Note 1187 — Chapter II · SYSTEM OF ALL PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING

Cf. Stout, Manual of Psychology, third edition, pp. 444-6: “Unless we assume from the outset that the primitive mind treats a perceived change which challenges its interest and attention, not as something self-existent in isolation, but as something conditioned by and conditioning other changes, it seems hopeless to attempt to show how this causal point of view could have arisen through any extension of knowledge in accordance with ascertained psychological laws and conditions.... There is good reason for denying that customary repetition is even required to furnish a first occasion or opportunity for the first emergence of the apprehension of causal relations. For, as we have already insisted, the process of learning by experience is from the first experimental.... Regularities are only found because they are sought. But it is in the seeking that the category of causal unity is primarily involved.” Cf. below, pp. 371-2.