(material) principle 'every thing must have its cause,' "in his controversy with Eberhard, who had identified them as one and the same.—I intend myself to criticize Kant's proof of the à priori and consequently transcendental character of the law of causality further on in a separate paragraph, after having given the only true proof.
With these precedents to guide them, the several writers on Logic belonging to Kant's school; Hofbauer, Maass, Jakob, Kiesewetter and others, have defined pretty accurately the distinction between reason and cause. Kiesewetter, more especially, gives it thus quite satisfactorily:[1] "Reason of knowledge is not to be confounded with reason of fact (cause). The Principle of Sufficient Reason belongs to Logic, that of Causality to Metaphysics.[2] The former is the fundamental principle of thought; the latter that of experience. Cause refers to real things, logical reason has only to do with representations."
Kant's adversaries urge this distinction still more strongly. G. E. Schultze[3] complains that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is confounded with that of Causality. Salomon Maimon[4] regrets that so much should be said about the sufficient reason without an explanation of what is meant by it, while he blames Kant[5] for deriving the principle of causality from the logical form of hypothetical judgments.
F. H. Jacobi[6] says, that by the confounding of the two conceptions, reason and cause, an illusion is produced, which has given rise to various false speculations; and he points out the distinction between them after his own
