On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

§ 47 Relation in Time Between Reason and Consequence

According to the laws of causality and of motivation, a reason must precede its consequence in Time. That this is absolutely essential, I have shown in my chief work, to which I here refer my readers157 in order to avoid repeating myself. Therefore, if we only bear in mind that it is not one thing which is the cause of another thing, but one state which is the cause of another state, we shall not allow ourselves to be misled by examples like that given by Kant,158 that the stove, which is the cause of the warmth of the room, is simultaneous with its effect. The state of the stove: that is, its being warmer than its surrounding medium, must precede the communication of its surplus caloric to that medium; now, as each layer of air on becoming warm makes way for a cooler layer rushing in, the first state, the cause, and consequently also the second, the effect, are renewed until at last the temperature of stove and room become equalized. Here therefore we have no permanent cause (the stove) and permanent effect (the warmth of the room) as simultaneous things, but a chain of changes; that is, a constant renewing of two states, one of which is the effect of the other. From this example, however, it is obvious that even Kant’s conception of Causality was far from clear.

On the other hand, the Principle of Sufficient Reason of Knowing conveys with it no relation in Time, but merely a relation for our Reason: here therefore, before and after have no meaning.

In the Principle of Sufficient Reason of Being, so far as it is valid in Geometry, there is likewise no relation in Time, but only a relation in Space, of which we might say that all things were co-existent, if here the words co-existence and succession had any meaning. In Arithmetic, on the contrary, the Reason of Being is nothing else but precisely the relation of Time itself.