conceptions, under which, therefore, more was subsumed than their true content would have justified, there have arisen false principles, and from these false systems. Spinoza’s whole method of demonstration rests upon such uninvestigated and too widely comprehended conceptions. Now here lies the great merit of Locke, who, in order to counteract all that dogmatic unreality, insisted upon the investigation of the _origin of the conceptions_, and thus led back to _perception and experience_. Bacon had worked in a similar frame of mind, yet more with reference to Physics than to Metaphysics. Kant followed the path entered upon by Locke, but in a higher sense and much further, as has already been mentioned above. To the men of mere show who succeeded in diverting the attention of the public from Kant to themselves the results obtained by Locke and Kant were inconvenient. But in such a case they know how to ignore both the dead and the living. Thus without hesitation they forsook the only right path which had at last been found by those wise men, and philosophised at random with all kinds of indiscriminately collected conceptions, unconcerned as to their origin and content, till at last the substance of the Hegelian philosophy, wise beyond measure, was that the conceptions had no origin at all, but were rather themselves the origin and source of things. But Kant has erred in this respect. He has too much neglected empirical perception for the sake of _pure_ perception—a point which I have fully discussed in my criticism of his philosophy. With me perception is throughout the source of all knowledge. I early recognised the misleading and insidious nature of abstractions, and in 1813, in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, I pointed out the difference of the relations which are thought under _this_ conception. General conceptions must indeed be the material in which philosophy deposits and stores up its knowledge, but not the source from which it draws it; the _terminus ad quem_, not _a quo_. It is not, as Kant defines it, a science _drawn from_ conceptions, but a science _in_ conceptions. Thus the conception of causality also, with which we are here concerned, has always been taken far too widely by philosophers for the furtherance of their dogmatic ends, and much was imported into it which does not belong to it at all. Hence arose propositions such as the following: “All that is has its cause”—“the effect cannot contain more than the cause, thus nothing that was not also in the cause”—“_causa est nobilior suo effectu_,” and many others just as unwarranted. The following subtilty of that insipid gossip Proclus affords an elaborate and specially lucid example of this. It occurs in his “_Institutio Theologica_,” § 76: “Παν το απο ακινητου γιγνομενον αιτιας, αμεταβλητον εχει την ὑπαρξιν; παν δε το απο κινουμενης, μεταβλητην; ει γαρ ακινητον εστι παντῃ το ποιουν, ου δια κινησεως, αλλ᾽ αυτῳ τῳ ειναι παραγει το δευτερον αφ᾽ ἑαυτου.” (_Quidquid ab immobili causa manat, immutabilem habet essentiam [substantiam]. Quidquid vero a mobili causa manat, essentiam habet mutabilem. Si enim illud, quod aliquid facit, est prorsus immobile, non per motum, sed per ipsum Esse producit ipsum secundum ex se ipso._) Excellent! But just show me a cause which is not itself set in motion: it is simply impossible. But here, as in so many cases, abstraction has thought away all determinations down to that one which it is desired to make use of without regard to the fact that the latter cannot exist without the former. The only correct expression of the law of causality is this: _Every change has its cause in another change which immediately precedes it_. If something _happens_, _i.e._, if a new state of things appears, _i.e._, if something is _changed_, then something else must have _changed_ immediately before, and something else again before this, and so on _ad infinitum_, for a _first_ cause is as impossible to conceive as a beginning of time or a limit of space. More than this the law of causality does not assert. Thus its claims only arise in the case of _changes_. So long as nothing changes there can be no question of a cause. For there is no _a priori_ ground for inferring from the existence of given things, _i.e._, states of matter, their previous non-existence, and from this again their coming into being, that is to say, there is no _a priori_ ground for inferring a change. Therefore the mere existence of a thing does not justify us in inferring that it has a cause. Yet there may be _a posteriori_ reasons, that is, reasons drawn from previous experience, for the assumption that the present state or condition did not always exist, but has only come into existence in consequence of another state, and therefore by means of a change, the cause of which is then to be sought, and also the cause of this cause. Here then we are involved in