summa quiete ac tranquillitate fuisse. Unâ etiam cum eo Cogitationem exstitisse, quam et Gratiam et Silentium (Sigen) nuncupant. Hunc porro_ Bythum _in animum, aliquando induxisse, rerum omnium initium proferre, atque hanc, quam in animum induxerat, productionem, in Sigen (silentium) quæ unâ cum eo erat, non secus atque in vulvam demisisse.
Hanc vero, suscepto hoc semine, prægnantem effectam peperisse Intellectum, parenti suo parem et æqualem, atque ita comparatum, ut solus paternæ magnitudinis capax esset. Atque hunc Intellectum et Monogenem et Patrem et principum omnium rerum appellant._) [37] Schelling, "Abhandlung von der menschlichen Freiheit."
[38] Irenæus, "Contr. hæres." lib. i. c. 1.
[39] "For they say that in those unseen heights which have no name there is a pre-existing, perfect Æon; this they also call fore-rule, forefather and the depth.--They say, that being incomprehensible and invisible, eternal and unborn, he has existed during endless Æons in the deepest calmness and tranquillity; and that coexisting with him was Thought, which they also call Grace and Silence. This Depth once bethought him to put forth from himself the beginning of all things and to lay that offshoot--which he had resolved to put forth--like a sperm into the coexisting Silence, as it were into a womb. Now this Silence, being thus impregnated and having conceived, gave birth to Intellect, a being which was like and equal to its Creator, and alone able to comprehend the greatness of its father. This Intellect also they call the Only-begotten and the Beginning of all things." [Tr.'s add.]
Somehow or other this must have come to Jacob Böhme's hearing from the History of Heresy, and Herr von Schelling must have received it from him in all faith.
§ 9. _Leibnitz._ It was Leibnitz who first formally stated the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a main principle of all knowledge and of all science. He proclaims it very pompously in various passages of his works, giving himself great airs, as though he had been the first to invent it; yet all he finds to say about it is, that everything must have a sufficient reason for being as it is, and not otherwise: and this the world had probably found out before him. True, he makes casual allusions to the distinction between its two chief significations, without, however, laying any particular stress upon it, or explaining it clearly anywhere else. The principal reference to it is in his "Principia Philosophiæ," § 32, and a little more satisfactorily in the French version, entitled "Monadologie": _En vertu du principe de la raison suffisante, nous considérons qu'aucun fait ne sauroit se trouver vrai ou existant, aucune énonciation véritable, sans qu'il y ait une raison suffisante, pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement_.[40] [40] Compare with this § 44 of his "Theodicée," and his 5th letter to Clarke, § 125.
§ 10. _Wolf._ The first writer who explicitly separated the two chief significations of our principle, and stated the difference between them in detail, was therefore Wolf. Wolf, however, does not place the principle of sufficient reason in Logic, as is now the custom, but in Ontology.
True, in § 71 he urges the necessity of not confounding the principle of sufficient reason of knowing with that of cause and effect; still he does not clearly determine here wherein the difference consists.
Indeed, he himself mistakes the one for the other; for he quotes instances of cause and effect in confirmation of the _principium rationis sufficientis_ in this very chapter, _de ratione sufficiente_, §§ 70, 74, 75, 77, which, had he really wished to preserve that distinction, ought rather to have been quoted in the chapter _de causis_ of the same work. In said chapter he again brings forward precisely similar instances, and once more enunciates the _principium cognoscendi_ (§ 876), which does not certainly belong to it, having been already discussed, yet which serves to introduce the immediately following clear and definite distinction between this principle and the law of causality, §§ 881-884. _Principium_, he continues, _dicitur id, quod in se continet rationem alterius_; and he distinguishes _three_ kinds: 1. PRINCIPIUM FIENDI (_causa_), which he defines as _ratio actualitatis alterius_, e.g., _si lapis calescit, ignis aut radii solares sunt rationes, cur calor lapidi insit_.--2. PRINCIPIUM ESSENDI, which he defines as _ratio possibilitatis alterius; in eodem, exemplo, ratio possibilitatis, cur lapis calorem recipere possit, est in essentia seu modo compositionis lapidis_. This last conception seems to me inadmissible. If it has any meaning at all, possibility means correspondence with the general conditions of experience known to us _à priori_, as Kant has sufficiently shown. From these conditions we know, with respect to Wolf's instance of the stone, that changes are possible as effects proceeding from causes: we know, that is, that one state can succeed another, if the former contains the conditions for the latter.
