e cause of B among events known to precede B
independently of the principle. Hence, from this point of view, there
can be no process such as Kant is trying to describe, and therefore
its precise nature is a matter of indifference.

[45] Cf. B. 165, M. 101, where Kant points out that the
determination of particular laws of nature requires
experience.

We may now turn to the facts. There is, it seems, no such thing as a
process by which, beginning with the knowledge of successive
apprehensions or representations, of the object of which we are
unaware, we come to be aware of their object. Still less is there a
process--and it is really this which Kant is trying to describe--by
which, so beginning, we come to apprehend these successive
representations as objects, i. e. as parts of the physical world,
through the thought of them as necessarily related. We may take Kant's
instance of our apprehension of a boat going down stream. We do not
first apprehend two perceptions of which the object is undetermined
and then decide that their object is a succession rather than a
coexistence. Still less do we first apprehend two perceptions or
representations and then decide that they are related as successive
events in the physical world. From the beginning we apprehend a real
sequence, viz. the fact that the boat having left one place is
arriving at another; there is no process _to_ this apprehension. In
other words, from the beginning we are aware of real elements, viz. of
events in nature, and we are aware of them as really related, viz. as
successive in nature. This must be so. For if we begin with the
awareness of two mere perceptions, we could never thence reach the
knowledge that their object was a succession, or even the knowledge
that they had an object; nor, so beginning, could we become aware of
the perceptions themselves as successive events in the physical world.
For suppose, _per impossibile_, the existence of a process by which we
come to be aware of two elements A and B as standing in a relation of
sequence in the physical world. In the first place, A and B, with the
awareness of which we begin, must be, and be known to be, real or
objective, and not perceptions or apprehensions; otherwise we could
never come to apprehend them as related in the physical world. In the
second place, A and B must be, and be known to be, real with the
reality of a physical event, otherwise we could never come to
apprehend them