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FIRST CLASS OF OBJECTS FOE THE SUBJECT. 101
I merely apprehend the succession of my own representa
tions, but the succession in my apprehension does not
authorize me to form any judgment whatever as to the
succession in the object, unless that judgment be based
and since, besides, I might invert the order
upon causality ;
in which these perceptions follow each other in my appre
hension, there being nothing which determines them as
objective. To illustrate this assertion, Kant brings forward
the instance of a house, whose parts we may consider in any
order we like, from top to bottom, or from bottom to top ;
the determination of succession being in this case purely
subjective and not founded upon an object, because it
depends upon our pleasure. In opposition to this instance,
he brings forward the perception of a ship sailing down a
river, which we see successively lower and lower down the
stream, which perception of the successively varying posi
tions of the ship cannot be changed by the looker-on. In
this latter case, therefore, he derives the subjective follow
ing in his own apprehension from the objective following
in the phenomenon, and on this account he calls it an
event. Now I maintain, on the contrary, that there is no
difference at all between these two cases, that both are events,
and that our knowledge of both is objective : that is to say,
it is knowledge of changes in real objects recognized as
such by the Subject. Both are changes of relative position
in two bodies. In the first case, one of these bodies is a
and the other
part of the observer s own organism, the eye,
is the house, with respect to the different parts of which
the eye successively alters its position. In the second, it
is the ship which alters its position towards the stream ;
therefore the change occurs between two bodies. Both are
events, the only difference being that, in the first, the
change has its starting-point in the observer s own body,
from whose sensations undoubtedly all his perceptions
originally proceed, but which is nevertheless an object