In this case we find, as effect, the state of being warm in the stone; as cause, the preceding state of a limited capacity for warmth in the stone and its contact with free heat. Now, Wolf's naming the first mentioned property of this state _principium essendi_, and the second, _principium fiendi_, rests upon a delusion caused by the fact that, so far as the stone is concerned, the conditions are more lasting and can therefore wait longer for the others. That the stone should be as it is: that is, that it should be chemically so constituted as to bring with it a particular degree of specific heat, consequently a capacity for heat which stands in inverse proportion to its specific heat; that besides it should, on the other hand, come into contact with free heat, is the consequence of a whole chain of antecedent causes, all of them _principia fiendi_; but it is the coincidence of circumstances on both sides which primarily constitutes that condition, upon which, as cause, the becoming warm depends, as effect. All this leaves no room for Wolf's _principium essendi_, which I therefore do not admit, and concerning which I have here entered somewhat into detail, partly because I mean to use the word myself later on in a totally different sense; partly also, because this explanation contributes to facilitate the comprehension of the law of causality.--3. Wolf, as we have said, distinguishes a PRINCIPIUM COGNOSCENDI, and refers also under _causa_ to a _causa impulsiva, sive ratio voluntatem determinans_.
Baumgarten repeats the Wolfian distinctions in his "Metaphysica," §§ reason_, of which his explanation agrees with Wolf's _ratio essendi_, and might even be applicable to the _ratio cognoscendi_, if he did not transfer to things what only applies to conceptions; 2. _Outward _ratio cognoscendi_ as a condition of the proposition; but in an example, § 125, he nevertheless confounds it with cause.
[41] Doctrine of Reason.
Lambert, in the new Organon, does not mention Wolf's distinctions; he shows, however, that he recognizes a difference between reason of knowledge and cause;[42] for he says that God is the _principium essendi_ of truths, and that truths are the _principia cognoscendi_ of God.
[42] Lambert, "New Organon," vol. i. § 572.
Plattner, in his Aphorisms, § 868, says: "What is called reason and conclusion within our knowledge (_principium cognoscendi, ratio--rationatum_), is in reality cause and effect (_causa efficiens--effectus_). Every cause is a reason, every effect a conclusion." He is therefore of opinion that cause and effect, in reality, correspond to the conceptions reason and consequence in our thought; that the former stand in a similar relation with respect to the latter as substance and accident, for instance, to subject and predicate, or the quality of the object to our sensation of that quality, &c. &c. I think it useless to refute this opinion, for it is easy to see that premisses and conclusion in judgments stand in an entirely different relation to one another from a knowledge of cause and effect; although in individual cases even knowledge of a cause, as such, may be the reason of a judgment which enunciates the effect.[43] [43] Compare § 36. of this treatise.
§ 12. _Hume._ No one before this serious thinker had ever doubted what follows.
