360 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



another animal shape, if on the longest day the fields were some- 

 times covered with fruit, sometimes with ice and snow, the faculty 

 of my empirical imagination would never be in a position, when 

 representing red color, to think of heavy cinnabar." 1 



The assumption that in recurring perceptions similar elements 

 of content, as well as of relation, are given, is a necessary condition 

 of the possibility of experience itself, and accordingly of all those 

 processes of thought which lead us, under the guidance of previous 

 perceptions, from the contents of one given perception to the con- 

 tents of possible perceptions. 



A tradition from Hume down has accustomed us to associate the 

 relation of cause and effect not so much with the uniformity of co- 

 existence as with the uniformity of sequence. Let us for the present 

 keep to this tradition. Its first corollary is that the relation of cause 

 and effect is to be sought in the uninterrupted flow and connection 

 of events and changes. The cause becomes the uniformly preceding 

 event, the constant antecedens, the effect the uniformly following, the 

 constant consequens, in the course of the changes that are presented 

 to consciousness as a result of foregoing changes in our sensorium. 



According to this tradition that we have taken as our point of 

 departure, the uniformity of the sequence of events is a necessary 

 presupposition of the relation between cause and effect. This uni- 

 formity is given us as an element of our experience; for we actually 

 find uniform successions in the course of the changing contents of 

 perception. Further, as all our perceptions are in the first instance 

 sense-perceptions, we may call them the sensory presupposition of 

 the possibility of the causal relation. 



In this presupposition, however, there is much more involved than 

 the name just chosen would indicate. The uniformity of sequence 

 lies, as we saw, not in the contents of perception as such, which are 

 immediately given to us. It arises rather through the fact that, in 

 the course of repeated perceptions, we apprehend through abstraction 

 the uniformities of their temporal relation. Moreover, there lie in the 

 repeated perceptions not only uniformities of sequence, but also 

 uniformities of the qualitative content of the successive events 

 themselves, and these uniformities also must be apprehended through 

 abstraction. Thus these uniform contents of perception make up 

 series of the following form: 



a 2 



u 



1 Kant, Kr. d. r. V., 1st ed., pp. 100 f. 



