[1515] A 439-41 = B 467-9.
[1516] A 441 = B 469.
[1517] Developed in the Dissertation (1770).
[1518] Zweites Hauptstück, Lehrsatz 4, Anmerkung 1. Cf. also Anmerkung 2.
[1519] Principles of Mathematics, i. p. 460.
[1520] Cf. above, p. 481 n. 2.
[1521] P. 489 n.
[1522] Cf. Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea (Werke, Frauenstädt, ii. p. 590; Eng. trans. ii. pp. 111-12). “The argument for the third thesis is a very fine sophism, and is really Kant’s pretended principle of pure reason itself entirely unadulterated and unchanged. It tries to prove the finiteness of the series of causes by saying that, in order to be sufficient, a cause must contain the complete sum of the conditions from which the succeeding state, the effect, proceeds. For the completeness of the determinations present together in the state which is the cause, the argument now substitutes the completeness of the series of causes by which that state itself was brought to actuality; and because completeness presupposes the condition of being rounded off or closed in, and this again presupposes finiteness, the argument infers from this a first cause, closing the series and therefore unconditioned. But the juggling is obvious. In order to conceive the state A as the sufficient cause of the state B, I assume that it contains the sum of the necessary determinations from the coexistence of which the state B inevitably follows. Now by this my demand upon it as a sufficient cause is entirely satisfied, and has no direct connection with the question how the state A itself came to be; this rather belongs to an entirely different consideration, in which I regard the said state A no more as cause, but as itself an effect; in which case another state again must be related to it, just as it was related to B. The assumption of the finiteness of the series of causes and effects, and accordingly of a first beginning, appears nowhere in this as necessary, any more than the presentness of the present moment requires us to assume a beginning of time itself.”
[1523] Op. cit. p. 24.
[1524] For comment upon Kant’s defence of his procedure cf. below, p. 496.