First, and before all things in heaven and on earth, is the Principle of Sufficient Reason in the form of the Law of Causality. For it is a _veritas æterna_: _i.e._ it is in and by itself above Gods and Fate; whereas everything else, the understanding, for instance, which thinks that principle, and no less the whole world and whatever may be its cause--atoms, motion, a Creator, _et cætera_--is what it is only in accordance with, and by virtue of, that principle. Hume was the first to whom it occurred to inquire whence this law of causality derives its authority, and to demand its credentials. Everyone knows the result at which he arrives: that causality is nothing beyond the empirically perceived succession of things and states in Time, with which habit has made us familiar. The fallacy of this result is felt at once, nor is it difficult to refute. The merit lies in the question itself; for it became the impulse and starting-point for Kant's profound researches, and by their means led to an incomparably deeper and more thorough view of Idealism than the one which had hitherto existed, and which was chiefly Berkeley's. It led to transcendental Idealism, from which arises the conviction, that the world is as dependent upon us, as a whole, as we are dependent upon it in detail. For, by pointing out the existence of those transcendental principles, as such, which enable us to determine _à priori_, _i.e._ before all experience, certain points concerning objects and their possibility, he proved that these things could not exist, as they present themselves to us, independently of our knowledge. The resemblance between a world such as this and a dream, is obvious.
Kant's chief passage on the Principle of Sufficient Reason is in a little work entitled "On a discovery, which is to permit us to dispense with all Criticism of Pure Reason."[44] Section I., _lit._ A.
Here he strongly urges the distinction between "the logical (formal) principle of cognition 'every proposition must have its reason,' and the transcendental (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.
[44] "Ueber eine Entdeckung, nach der alle Kritik der reinen Vernunft entbehrlich gemacht werden soll."
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:[45] "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.[46] 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."
[46] _Ibid._ p. 60.
Kant's adversaries urge this distinction still more strongly. G. E.
Schultze[47] complains that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is confounded with that of Causality. Salomon Maimon[48] regrets that so much should be said about the sufficient reason without an explanation of what is meant by it, while he blames Kant[49] for deriving the principle of causality from the logical form of hypothetical judgments.
F. H. Jacobi[50] 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 fashion. Here, however, as is usual with him, we find a good deal more of self-complacent phrase-jugglery than of serious philosophy.
[50] Jacobi, "Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza," Beilage 7, p. 414.
How Herr von Schelling finally distinguishes reason from cause, may be seen in his "Aphorisms introductory to the Philosophy of Nature,"[51] § 184, which open the first book of the first volume of Marcus and Schelling's "Annals of Medecine." Here we are taught that gravity is the _reason_ and light the _cause_ of all things. This I merely quote as a curiosity; for such random talk would not otherwise deserve a place among the opinions of serious and honest inquirers.
[51] "Aphorismen zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie."
§ 14. _On the Proofs of the Principle._ We have still to record various fruitless attempts which have been made to prove the Principle of Sufficient Reason, mostly without clearly defining in which sense it was taken: Wolf's, for instance, in his Ontology, § 70, repeated by Baumgarten in his "Metaphysics," § 20. It is useless to repeat and refute it here, as it obviously rests on a verbal quibble. Plattner[52] and Jakob[53] have tried other proofs, in which, however, the circle is easily detected. I purpose dealing with those of Kant further on, as I have already said. Since I hope, in the course of this treatise, to point out the different laws of our cognitive faculties, of which the principle of sufficient reason is the common expression, it will result as a matter of course, that this principle cannot be proved, and that, on the contrary, Aristotle's remark:[54] λόγον ζητοῦσι ὧν οὐκ ἔστι λόγος. ἀποδείξεως γὰρ ἀρχὴ οὐκ ἀπόδειξίς ἐστι (_rationem eorum quærant, quorum non est ratio: demonstrationis enim principium non est demonstratio_) may be applied with equal propriety to all these proofs. For every proof is a reference to something already recognised; and if we continue requiring a proof again for this something, whatever it be, we at last arrive at certain propositions which express the forms and laws, therefore the conditions, of all thought and of all knowledge, in the application of which consequently all thought and all knowledge consists: so that certainty is nothing but correspondence with those conditions, forms, and laws, therefore their own certainty cannot again be ascertained by means of other propositions. In the fifth chapter I mean to discuss the kind of truth which belongs to propositions such as these.
