828 IMMANUELKANT
act of its cause—this determination being a state of the cause—which it follows accord-
ing to a constant law. But this determination of the cause to a causal act must likewise
be something that takes place or happens; the cause must have begun to act, otherwise
no succession between it and the effect could be conceived. Otherwise the effect, as
well as the causal act of the cause, would have always existed. Therefore the deter-
mination of the cause to act must also have originated among appearances and must
consequently, like its effect, be an event, which must again have its cause, and so on;
hence natural necessity must be the condition on which efficient causes are determined.
Whereas if freedom is to be a property of certain causes of appearances, it must, as
regards these, which are events, be a faculty of starting them spontaneously. That is, it
would not require that the causal act of the cause should itself begin [in time], and hence
it would not require any other ground to determine its start. But then the cause, as to its
causal act, could not rank under time-determinations of its state; that is, it could not be
an appearance, but would have to be considered a thing in itself, while only its effects
would be appearances.* If without contradiction we can think of the beings of under-
standing as exercising such an influence on appearances, then natural necessity will
attach to all connections of cause and effect in the sensuous world; though, on the other
hand, freedom can be granted to the cause which is itself not an appearance (but the
foundation of appearance). Nature and freedom therefore can without contradiction be
attributed to the very same thing, but in different relations—on one side as an appear-
ance, on the other as a thing in itself.
We have in us a faculty which not only stands in connection with its subjective
determining grounds [motives] which are the natural causes of its actions and is so far the
faculty of a being that itself belongs to appearances, but is also related to objective
grounds which are only Ideas so far as they can determine this faculty. This connection is
expressed by the word ought.This faculty is called “reason,” and, so far as we consider a
being (man) entirely according to this objectively determinable reason, he cannot be
considered as a being of sense; this property is a property of a thing in itself, a property
whose possibility we cannot comprehend. I mean we cannot comprehend how the ought
should determine (even if it never has actually determined) its activity and could become
the cause of actions whose effect is an appearance in the sensible world. Yet the causality
of reason would be freedom with regard to the effects in the sensuous world, so far as we
can consider objective grounds,which are themselves Ideas, as their determinants. For its
action in that case would not depend upon subjective conditions, consequently not upon
those of time, and of course not upon the law of nature which serves to determine them,
because grounds of reason give the rule universally to actions, according to principles,
without influence of the circumstances of either time or place.*The Idea of freedom occurs only in the relation of the intellectual, as cause, to the appearance, as
effect. Hence we cannot attribute freedom to matter in regard to the incessant action by which it fills its
space, though this action takes place from an internal principle. We can likewise find no notion of free-
dom suitable to purely rational beings, for instance, to God, so far as his action is immanent. For his
action, though independent of external determining causes, is determined in his eternal reason, that is, in
the divine nature.It is only if something is to startby an action, and so the effect occurs in the sequence
of time, or in the world of sense (for example, the beginning of the world), that we can put the question
whether the causal act of the cause must in its turn have been started or whether the cause can originate an
effect without its causal act itself beginning. In the former case, the concept of this activity is a concept of
natural necessity; in the latter, that of freedom. From this the reader will see that as I explained freedom
to be the faculty of starting an event spontaneously, I have exactly hit the concept which is the problem of
metaphysics.344
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