is nothing by which prior to experience we can
determine what will happen next. It is just as conceivable that the
moving ball should come back or should come to rest, as that the ball
hitherto at rest should begin to move. A magnet fastened to a piece of
wood is floating on water. Another magnet held in the hand is brought
very near one of its poles or ends. If two north poles are thus brought
together the floating magnet is repelled; if a north and a south pole are
brought together the floating magnet is attracted. The motion of the
floating magnet is in each case called the effect; the approach of the
magnet held in the hand is called the cause. And this cause is, as far as
we know, invariably followed by this effect. But to say that one is
cause and the other effect is merely to say that one is always followed
by the other; and no other meaning, according to Hume, can be
attached to the words cause and effect.
Having established this interpretation of these words, Hume goes on to
ask: What can be the ground in reason for the principle universally
adopted, that the law of cause and effect rules phenomena, and that a
cause which has been followed by an effect once will be followed by
the same effect always? And he concludes that no rational ground can
be found at all, that it is the mere result of custom without anything
rational behind it. We are accustomed to see it so, and what we have
been so perpetually accustomed to see we believe that we shall
continue to see. But why what has always been hitherto should always
be hereafter, no reason whatever can be given. The logical conclusion
obviously is to discredit all human faculties and to land us in universal
scepticism.
It was at this point that Kant took up the question, avowedly in
consequence of Hume's reasoning. He considered that Hume had been
misled by turning his attention to Physics, and that his own good sense
would have saved him from his conclusion had he thought rather of
Mathematics. Kant's solution of the problem, based mainly on the
reality of Mathematics, and especially of Geometry, is the direct
opposite of Hume's.
It will be most easy to give a clear account of Kant's solution by using a
very familiar illustration. There is a well-known common toy called a
Kaleidoscope, in which bits of coloured glass placed at one end are
seen through a small round hole at the other. The bits of glass are not
arranged in any order whatever, and by shaking the instrument may be
rearranged again and again indefinitely and still without any order
whatever. But however they may be arranged in themselves they
always form, as seen from the other end, a symmetrical pattern. The
pattern indeed varies with every shake of the instrument and
consequent re-arrangement of the bits of glass, but it is invariably
symmetrical. Now the symmetry in this case is not in the bits of glass;
the colours are there no doubt, but the symmetrical arrangement of
them is not. The symmetry is entirely due to the instrument. And if a
competent enquirer looks into the instrument and examines its
construction, he will be able to lay down with absolute certainty the
laws of that symmetry which every pattern as seen through the
instrument must obey.
Just such an instrument, according to Kant, is the human mind. Space
and Time and the Perceptive Faculties are the parts of the instrument.
Everything that reaches the senses must submit to the laws of Space
and Time, that is, to the Laws of Mathematics, because Space and Time
are forms of the mind itself, and, like the kaleidoscope, arrange all
things on their way to the senses according to a pattern of their own.
This pattern is as it were super-added to the manifestations that come
from the things themselves; and if there be any manifestations of such a
nature that they could not submit to this addition, or, in other words,
could not submit to Mathematical Laws, these manifestations could not
affect our senses at all. So too our Understanding has a pattern of its
own which it imposes on all things that reach its power of perception.
What cannot be accommodated to this pattern cannot be understood at
all. Whatever things may be in themselves, their manifestations are not
within the range of our intelligence, except by passing through the
arranging process which our own mind executes upon them.
It is clear that this wonderfully ingenious speculation rests its claims
for acceptance purely on the assertion that it and it alone explains the
facts. It cannot be proved from any principle
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