The transcendental idea of freedom is far from constituting the entire
content of the psychological conception so termed, which is for the
most part empirical. It merely presents us with the conception of
spontaneity of action, as the proper ground for imputing freedom to the
cause of a certain class of objects. It is, however, the true
stumbling-stone to philosophy, which meets with unconquerable
difficulties in the way of its admitting this kind of unconditioned
causality. That element in the question of the freedom of the will,
which has for so long a time placed speculative reason in such
perplexity, is properly only transcendental, and concerns the question,
whether there must be held to exist a faculty of spontaneous
origination of a series of successive things or states. How such a
faculty is possible is not a necessary inquiry; for in the case of
natural causality itself, we are obliged to content ourselves with the
à priori knowledge that such a causality must be presupposed, although
we are quite incapable of comprehending how the being of one thing is
possible through the being of another, but must for this information
look entirely to experience. Now we have demonstrated this necessity of
a free first beginning of a series of phenomena, only in so far as it
is required for the comprehension of an origin of the world, all
following states being regarded as a succession according to laws of
nature alone. But, as there has thus been proved the existence of a
faculty which can of itself originate a series in time—although we are
unable to explain how it can exist—we feel ourselves authorized to
admit, even in the midst of the natural course of events, a beginning,
as regards causality, of different successions of phenomena, and at the
same time to attribute to all substances a faculty of free action. But
we ought in this case not to allow ourselves to fall into a common
misunderstanding, and to suppose that, because a successive series in
the world can only have a comparatively first beginning—another state
or condition of things always preceding—an absolutely first beginning
of a series in the course of nature is impossible. For we are not
speaking here of an absolutely first beginning in relation to time, but
as regards causality alone. When, for example, I, completely of my own
free will, and independently of the necessarily determinative influence
of natural causes, rise from my chair, there commences with this event,
including its material consequences in infinitum, an absolutely new
series; although, in relation to time, this event is merely the
continuation of a preceding series. For this resolution and act of mine
do not form part of the succession of effects in nature, and are not
mere continuations of it; on the contrary, the determining causes of
nature cease to operate in reference to this event, which certainly
succeeds the acts of nature, but does not proceed from them. For these