as related by way of succession in the physical world.
If A and B were bodies, as they are when we apprehend the parts of a
house, they could never be apprehended as successive. In other words,
the process by which, on Kant's view, A and B become, and become known
to be, events presupposes that they already are, and are known to be,
events. Again, even if it be granted that A and B are real events, it
is clear that there can be no process by which we come to apprehend
them as successive. For if we apprehended events A and B separately,
we could never thence advance to the apprehension of their relation,
or, in other words, we could never discover which came first. Kant
himself saw clearly that the perception of A followed by the
perception of B does not by itself yield the perception that B follows
A. In fact it was this insight which formed the starting-point of his
discussion.[46] Unfortunately, instead of concluding that the
apprehension of a succession is ultimate and underivable from a more
primitive apprehension, he tried to formulate the nature of the
process by which, starting from such a succession of perceptions, we
reach the apprehension of a succession. The truth is simply that there
is and can be no _process to_ the apprehension of a succession; in
other words, that we do and must apprehend a real succession
immediately or not at all. The same considerations can of course be
supplied _mutatis mutandis_ to the apprehension of the coexistence of
bodies in space, e. g. of the parts of a house.

[46] Cf. B. 237, M. 144.

It may be objected that this denial of the existence of the process
which Kant is trying to describe must at least be an overstatement.
For the assertion that the apprehension of a succession or of a
coexistence is immediate may seem to imply that the apprehension of
the course of a boat or of the shape of a house involves no process at
all; yet either apprehension clearly takes time and so must involve a
process. But though a process is obviously involved, it is not a
process from the apprehension of what is not a succession to the
apprehension of a succession, but a process from the apprehension of
one succession to that of another. It is the process by which we pass
from the apprehension of one part of a succession which may have, and
which it is known may have, other parts to the apprehension of what
is, and what is known to be, another part of the same succession.
Moreover, the asse