ct, which is
palpably contrary to fact. Again, his aim is to show that we become
aware of a succession by presupposing the law of causality. This law,
however, is quite general, and only asserts that _something_ must
precede an event upon which it follows always and necessarily. Hence
by itself it palpably gives no means of determining whether this
something is A rather than anything else.[43] Therefore if he were
to maintain that the antecedent member of an apprehended objective
succession must be thought of as its cause, the analogy would
obviously provide no means of determining the antecedent member, and
therefore the succession itself, for the succession must be the
sequence of B upon some definite antecedent. On the other hand, the
view that the cause of B need not be A only incurs the same difficulty
in a rather less obvious form. For, even on this view, the argument
implies that in order to apprehend two individual perceptions A B as
an objective succession, we must know that A _must_ precede B, and the
presupposition that B implies a cause in the state of affairs
preceding B in no way enables us to say either that A coexists with
the cause, or that it is identical with it, and therefore that it must
precede B.

[43] Cf. B. 165, M. 101, where Kant points out that the
determination of particular laws of nature requires
experience.

Nevertheless, it cannot be regarded as certain that Kant did not think
of A, the apprehended antecedent of B, as necessarily the cause of B,
for his language is both ambiguous and inconsistent. When he considers
the apprehension of a succession from the side of the successive
perceptions, he at least tends to think of A B as cause and
effect;[44] and it may well be that in discussing the problem from
the side of the law of causality, he means the cause of B to be A,
although the generality of the law compels him to refer to it as
_something_ upon which B follows according to a rule.

[44] He definitely implies this, B. 234, M. 142.

Further, it should be noticed that to allow as Kant, in effect, does
elsewhere[45], that experience is needed to determine the cause of B is
really to concede that the apprehension of objective successions is
_prior to_, and _presupposed by_, any process which appeals to the
principle of causality; for if the principle of causality does not by
itself enable us to determine the cause of B, it cannot do more than
enable us to pick out th