CONTENT AND VALIDITY OF THE CAUSAL LAW 379 



reproduction or recognition, a relationless identification or discrim- 

 ination, in short, a relationless thought, are, as phrases, one and 

 all mere contradictions. We cannot picture "through our relating 

 thought," to use Helmholtz's expression, nor even in our imagination, 

 the sense impressions that we should have if our thought were re- 

 lationless, that is, were nullified in its very components and presup- 

 positions. In the case of Helmholtz's two dimensional beings, the 

 question at issue was not regarding the setting aside of the conditions 

 of our thought and the substituting conditions contradictory to 

 them, but regarding the setting aside of a part of the content of our 

 sense intuition, meanwhile retaining the conditions and forms 

 peculiar to our thought. In this case, therefore, we have a permissible 

 fiction, whereas in Mill's chaos we have an unthinkable thought. 



Again, the sense impressions that must be presupposed in an 

 inherently relationless chaos have no possible relation to the world 

 of our perception, whose components are universally related to 

 each other through the uniformities of their coexistences and se- 

 quences. Accordingly, the remark with which Helmholtz concludes 

 the passage above quoted holds, mutatis mutandis, here also. " If there 

 is no sense impression known that stands in relation to an event 

 which has never been observed (by us), as would be the case for us 

 were there a motion toward a fourth dimension, and for those two 

 dimensional beings were there a motion toward our third dimension; 

 then it follows that such an ' idea ' is impossible, as much so as that 

 a man completely blind from childhood should be able to ' imagine ' 

 the colors, if we could give him too a conceptual description of them." 



Hence the first of the theses in which we summed up Stuart 

 Mill's assumptions must be rejected. With it go also the second and 

 third. In this case we need not answer the question: In how far 

 do these theses correspond to Mill's own statements regarding the 

 absolute surety and universality of the causal law? 



We have now found what we sought, in order to establish as a 

 valid assertion the seeming paradox in the proof of the necessity 

 that we ascribe to the relation between cause and effect. We have 

 proved that the assumption of a completely irregular and therefore 

 relationless alternation of impressions contradicts not only our 

 experience, but even the conditions of our thought; for these pre- 

 suppose the uniformities of the impressions, and consequently our 

 ability to relate them, all which was eliminated from our hypothetical 

 chaos. Hence we have also established that a necessary relation is 

 implied in the thought of a constant sequence of events, which 

 makes the uniformly following b really dependent upon the uniformly 

 preceding a. 



From still another side, we can make clear the necessity asserted 