[53] Jakob, "Logik und Metaphysik," p. 38 (1794).
[54] Aristotle, "Metaph." iii. 6. "They seek a reason for that which has no reason; for the principle of demonstration is not demonstration." [Tr.'s add.] Compare with this citation "Analyt.
post." i. 2.
To seek a proof for the Principle of Sufficient Reason, is, moreover, an especially flagrant absurdity, which shows a want of reflection.
Every proof is a demonstration of the reason for a judgment which has been pronounced, and which receives the predicate _true_ in virtue precisely of that demonstration. This necessity for a reason is exactly what the Principle of Sufficient Reason expresses. Now if we require a proof of it, or, in other words, a demonstration of its reason, we thereby already assume it to be true, nay, we found our demand precisely upon that assumption, and thus we find ourselves involved in the circle of exacting a proof of our right to exact a proof.
CHAPTER III.
INSUFFICIENCY OF THE OLD AND OUTLINES OF A NEW DEMONSTRATION.
§ 15. _Cases which are not comprised among the old established meanings of the Principle._ From the summary given in the preceding chapter we gather, that two distinct applications of the principle of sufficient reason have been recognized, although very gradually, very tardily, and not without frequent relapses into error and confusion: the one being its application to judgments, which, to be true, must have a reason; the other, its application to changes in material objects, which must always have a cause. In both cases we find the principle of sufficient reason authorizing us to ask _why?_ a quality which is essential to it.
But are all the cases in which it authorizes us to ask _why_ comprised in these two relations? If I ask: Why are the three sides of this triangle equal? the answer is: Because the three angles are so. Now, is the equality of the angles the cause of the equality of the sides?
No; for here we have to do with no change, consequently with no effect which must have a cause.--Is it merely a logical reason? No; for the equality of the angle is not only a proof of the equality of the sides, it is not only the foundation of a judgment: mere conceptions alone would never suffice to explain why the sides must be equal, because the angles are so; for the conception of the equality of the sides is not contained in that of the equality of the angles. Here therefore we have no connection between conceptions and judgments, but between sides and angles. The equality of the angles is not the _direct_, but the _indirect_ reason, by which we know the equality of the sides; for it is the reason why a thing is such as it is (in this case, that the sides are equal): the angles being equal, the sides must therefore be equal. Here we have a necessary connection between angles and sides, not a direct, necessary connection between two judgments.--Or again, if I ask why _infecta facta_, but never _facta infecta fieri possunt_, consequently why the past is absolutely irrevocable, the future inevitable, even this does not admit of purely logical proof by means of mere abstract conceptions, nor does it belong either to causality, which only rules _occurrences_ within Time, not Time itself. The present hour hurled the preceding one into the bottomless pit of the past, not through causality, but immediately, through its mere existence, which existence was nevertheless inevitable. It is impossible to make this comprehensible or even clearer by means of mere conceptions; we recognise it, on the contrary, quite directly and instinctively, just as we recognize the difference between right and left and all that depends upon it: for instance, that our left glove will not fit our right hand, &c. &c.
Now, as all those cases in which the principle of sufficient reason finds its application cannot therefore be reduced to logical reason and consequence and to cause and effect, the law of specification cannot have been sufficiently attended to in this classification. The law of homogeneity, however, obliges us to assume, that these cases cannot differ to infinity, but that they may be reduced to certain species.
Now, before attempting this classification, it will be necessary to determine what is peculiar to the principle of sufficient reason in all cases, as its special characteristic; because the conception of the genus must always be determined before the conception of the species.