the _infinite regressus_ to which the application of the law of causality always leads. We said above: “_Things_, _i.e._, _states or conditions of matter,_” for _change_ and _causality_ have only to do with states or conditions. It is these states which we understand by _form_, in the wider sense; and only the forms change, the matter is permanent. Thus it is only the form which is subject to the law of causality. But the form constitutes the _thing_, _i.e._, it is the ground of _the difference_ of things; while matter must be thought as the same in all. Therefore the Schoolmen said, “_Forma dat esse rei;_” more accurately this proposition would run: _Forma dat rei essentiam, materia existentiam_. Therefore the question as to the cause of a _thing_ always concerns merely its form, _i.e._, its state or quality, and not its matter, and indeed only the former so far as we have grounds for assuming that it has not _always_ existed, but has come into being by means of a _change_. The union of _form_ and _matter_, or of _essentia_ and _existentia_, gives the _concrete_, which is always particular; thus, the _thing_. And it is the _forms_ whose union with _matter_, _i.e._, whose appearance in matter by means of a _change_, are subject to the law of causality. By taking the conception _too widely_ in the abstract the mistake slipped in of extending causality to the thing absolutely, that is, to its whole inner nature and existence, thus also to matter, and ultimately it was thought justifiable to ask for a cause of the world itself. This is the origin of the _cosmological proof_. This proof begins by inferring from the existence of the world its non-existence, which preceded its existence, and such an inference is quite unjustifiable; it ends, however, with the most fearful inconsistency, for it does away altogether with the law of causality, from which alone it derives all its evidencing power, for it stops at a first cause, and will not go further; thus ends, as it were, by committing parricide, as the bees kill the drones after they have served their end. All the talk about the _absolute_ is referable to a shamefast, and therefore disguised cosmological proof, which, in the face of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” has passed for philosophy in Germany for the last sixty years. What does the absolute mean? Something that is, and of which (under pain of punishment) we dare not ask further whence and why it is. A precious rarity for professors of philosophy! In the case, however, of the honestly expressed cosmological proof, through the assumption of a first cause, and therefore of a first beginning in a time which has absolutely no beginning, this beginning is always pushed further back by the question: Why not earlier? And so far back indeed that one never gets down from it to the present, but is always marvelling that the present itself did not occur already millions of years ago. In general, then, the law of causality applies to all things in the world, but not to the world itself, for it is _immanent_ in the world, not _transcendent; with_ it it comes into action, and _with_ it it is abolished. This depends ultimately upon the fact that it belongs to the mere form of our understanding, like the whole of the objective world, which accordingly is merely phenomenal, and is conditioned by the understanding. Thus the law of causality has full application, without any exception, to all things in the world, of course in respect of their form, to the variation of these forms, and thus to their changes. It is valid for the actions of men as for the impact of a stone, yet, as we have said always, merely with regard to events, to _changes_. But if we abstract from its origin in the understanding and try to look at it as purely objective, it will be found in ultimate analysis to depend upon the fact that everything that acts does so by virtue of its original, and therefore eternal or timeless, power; therefore its present effect would necessarily have occurred infinitely earlier, that is, before all conceivable time, but that it lacked the temporal condition. This temporal condition is the occasion, _i.e._, the cause, on account of which alone the effect only takes place _now_, but now takes place necessarily; the cause assigns it its place in time.
But in consequence of that unduly wide view in abstract thought of the conception _cause_, which was considered above, it has been confounded with the conception of _force_. This is something completely different from the cause, but yet is that which imparts to every cause its causality, _i.e._, the capability of producing an effect. I have explained this fully and thoroughly in the second book of the first volume, also in “The Will in Nature,” and finally also in the second edition of the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 20, p. 44 (third edition, p. 45).
