Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/220

210 certainty a priori, and with it the lapse of a certain time. Thus, for example, we know that a certain time must elapse between the falling of the flint and the projection of the bullet, although we cannot perceive it, and that this time must further be divided between several events that occur in a strictly determined succession the – falling of the flint, the striking of the spark, ignition, the spread of the fire, the explosion, and the projection of the bullet. No man ever perceived this succession of events; but because we know which is the cause of the others, we thereby also know which must precede the others in time, and consequently also that during the course of the whole series a certain time must elapse, although it is so short that it escapes our empirical apprehension; for no one will assert that the projection of the bullet is actually simultaneous with the falling of the flint. Thus not only the law of causality, but also its relation to time, and the necessity of the succession of cause and effect, is known to us a priori. If we know which of two events is the cause and which is the effect, we also know which precedes the other in time; if, on the contrary, we do not know which is cause and which effect, but only know in general that they are causally connected, we seek to discover the succession empirically, and according to that we determine which is the cause and which the effect. The falseness of the assertion that cause and effect are simultaneous further appears from the following consideration. An unbroken chain of causes and effects fills the whole of time. (For if this chain were broken the world would stand still, or in order to set it in motion again an effect without a cause would have to appear.) Now if every effect were simultaneous with its cause, then every effect would be moved up into the time of its cause, and a chain of causes and effects containing as many links as before would fill no time at all, still less an infinite time, but would be all together in one moment. Thus, under the assumption that cause and effect are simultaneous, the course of the world