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FIRST CLASS OF OBJECTS FOR THE SUBJECT. 99
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 sensa
tions 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 i.e. body objectively, as an object, by its presenting
itself, like all other objects, as the recognised cause of a
on this account
subjectively given effect and precisely
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 a priority of
the conception of Causality.
One of the chief objects of the
"
Critique
of Pure
Beason" is to show the universal validity, for all expe
rience, of the causal law, its a priority, and, as a necessary