This confusion is to be found in its most aggravated form in Maine de Biran’s book mentioned above, and this is dealt with more fully in the place last referred to; but apart from this it is also very common; for example, when people seek for the cause of any original force, such as gravitation. Kant himself (_Über den Einzig Möglichen Beweisgrund_, vol.
i. p. 211-215 of Rosenkranz’s edition) calls the forces of nature “efficient causes,” and says “gravity is a cause.” Yet it is impossible to see to the bottom of his thought so long as force and cause are not distinctly recognised as completely different. But the use of abstract conceptions leads very easily to their confusion if the consideration of their origin is set aside. The knowledge of causes and effects, always _perceptive_, which rests on the form of the understanding, is neglected in order to stick to the abstraction _cause_. In this way alone is the conception of causality, with all its simplicity, so very frequently wrongly apprehended. Therefore even in Aristotle (“Metaph.,” iv. 2) we find causes divided into four classes which are utterly falsely, and indeed crudely conceived. Compare with it my classification of causes as set forth for the first time in my essay on sight and colour, chap. 1, and touched upon briefly in the sixth paragraph of the first volume of the present work, but expounded at full length in my prize essay on the freedom of the will, p. 30-33. Two things in nature remain untouched by that chain of causality which stretches into infinity in both directions; these are matter and the forces of nature. They are both conditions of causality, while everything else is conditioned by it. For the one (matter) is that _in_ which the states and their changes appear; the other (forces of nature) is that by virtue of which alone they can appear at all. Here, however, one must remember that in the second book, and later and more thoroughly in “The Will in Nature,” the natural forces are shown to be identical with the will in us; but matter appears as the mere _visibility of the will_; so that ultimately it also may in a certain sense be regarded as identical with the will.
On the other hand, not less true and correct is what is explained in § 4 of the first book, and still better in the second edition of the essay on the principle of sufficient reason at the end of § 21, p. 77 (third edition, p. 82), that matter is causality itself objectively comprehended, for its entire nature consists in _acting in general_, so that it itself is thus the activity (ενεργεια = reality) of things generally, as it were the abstraction of all their different kinds of acting. Accordingly, since the essence, _essentia_, of matter consists in _action in general_, and the reality, _existentia_, of things consists in their materiality, which thus again is one with action in general, it may be asserted of matter that in it _existentia_ and _essentia_ unite and are one, for it has no other attribute than _existence itself_ in general and independent of all fuller definitions of it. On the other hand, all _empirically_ given matter, thus all material or matter in the special sense (which our ignorant materialists at the present day confound with matter), has already entered the framework of the _forms_ and manifests itself only through their qualities and accidents, because in experience every action is of quite a definite and special kind, and is never merely general.
Therefore pure matter is an object of _thought_ alone, not of Giordano Bruno (_Della Causa_, dial. 4) to make the paradoxical assertion that matter has no extension, for extension is inseparable from the form, and that therefore it is _incorporeal_. Yet Aristotle had already taught that it is not a body although it is corporeal: “σωμα μεν ουκ αν ειη, under _pure matter_ only action, in the abstract, quite independent of the _kind_ of action, thus _pure causality_ itself; and as such it is not an _object_ but a _condition_ of experience, just like space and time. This is the reason why in the accompanying table of our pure _a priori_ knowledge matter is able to take the place of causality, and therefore appears along with space and time as the third pure form, and therefore as dependent on our intellect.
This table contains all the fundamental truths which are rooted in our perceptive or intuitive knowledge _a priori_, expressed as first principles independent of each other. What is special, however, what forms the content of arithmetic and geometry, is not given here, nor yet what only results from the union and application of those formal principles of knowledge. This is the subject of the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science” expounded by Kant, to which this table in some measure forms the propædutic and introduction, and with which it therefore stands in direct connection. In this table I have primarily had in view the very remarkable _parallelism_ of those _a priori_ principles of knowledge which form the framework of all experience, but specially also the fact that, as I have explained in § 4 of the first volume, matter (and also causality) is to be regarded as a combination, or if it is preferred, an amalgamation, of space and time. In agreement with this, we find that what geometry is for the pure perception or intuition of space, and arithmetic for that of time, Kant’s _phoronomy_ is for the pure perception or intuition of the two _united_. For matter is primarily that which is movable in space. The mathematical point cannot even be conceived as movable, as Aristotle has shown (“Physics,” vi. 10). This philosopher also himself provided the first example of such a science, for in the fifth and sixth books of his “Physics” he determined _a priori_ the laws of rest and motion.
