The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

therefore presuppose matter, and matter presupposes space. Strictly speaking, co- existence is a negative determination, which merely signifies that two things or states are not different in respect of time ; thus their difference is to be sought for elsewhere.

But in any case, our knowledge of the permanence of substance, i.e., of matter, must be based upon insight a priori; for it is raised above all doubt, and therefore cannot be drawn from experience.

I deduce it from the fact that the principle of all becoming and passing away, the law of causality, of which we are conscious a priori, is essentially concerned only with the changes, ie., the successive states of matter, is thus limited to the form, and leaves the matter untouched, which therefore exists in our consciousness as the foundation of all things, which is not subject to becoming or passing away, which has therefore always been and will always continue to be.

A deeper proof of the permanence of substance, drawn from the analysis of our perception of the empirical world in general, is to be found in the first book of this work, § 4, where it is shown that the nature of matter consists in the absolute union of space and time, a union which is only possible by means of the idea of causality, consequently only for the understanding, which is nothing but the subjective correlative of causality.

Hence, also, matter is never known otherwise than as producing effects, i.e., as through and through causality ; to be and to act are with it one, which is indeed signified by the word actuality. Intimate union of space and time — causality, matter, actuality — are thus one, and the subjective correlative of this one is the understanding.

Matter must bear in itself the conflicting properties of both factors from which it proceeds, and it is the idea of causality which abolishes what is contradictory in both, and makes their co-existence conceivable by the understanding, through which and for which alone matter is, and whose whole faculty consists in the knowledge of cause and effect. Thus for the understanding there is

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united in matter the inconstant flux of time, appearing aa change of the accidents, with the rigid immobility of space, which exhibits itself as the permanence of substance. For if the substance passed away like the accidents, the phenomenon would be torn away from space altogether, and Mould only belong to time ; the world of experience would be destroyed by the abolition of matter, annihilation. Thus from the share which space has in matter, i.e., in all phenomena of the actual — in that it is the opposite and counterpart of time, and therefore in itself and apart from the union with the latter knows absolutely no change — the principle of the permanence of substance, which recognises everything as a priori certain, had to be deduced and explained ; but not from mere time, to which for this purpose and quite erroneously Kant has attributed permanence.

In the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23, I have fully explained the incorrectness of the following proof of the a priori nature and of the necessity of the law of causality from the mere succession of events in time; I must, therefore, content myself here by referring to that passage.1 This is precisely the case with the proof of reciprocity also, the concept of which I was obliged to explain above as invalid. What is necessary has also been said of modality, the working out of the principles of which now follows.

There are still a few points in the further course of the transcendental analytic which I should have to refute were it not that I am afraid of trying the patience of the reader; I therefore leave them to his own reflection. But ever anew in the " Critique of Pure Reason " we meet that principal and fundamental error of Kant's, which I have copiously denounced above, the complete failure to distinguish abstract, discursive knowledge from intuitive. It is this that throws a constant obscurity over Kant's whole

1 With my refutation of the Kan- Zrit, Ravtn und KatualiUU, § 28 ; and tian proof may be compared the ear- by G. £. Schulze, Kritik der tkeortttier attacks upon it by Feder, lebcr ischen Philo$opkie, Bd ii. S. 422-44* fl

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