objects out of thyself, notwithstanding that thou neither knowest nor canst know aught of them. But how then dost thou know, and how dost thou propose to prove, that sensation must have a cause? Or, in the general manner in which thou hast stated the proposition, why canst thou not rest satisfied to know that something is? why must thou assume that it has become so, or that it has become so by means of a foreign power? I remark that thou hast always only assumed this.
I. I confess it. But I cannot do otherwise than think so. It seems as if I knew it immediately.
Spirit. What this answer, “thou knowest it immediately,” may signify, we shall see should we be brought back to it as the only possible one. We will however first try all other possible methods of ascertaining the grounds of the assertion that everything must have a cause.
Dost thou know this by immediate perception?
I. How could I? since perception only declares that in me something is, according as my nature is determined; but never that it has become so; still less that it has become so by means of a foreign power lying beyond all perception.
Spirit. Or dost thou obtain this principle by generalisation of thy observation of external things, the cause of which thou hast always discovered out of themselves; an observation which thou now appliest to thyself and to thine own condition?
I. Do not treat me like a child, and ascribe to me palpable absurdities. By the principle of causality I first arrive at a knowledge of things out of myself; how then can I again, by observation of these things, arrive at this principle itself. Shall the earth rest on