Now this table may be regarded at pleasure either as a collection of the eternal laws of the world, and therefore as the basis of our ontology, or as a chapter of the physiology of the brain, according as one assumes the realistic or the idealistic point of view; but the second is in the last instance right. On this point, indeed, we have already come to an understanding in the first chapter; yet I wish further to illustrate it specially by an example. Aristotle’s book “_De Xenophane_,” &c., commences with these weighty words of Xenophanes: “Αϊδιον ειναι φησιν, ει τι εστιν, ειπερ μη ενδεχεται γενεσθαι μηδεν εκ μηδενος.” (_Æternum esse, inquit, quicquid est, siquidem fieri non potest, ut ex nihilo quippiam existat._) Here, then, Xenophanes judges as to the origin of things, as regards its possibility, and of this origin he can have had no experience, even by analogy; nor indeed does he appeal to experience, but judges apodictically, and therefore _a priori_. How can he do this if as a stranger he looks from without into a world that exists purely objectively, that is, independently of his knowledge? How can he, an ephemeral being hurrying past, to whom only a hasty glance into such a world is permitted, judge apodictically, _a priori_ and without experience concerning that world, the possibility of its existence and origin? The solution of this riddle is that the man has only to do with his own ideas, which as such are the work of his brain, and the constitution of which is merely the manner or mode in which alone the function of his brain can be fulfilled, _i.e._, the form of his perception. He thus judges only as to the _phenomena of his own brain_, and declares what enters into its forms, time, space, and causality, and what does not. In this he is perfectly at home and speaks apodictically. In a like sense, then, the following table of the _Prædicabilia a priori_ of time, space, and matter is to be taken:— Of Time. Of Space. Of Matter.
(1) There is only (1) There is only (1) There is only _one_ Time, and all _one_ Space, and all _one_ Matter, and different times are different spaces are all different parts of it. parts of it. materials are different states of matter; as such it is called _Substance_.
(2) Different times (2) Different spaces (2) Different are not simultaneous are not successive matters (materials) but successive. but simultaneous. are not so through substance but through accidents.
(3) Time cannot be (3) Space cannot be (3) Annihilation of thought away, but thought away, but matter is everything can be everything can be inconceivable, but thought away from thought away from annihilation of all it. it. its forms and qualities is conceivable.
(4) Time has three (4) Space has three (4) Matter exists, divisions, the past, dimensions—height, _i.e._, acts in all the present, and the breadth, and length. the dimensions of future, which space and throughout constitute two the whole length of directions and a time, and thus these centre of two are united and indifference. thereby filled. In this consists the true nature of matter; thus it is through and through causality.
(5) Time is (5) Space is (5) Matter is infinitely infinitely infinitely divisible. divisible. divisible.
(6) Time is (6) Space is (6) Matter is homogeneous and a homogeneous and a homogeneous and a no one of its parts no one of its parts it does not consist is different from is different from of originally the rest, nor the rest, nor different separated from it by separated from it by (_homoiomeria_) or anything that is not anything that is not originally separated time. space. parts (atoms); it is therefore not composed of parts, which would necessarily be separated by something that was not matter.
(7) Time has no (7) Space has no (7) Matter has no beginning and no limits, but all origin and no end, end, but all limits are in it. but all coming into beginning and end is being and passing in it. away are in it.
(8) By reason of (8) By reason of (8) By reason of time we count. space we measure. matter we weigh.
(9) Rhythm is only (9) Symmetry is only (9) Equilibrium is in time. in space. only in matter.
(10) We know the (10) We know the (10) We know the laws of time _a laws of space _a laws of the priori_. priori_. substance of all accidents _a priori_.
(11) Time can be (11) Space is (11) Matter can only perceived _a immediately be thought _a only in the form of priori_.
a line.
(12) Time has no (12) Space can never (12) The accidents permanence, but pass away, but change; the passes away as soon endures through all substance remains.
as it is there. time.
