Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/79

 experience and consequently without exception, as will be shown in § 21; as moreover it decides, that upon a given, definite, relatively first state, a second equally definite one inevitably ensues by rule, i.e., always; the relation between cause and effect is a necessary one, so that the causal law authorizes us to form hypothetical judgments, and thereby shows itself to be a form of the principle of sufficient reason, upon which principle all judgments must be founded and, as will be shown further on, all necessity is based.

This form of our principle I call the principle of the sufficient reason of becoming, because its application in variably pre-supposes a change, the entering upon a new state: consequently a becoming. One of its essential characteristics is this: that the cause always precedes the effect in Time (compare § 47), and this alone gives us the original criterion by which to distinguish which is cause and which effect, of two states linked together by the causal nexus. Conversely, in some cases, the causal nexus is known to us through former experience; but the rapidity with which the different states follow upon each other is so great, that the order in which this happens escapes our perception. "We then conclude with complete certitude from causality to succession: thus, for instance, we infer that the igniting of gunpowder precedes its explosion.

From this essential connection between causality and succession it follows, that the conception of reciprocity, strictly speaking, has no meaning; for it presumes the effect to be again the cause of its cause: that is, that what follows is at the same time what precedes. In a "Critique of Kantian Philosophy," which I have added to my chief work, and to which I refer my readers, I have