§ 16. _The Roots of the Principle of Sufficient Reason._ _Our knowing consciousness, which manifests itself as outer and inner Sensibility_ (or receptivity) _and as Understanding and Reason, subdivides itself into Subject and Object and contains nothing else. To be Object for the Subject and to be our representation, are the same thing. All our representations stand towards one another in a regulated connection, which may be determined_ À PRIORI, _and on account of which, nothing existing separately and independently, nothing single or detached, can become an Object for us_. It is this connection which is expressed by the Principle of Sufficient Reason in its generality. Now, although, as may be gathered from what has gone before, this connection assumes different forms according to the different kinds of objects, which forms are differently expressed by the Principle of Sufficient Reason; still the connection retains what is common to all these forms, and this is expressed in a general and abstract way by our principle.
The relations upon which it is founded, and which will be more closely indicated in this treatise, are what I call the Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Now, on closer inspection, according to the laws of homogeneity and of specification, these relations separate into distinct species, which differ widely from each other. Their number, however, may be reduced to _four_, according to the _four_ classes into which everything that can become an object for us--that is to say, all our representations--may be divided. These classes will be stated and considered in the following four chapters.
We shall see the Principle of Sufficient Reason appear under a different form in each of them; but it will also show itself under all as the same principle and as derived from the said root, precisely because it admits of being expressed as above.
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE FIRST CLASS OF OBJECTS FOR THE SUBJECT, AND THAT FORM OF THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON WHICH PREDOMINATES IN IT.
§ 17. _General Account of this Class of Objects._ The first class of objects possible to our representative faculty, is that of _intuitive, complete, empirical_ representations. They are _intuitive_ as opposed to mere thoughts, _i.e._ abstract conceptions; they are _complete_, inasmuch as, according to Kant's distinction, they not only contain the formal, but also the material part of phenomena; and they are _empirical_, partly as proceeding, not from a mere connection of thoughts, but from an excitation of feeling in our sensitive organism, as their origin, to which they constantly refer for evidence as to their reality: partly also because they are linked together, according to the united laws of Space, Time and Causality, in that complex without beginning or end which forms our _Empirical Reality_. As, nevertheless, according to the result of Kant's teaching, this _Empirical Reality_ does not annul their _Transcendental Ideality_, we shall consider them here, where we have only to do with the formal elements of knowledge, merely as representations.
§ 18. _Outline of a Transcendental Analysis of Empirical Reality._ The forms of these representations are those of the inner and outer sense; namely, _Time_ and _Space_. But these are only _perceptible_ when _filled_. Their _perceptibility_ is _Matter_, to which I shall return further on, and again in § 21. _If Time were the only form_ of these representations, there could be no _coexistence_, therefore nothing _permanent_ and no _duration_. For _Time_ is only perceived when filled, and its course is only perceived by the _changes_ which take place in that which fills it. The _permanence_ of an object is therefore only recognized by contrast with the _changes_ going on in other objects _coexistent_ with it. But the representation of _coexistence_ is impossible in Time alone; it depends, for its completion, upon the representation of _Space_; because, in mere Time, all things _follow one another_, and in mere Space all things are _side by side_; it is accordingly only by the combination of Time and Space that the representation of coexistence arises.
_On the other hand, were Space the sole form_ of this class of representations, there would be no _change_; for change or alteration is _succession_ of states, and _succession_ is only possible in _Time_.
We may therefore define Time as the possibility of opposite states in one and the same thing.
Thus we see, that although infinite divisibility and infinite extension are common to both Time and Space, these two forms of empirical representations differ fundamentally, inasmuch as what is essential to the _one_ is without any meaning at all for the _other_: juxtaposition having no meaning in Time, succession no meaning in Space. The empirical representations which belong to the orderly complex of reality, appear notwithstanding in both forms together; nay, the _intimate union_ of both is the condition of reality which, in a sense, grows out of them, as a product grows out of its factors.