(13) Time never (13) Space is (13) Matter is rests. immovable. indifferent to rest and motion, _i.e._, it is originally disposed towards neither of the two.
(14) Everything that (14) Everything that (14) Everything exists in time has exists in space has material has the duration. a position. capacity for action.
(15) Time has no (15) Space has no (15) Matter is what duration, but all motion, but all is permanent in time duration is in it, motion is in it, and and movable in and is the it is the change of space; by the persistence of what position of what is comparison of what is permanent in moved, in contrast rests with what is contrast with its with its unbroken moved we measure restless course. rest. duration.
(16) All motion is (16) All motion is (16) All motion is only possible in only possible in only possible to time. space. matter.
(17) Velocity is, in (17) Velocity is, in (17) The magnitude equal spaces, in equal times, in of the motion, the inverse proportion direct proportion to velocity being to the time. the space. equal, is in direct geometrical proportion to the matter (mass).
(18) Time is not (18) Space is (18) Matter as such measurable directly measurable directly (mass) is through itself, but through itself, and measurable, _i.e._, only indirectly indirectly through determinable as through motion, motion, which is in regards its quantity which is in space time and space only indirectly, and time together: together; hence, for only through the thus the motion of example, an hour’s amount of the motion the sun and of the journey, and the which it receives clock measure time. distance of the and imparts when it fixed stars is repelled or expressed as the attracted.
travelling of light for so many years.
(19) Time is (19) Space is (19) Matter is omnipresent. Every eternal. Every part absolute. That is, part of time is of it exists always. it neither comes everywhere, _i.e._, into being nor in all space, at passes away, and once. thus its quantity can neither be increased nor diminished.
(20) In time taken (20) In space taken (20, 21) Matter by itself everything by itself everything unites the ceaseless would be in would be flight of time with succession. simultaneous. the rigid immobility of space; therefore it is the permanent substance of the changing accidents.
Causality determines this change for every place at every time, and thereby combines time and space, and constitutes the whole nature of matter.
(21) Time makes the (21) Space makes the change of accidents permanence of possible. substance possible.
(22) Every part of (22) No part of (22) For matter is time contains all space contains the both permanent and parts of matter. same matter as impenetrable.
another.
(23) Time is the (23) Space is the (23) Individuals are (24) The now has no (24) The point has (24) The atom has no duration. no extension. reality.
(25) Time in itself (25) Space in itself (25) Matter in is empty and without is empty and without itself is without properties. properties. form and quality, and likewise inert, _i.e._, indifferent to rest or motion, thus without properties.
(26) Every moment is (26) By the position (26) Every change in conditioned by the of every limit in matter can take preceding moment, space with reference place only on and is only because to any other limit, account of another the latter has its position with change which ceased to be. reference to every preceded it; and (Principle of possible limit is therefore a first sufficient reason of precisely change, and thus existence in determined. also a first state time.—See my essay (Principle of of matter, is just on the principle of sufficient reason of as inconceivable as sufficient reason.) existence in space.) a beginning of time or a limit of space.
(Principle of sufficient reason of becoming.)
(27) Time makes (27) Space makes (27) Matter, as that arithmetic possible. geometry possible. which is movable in space, makes phoronomy possible.
(28) The simple (28) The simple (28) The simple element in element in geometry element in phoronomy arithmetic is unity. is the point. is the atom.
Notes to the Annexed Table.
(1) To No. 4 of Matter.
The essence of matter is acting, it is acting itself, in the abstract, thus acting in general apart from all difference of the kind of action: it is through and through causality. On this account it is itself, as regards its existence, not subject to the law of causality, and thus has neither come into being nor passes away, for otherwise the law of causality would be applied to itself. Since now causality is known to us _a priori_, the conception of matter, as the indestructible basis of all that exists, can so far take its place in the knowledge we possess _a priori_, inasmuch as it is only the realisation of an _a priori_ form of our knowledge. For as soon as we see anything that acts or is causally efficient it presents itself _eo ipso_ as material, and conversely anything material presents itself as necessarily active or causally efficient. They are in fact interchangeable conceptions. Therefore the word “actual” is used as synonymous with “material;” and also the Greek κατ᾽ ενεργειαν, in opposition to κατα δυναμιν, reveals the same source, for ενεργεια signifies action in general; so also with _actu_ in opposition to _potentia_, and the English “actually” for “_wirklich_.” What is called space-occupation, or impenetrability, and regarded as the essential predicate of body (_i.e._ of what is material), is merely that _kind of action_ which belongs to _all_ bodies without exception, the mechanical.
