Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/234

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itself, and which it is therefore impossible to contradict without declaring war against that understanding also. So great however is the courage of these gentlemen. I am sorry to say I know of three,[1] and I am afraid there are a good many more at work at this undermining process, who have the incredible presumption to maintain the à posteriori origin of Space as a consequence, a mere relation, of the objects within it; for they assert that Space and Time are of empirical origin and attached to those bodies, so that [according to them] Space first arises through our perception of the juxtaposition of bodies and Time likewise through our perception of the succession of changes (sancta simplicitas![2] as if the words "collateral" and "successive" would have any sense for us without the antecedent intuitions of Space and of Time to give them a meaning); consequently, that if there were no bodies, there would be no Space, therefore if they disappeared Space also must lapse, and that if all changes were to stop, Time also would stop.[3]

And such stuff as this is gravely taught fifty years after Kant's death! The aim of it is, as we know, to undermine Kantian philosophy, and certainly if these propositions were true, one stroke would suffice to overthrow it. For-

  1. (a) Rosenkranz, "Meine Reform der Hegelschen Philosophie", 1852, especially p. 41, in a pompous, dictatorial tone: "I have explicitly said, that Space and Time would not exist if Matter did not exist. Æther spread out within itself first constitutes real Space, and the movement of this ether and consequent real genesis of everything individual and separate, constitutes real Time." (b) Ludwig Noack, "Die Theologie als Religionsphilosophie", 1853, pp. 8, 9. (c) Von Reichlin-Meldegg, Two reviews of Oersted's "Geist in der Natur" in the Heidelberg Annals, Nov.-Dec., 1850, and May-June, 1854.
  2. Wikisource translation: blessed simplicity!
  3. Time is the condition of the possibility of succession, which could neither take place, nor be understood by us and expressed in words, without Time. And Space is likewise the condition of the possibility of juxtaposition, and Transcendental Æsthetic is the proof that these con ditions have their seat in the constitution of our head. [Add. to 3rd ed.]