Now it is the Understanding which, by means of its own peculiar function, brings about this _union_ and connects these heterogeneous forms in such a manner, that _empirical reality_--albeit only for that Understanding--arises out of their mutual interpenetration, and arises as a collective representation, forming a complex, held together by the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, but whose limits are problematical. Each single representation belonging to this class is a part of this complex, each one taking its place in it according to laws known to us _à priori_; in it therefore countless objects _coexist_, because Substance, _i.e._ Matter, remains permanent in spite of the ceaseless flow of Time, and because its states change in spite of the rigid immobility of Space. In this complex, in short, the whole objective, real world exists for us. The reader who may be interested in this, will find the present rough sketch of the analysis of empirical reality further worked out in § 4 of the first volume of "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,"[55] where a closer explanation is given of the way in which the Understanding effects this union and thus creates for itself the empirical world. He will also find a very important help in the table, "_Prædicabilia à priori_ of Time, Space, and Matter," which is added to the fourth chapter of the second volume of the same work, and which I recommend to his attention, as it especially shows how the contrasts of Time and Space are equally balanced in Matter, as their product, under the form of Causality.
edition.
We shall now proceed to give a detailed exposition of that function of the Understanding which is the basis of empirical reality; only we must first, by a few incidental explanations, remove the more immediate objections which the fundamental idealism of the view I have adopted might encounter.
Now as, notwithstanding this union through the Understanding of the forms of the inner and outer sense in representing Matter and with it a permanent outer world, all _immediate_ knowledge is nevertheless acquired by the Subject through the _inner_ sense alone--the outer sense being again Object for the inner, which in its turn perceives the perceptions of the outer--and as therefore, with respect to the _immediate presence_ of representations in its consciousness, the Subject remains under the rule of _Time_ alone, as the form of the _inner sense_:[56] it follows, that only one representation can be present to it (the Subject) at the same time, although that one may be very complicated. When we speak of representations as _immediately present_, we mean, that they are not only known in the union of Time and Space effected by the Understanding--an intuitive faculty, as we shall soon see--through which the collective representation of empirical reality arises, but that they are known in mere Time alone, as representations of the inner sense, and just at the neutral point at which its two currents separate, called the _present_. The necessary condition mentioned in the preceding paragraph for the immediate presence of a representation of this class, is its causal action upon our senses and consequently upon our organism, which itself belongs to this class of objects, and is therefore subject to the causal law which predominates in it and which we are now about to examine. Now as therefore, on the one hand, according to the laws of the inner and outer world, the Subject cannot stop short at that one representation; but as, on the other hand, there is no coexistence in Time alone: that single representation must always vanish and be superseded by others, in virtue of a law which we cannot determine _à priori_, but which depends upon circumstances soon to be mentioned. It is moreover a well-known fact, that the imagination and dreams reproduce the immediate presence of representations; the investigation of that fact, however, belongs to empirical Psychology. Now as, notwithstanding the transitory, isolated nature of our representations with respect to their immediate presence in our consciousness, the Subject nevertheless retains the representation of an all-comprehensive complex of reality, as described above, by means of the function of the Understanding; representations have, on the strength of this antithesis, been viewed, as something quite different when considered as belonging to that complex than when considered with reference to their immediate presence in our consciousness. From the former point of view they were called _real things_; from the latter only, representations κατ' ἐξοχήν. This view of the matter, which is the ordinary one, is known under the name of _Realism_. On the appearance of modern philosophy, _Idealism_ opposed itself to this _Realism_ and has since been steadily gaining ground. Malebranche and Berkeley were its earliest representatives, and Kant enhanced it to the power of Transcendental Idealism, by which the co-existence of the Empirical Reality of things with their Transcendental Ideality becomes conceivable, and according to which Kant expresses himself as follows:[57] "_Transcendental Idealism_ teaches