It is this universality alone, by virtue of which it belongs to the conception of body, and follows _a priori_ from this conception, and therefore cannot be thought away from it without doing away with the conception itself—it is this, I say, that distinguishes it from any other kind of action, such as that of electricity or chemistry, or light or heat. Kant has very accurately analysed this space-occupation of the mechanical mode of activity into repulsive and attractive force, just as a given mechanical force is analysed into two others by means of the parallelogram of forces. But this is really only the thoughtful analysis of the phenomenon into its two constituent parts. The two forces in conjunction exhibit the body within its own limits, that is, in a definite volume, while the one alone would diffuse it into infinity, and the other alone would contract it to a point. Notwithstanding this reciprocal balancing or neutralisation, the body still acts upon other bodies which contest its space with the first force, repelling them, and with the other force, in gravitation, attracting all bodies in general. So that the two forces are not extinguished in their product, as, for instance, two equal forces acting in different directions, or +E and -E, or oxygen and hydrogen in water. That impenetrability and gravity really exactly coincide is shown by their empirical inseparableness, in that the one never appears without the other, although we can separate them in thought.
I must not, however, omit to mention that the doctrine of Kant referred to, which forms the fundamental thought of the second part of his “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science,” thus of the Dynamics, was distinctly and fully expounded before Kant by Priestley, in his excellent “Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit,” § 1 and 2, a book which appeared in 1777, and the second edition in 1782, while Kant’s work was published in 1786. Unconscious recollection may certainly be assumed in the case of subsidiary thoughts, flashes of wit, comparisons, &c., but not in the case of the principal and fundamental thought. Shall we then believe that Kant silently appropriated such important thoughts of another man? and this from a book which at that time was new? Or that this book was unknown to him, and that the same thoughts sprang up in two minds within a short time? The explanation, also, which Kant gives, in the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science” (first edition, p. 88; Rosenkranz’s edition, p. 384), of the real difference between fluids and solids, is in substance already to be found in Kaspar Freidr. Wolff’s “Theory of Generation,” Berlin 1764, p. 132. But what are we to say if we find Kant’s most important and brilliant doctrine, that of the ideality of space and the merely phenomenal existence of the corporeal world, already expressed by Maupertuis thirty years earlier? This will be found more fully referred to in Frauenstädt’s letters on my philosophy, Letter 14.
Maupertuis expresses this paradoxical doctrine so decidedly, and yet without adducing any proof of it, that one must suppose that he also took it from somewhere else. It is very desirable that the matter should be further investigated, and as this would demand tiresome and extensive researches, some German Academy might very well make the question the subject of a prize essay. Now in the same relation as that in which Kant here stands to Priestley, and perhaps also to Kaspar Wolff, and Maupertuis or his predecessor, Laplace stands to Kant. For the principal and fundamental thought of Laplace’s admirable and certainly correct theory of the origin of the planetary system, which is set forth in his “_Exposition du Système du Monde_,” liv. v. c. 2, was expressed by Kant nearly fifty years before, in 1755, in his “_Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels_,” and more fully in 1763 in his “_Einzig möglichen Beweisgrund des Daseyns Gottes_,” ch. 7. Moreover, in the later work he gives us to understand that Lambert in his “_Kosmologischen Briefen_,” 1761, tacitly adopted that doctrine from him, and these letters at the same time also appeared in French (_Lettres Cosmologiques sur la Constitution de l’Univers_). We are therefore obliged to assume that Laplace knew that Kantian doctrine.
Certainly he expounds the matter more thoroughly, strikingly, and fully, and at the same time more simply than Kant, as is natural from his more