones follow one another according to the law of cause and effect ? Even the succession of day and night is undoubtedly known to us as an objective one, but we as certainly do not look upon them as causes and effects of one another ; and as to their common cause, the whole world was in error till Copernicus came ; yet the correct knowledge of their succession was not in the least disturbed by that error. Hume's hypothesis, by the way, also finds its refutation through this ; since the following of day and night upon each other—the most ancient of all successions and the one least liable to exception—has never yet misled anyone into taking them for cause and effect of each other.

Elsewhere Kant asserts, that a representation only shows reality (which, I conclude, means that it is distinguished from a mere mental image) by our recognising its necessary connection with other representations subject to rule (the causal law) and its place in a determined order of the time-relations of our representations. But of how few representations are we able to know the place assigned to them by the law of causality in the chain of causes and effects ! Yet we are never embarrassed to distinguish objective from subjective representations : real, from imaginary objects. When asleep, we are unable to make this distinction, for our brain is then isolated from the peripherical nervous system, and thereby from external influences. In our dreams therefore, we take imaginary for