that all phenomena are representations only, not things by themselves." And again:[58] "Space itself is nothing but mere representation, and whatever is in it must therefore be contained in that representation. There is nothing whatever in Space, except so far as it is really represented in it." Finally he says:[59] "If we take away the thinking Subject, the whole material world must vanish; because it is nothing but a phenomenon in the sensibility of our own subject and a certain class of its representations." In India, Idealism is even a doctrine of popular religion, not only of Brahminism, but of Buddhism; in Europe alone is it a paradox, in consequence of the essentially and unavoidably realistic principle of Judaism. But Realism quite overlooks the fact, that the so-called existence of these real things is _absolutely nothing but their being represented_ (_ein Vorgestellt-werden_), or--if it be insisted, that only the immediate presence in the consciousness of the Subject can be called being represented κατ' ἐντελέχειαν--it is even only a possibility of being represented κατὰ δύναμιν. The realist forgets that the Object ceases to be Object apart from its reference to the Subject, and that if we take away that reference, or think it away, we at once do away with all objective existence. Leibnitz, while he clearly felt the Subject to be the necessary condition for the Object, was nevertheless unable to get rid of the thought that objects exist by themselves and independently of all reference whatsoever to the Subject, _i.e._ independently of being represented. He therefore assumed in the first place a world of objects exactly like the world of representations and running parallel with it, having no direct, but only an outward connection with it by means of a _harmonia præstabilita_;--obviously the most superfluous thing possible, for it never comes within perception, and the precisely similar world of representations which does come within perception, goes its own way regardless of it. When, however, he wanted to determine more closely the essence of these things existing objectively in themselves, he found himself obliged to declare the Objects in themselves to be Subjects (_monades_), and by doing so he furnished the most striking proof of the inability of our consciousness, in as far as it is merely cognitive, to find within the limits of the intellect--_i.e._ of the apparatus by means of which we represent the world--anything beyond Subject and Object; the representer and the represented. Therefore, if we abstract from the objectivity of an Object, or in other words, from its being represented (_Vorgestellt-werden_), if we annul it in its quality as an Object, yet still wish to retain something, we can meet with nothing but _the Subject_. Conversely, if we desire to abstract from the subjectivity of the Subject, yet to have something over, the contrary takes place, and this leads to Materialism.
[56] Compare Kant, "Krit. d. r. Vern." Elementarlehre. Abschnitt ii. Schlüsse a. d. Begr. _b_ and _c_. 1st edition, pp. 33 and 34; [57] Kant, "Krit. d. r. V." Kritik des Vierten Paralogismus der transcendentalen Psychologie, p. 369, 1st edition. (Engl. Transl.
Note.)
[59] Kant, "Krit. d. r. V." "Betrachtung über die Summe," &c., p.
383 of 1st edition. (Engl. Transl. p. 331.)
Spinoza, who never thoroughly sifted the matter, and never therefore acquired a clear notion of it, nevertheless quite understood the necessary correlation between Subject and Object as so essential, that they are inconceivable without it; consequently he defined it as an identity in the Substance (which alone exists) of that which knows, with that which has extension.
OBSERVATION.--With reference to the chief argument of this paragraph, I take the opportunity to remark that if, in the course of this treatise, for the sake of brevity and in order to be more easily understood, I at any time use the term _real objects_, I mean by it nothing but the intuitive representations that are united to form the complex of empirical reality, which reality in itself always remains ideal.
§ 20. _Principle of Sufficient Reason of Becoming._ In the Class of Objects for the Subject just described, the principle of sufficient reason figures as the _Law of Causality_, and, as such, I call it the _Principle of Sufficient Reason of Becoming, principium rationis sufficientis fiendi_. By it, all objects presenting themselves within the entire range of our representation are linked together, as far as the appearance and disappearance of their states is concerned, _i.e._ in the movement of the current of Time, to form the complex of empirical reality. The law of causality is as follows.
When one or several real objects pass into any new state, some other state must have preceded this one, upon which the new state regularly follows, _i.e._ as often as that preceding one occurs. This sort of following we call _resulting_; the first of the states being named a _cause_, the second an _effect_. When a substance takes fire, for instance, this state of ignition must have been preceded by a state, 1^o, of affinity to oxygen; 2^o, of contact with oxygen; 3^o, of a