Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/22

6 of causes that of itself begins a series of phenomena that proceeds according to natural laws; hence we must admit transcendental freedom, without which even in the course of nature the succession of phenomena would never be complete as to causes"—or, in other words, the series of phenomena in nature would lack causality, if spontaneity or self-activity is denied.

In his remarks on this last demonstration, Kant shows further that he does not see quite fully this need of a spontaneity or pure self-activity in the true cause, because he speaks more explicitly of all successive states and conditions of events as "resulting according to mere laws of nature." The idea of a cause that could set things going and then leave them to go on of themselves, belongs to an inconsistent dualism. But it implies that the spontaneous factor of causality is transmitted to the series of phenomena in nature, so that the things created have become real and true causes and can originate new distinctions. In that case, as already shown, the infinite regress of causes would not be necessary to explain any given event.

But the defect in Kant's conception of true cause will be apparent in the proof of the antithesis, which reads as follows: "There is no freedom, but everything in the world takes place solely according to the laws of nature." The proof of this antithesis is not so satisfactory. For it points out merely the fact that a first beginning of action, i.e. the spontaneity of a true cause, breaks the continuity of the natural law of cause and effect and "is opposed to the law of causality" and, therefore, destructive of the unity of experience.

"If we admit that there is freedom, in the transcendental meaning of the term, as a particular species of causality producing occurrences in the world, that is to say, a capacity to begin a new condition of things and a new series of results that flow from it, it would follow that not only the new condition but even the determination of the spontaneity to the production of the series, that is to say, the causality, would have an absolute beginning, such that nothing precedes it to determine this action according to constant laws. But every beginning