Now, as far as it is the starting-point, _i.e._ the mediator, for our perception of all other objects, I have called the bodily organism, in the first edition of the present work, the _Immediate Object_; this, however, must not be taken in a strictly literal sense. For although our bodily sensations are all apprehended directly, still this immediate apprehension does not yet make our body itself perceptible to us as an object; on the contrary, up to this point all remains subjective, that is to say, sensation. From this sensation certainly proceeds the perception of all other objects as the causes of such sensations, and these causes then present themselves to us as objects; but it is not so with the body itself, which only supplies sensations to consciousness. It is only _indirectly_ that we know even this body objectively, _i.e._ as an object, by its presenting itself, like all other objects, as the recognised cause of a subjectively given effect--and precisely on this account _objectively_--in our Understanding, or brain (which is the same). Now this can only take place when its own senses are acted upon by its parts: for instance, when the body is seen by the eye, or felt by the hand, &c., upon which data the brain (or understanding) forthwith constructs it as to shape and quality in space.--The immediate presence in our consciousness of representations belonging to this class, depends therefore upon the position assigned to them in the causal chain--by which all things are _connected_--relatively to the body (for the time being) of the Subject--by which (the Subject) all things are _known_. § 23. _Arguments against Kant's Proof of the_ à priority _of the conception of Causality_. One of the chief objects of the "Critique of Pure Reason" is to show the universal validity, for all experience, of the causal law, its _à priority_, and, as a necessary consequence of this, its restriction to possible experience. Nevertheless, I cannot assent to the proof there given of the _à priority_ of the principle, which is substantially this:--"The _synthesis_ of the manifold by the imagination, which is necessary for all empirical knowledge, gives succession, but not yet determinate succession: that is, it leaves undetermined which of two states perceived was the first, not only in my imagination, but in the object itself. But definite order in this succession--through which alone what we perceive becomes experience, or, in other words, authorizes us to form objectively valid judgments--is first brought into it by the purely intellectual conception of cause and effect. Thus the principle of causal relation is the condition which renders experience possible, and, as such, it is given us _à priori_."[98] [98] Kant, "Krit. d. r. Vern." 1st edition, p. 201; 5th edition, p. 246. (English translation by M. Müller, p. 176.) This is, however, not a literal quotation. (Tr.'s note.)