ground and root of such necessity out of account, overlooked the relativity of all necessity which follows from it, and thereby made the quite unthinkable fiction of an absolute necessity, i.e., of something the existence of which would be as inevitable as the consequent of a reason, but which yet was not the consequent of a reason, and therefore depended upon nothing; an addition which is an absurd petitio, for it conflicts with the principle of sufficient reason. Now, starting from this fiction, it explained, in diametrical opposition to the truth, all that is established by a reason as contingent, because it looked at the relative nature of its necessity and compared this with that entirely imaginary absolute necessity, which is self-contradictory in its conception.[1] Now Kant adheres to this fundamentally perverse definition of the contingent and gives it as explanation. (Critique of Pure Reason, V. p. 289-291; 243. V. 301; 419. V. 447, 486, 488.) He falls indeed into the most evident contradiction with himself upon this point, for on p. 301 he says: "Everything contingent has a cause," and adds, "That is contingent which might possibly not be." But whatever has a cause cannot possibly not be: thus it is necessary. For the rest, the source of the whole of this false explanation of the necessary and the contingent is to be found in Aristotle in "De Generatione et Corruptione," lib. ii. c. 9 et 11, where the necessary is explained as that which cannot possibly not be: there stands in opposi-
- ↑ Cf. Christian Wolf's "Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, Welt und Seele," § 577~579. It is strange that he only explains as contingent what is necessary according to the principle of sufficient reason of becoming, i.e., what takes place from causes, and on the contrary recognises as necessary that which is so according to the other forms of the principle of sufficient reason; for example, what follows from the essentia (definition), thus analytical judgments, and further also mathematical truths. The reason he assigns for this is, that only the law of causality gives infinite series, while the other kinds of grounds give only finite series. Yet this is by no means the case with the forms of the principle of sufficient reason in pure space and time, but only holds good of the logical ground of knowledge; but he held mathematical necessity to be such also. Compare the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 50.
