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

In the second conflict the thesis is at once guilty of a very palpable petitio principii, for it commences, " Every compound substance consists of simple parts." From the compoundness here arbitrarily assumed, no doubt it afterwards very easily proves the simple parts. But the proposition, "All matter is compound," which is just the point, remains unproved, because it is simply a groundless assumption. The opposite of simple is not compound, but extended, that which has parts and is divisible. Here, however, it is really tacitly assumed that the parts existed before the whole, and were brought together, whence the whole has arisen ; for this is the meaning of the word " compound." Yet this can just as little be asserted as the opposite. Divisibility means merely the possibility of separating the whole into parts, and not that the whole is compounded out of parts and thus came into being. Divisibility merely asserts the parts a parte post; compoundness asserts them a parte ante. For there is essentially no temporal relation between the parts and the

CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY, m

vhole ; they rather condition each other reciprocally, and hus always exist at the same time, for only so far as both ire there is there anything extended in space. Therefore vhat Kant says in the observations on the thesis, " Space >ught not to be called a compositum, bnt a totum" &c, lolds good absolutely of matter also, which is simply ipace become perceptible.

On the other hand, the infinite livisibility of matter, which the antithesis asserts, follows i priori and incontrovertibly from that of space, which it ills. This proposition has absolutely nothing against it ; ind therefore Kant also (p. 513 ; V.

541), when he speaks leriously and in his own person, no longer as the mouth- )iece of the aSiieos X070?, presents it as objective truth ; tnd also in the " Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science" (p. 108, first edition), the proposition, "Matter is nfinitely divisible," is placed at the beginning of the proof )f the first proposition of mechanics as established truth, laving appeared and been proved as the fourth proposition n the Dynamics.

But here Kant spoils the proof of the mtithesis by the greatest obscurity of style and useless iccumulation of words, with the cunning intention that ;he evidence of the antithesis shall not throw the sophisms )f the thesis too much into the shade. Atoms are no accessary thought of the reason, but merely an hypothesis for the explanation of the difference of the specific gravity jf bodies.

But Kant himself has shown, in the dynamics jf his " Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science," that this can be otherwise, and indeed better and more simply explained than by atomism. In this, however, he was anticipated by Priestley, " On Matter and Spirit," sect. 1. Indeed, even in Aristotle, " Phys." iv. 9, the fundamental thought of this is to be found.

The argument for the third thesis is a very fine sophism, and is really Kant's pretended principle of pure reason itself entirely unadulterated and unchanged. It tries to prove the finiteness of the series of causes by saying that, in order to be sufficient, a cause must contain

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