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Let us then seek to give an account of what is understood by simultaneity or antecedence, and for this let us analyze some examples.
I write a letter; it is afterward read by the friend to whom I have addressed it. There are two facts which have had for their theater two different consciousnesses. In writing this letter I have had the visual image of it, and my friend has had in his turn this same visual image in reading the letter. Though these two facts happen in impenetrable worlds, I do not hesitate to regard the first as anterior to the second, because I believe it is its cause.
I hear thunder, and I conclude there has been an electric discharge; I do not hesitate to consider the physical phenomenon as anterior to the auditory image perceived in my consciousness, because I believe it is its cause.
Behold then the rule we follow, and the only one we can follow: when a phenomenon appears to us as the cause of another, we regard it as anterior. It is therefore by cause that we define time; but most often, when two facts appear to us bound by a constant relation, how do we recognize which is the cause and which the effect? We assume that the anterior fact, the antecedent, is the cause of the other, of the consequent. It is then by time that we define cause. How save ourselves from this petitio principii?
We say now post hoc, ergo propter hoc; now propter hoc, ergo post hoc; shall we escape from this vicious circle?
X
Let us see, not how we succeed in escaping, for we do not completely succeed, but how we try to escape.
I execute a voluntary act and I feel afterward a sensation , which I regard as a consequence of the act ; on the other hand, for whatever reason, I infer that this consequence is not immediate, but that outside my consciousness two facts and , which I have not witnessed, have happened, and in such a way that is the effect of , that is the effect of , and of .
But why? If I think I have reason to regard the four facts as bound to one another by a causal connection, why
