On the Antithesis.
The proof in favour of the infinity of the cosmical succession and
the cosmical content is based upon the consideration that, in the
opposite case, a void time and a void space must constitute the limits
of the world. Now I am not unaware, that there are some ways of
escaping this conclusion. It may, for example, be alleged, that a
limit to the
world, as regards both space and time, is quite possible,
without at the same time holding the existence of an absolute time
before the beginning of the world, or an absolute space extending
beyond the actual world— which is impossible. I am quite well
satisfied with the latter part of this opinion of the philosophers
of the Leibnitzian school. Space is merely the form of external
intuition, but not a real object which can itself be externally
intuited; it is not a correlate of phenomena, it is the form of
phenomena itself. Space, therefore, cannot be regarded as absolutely
and in itself something determinative of the existence of things,
because it is not itself an object, but only the form of possible
objects. Consequently, things, as phenomena, determine space; that
is to say, they render it possible that, of all the possible
predicates of space (size and relation), certain may belong to
reality. But we cannot affirm the converse, that space, as something
self—subsistent, can determine real things in regard to size or shape,
for it is in itself not a real thing. Space (filled or void)
* may
therefore
be limited by phenomena, but phenomena cannot be limited
by an empty space without them. This is true of time also. All this
being granted, it is nevertheless indisputable, that we must assume
these two nonentities, void space without and void time before the
world, if we assume the existence of cosmical limits, relatively to
space or time.
[*]
It is evident that what is meant here is, that empty space, in so
far as it is limited by phenomena— space, that is, within the world—
does not at least contradict transcendental principles, and may
therefore, as regards them, be admitted, although its possibility
cannot on that account be affirmed.
For, as regards the subterfuge adopted by those who endeavour to
evade the consequence— that, if the world is limited as to space and
time, the infinite void must determine the existence of actual
things in regard to their dimensions— it arises solely from the fact
that instead of a sensuous world, an intelligible world — of which
nothing is known— is cogitated; instead of a real beginning (an
existence, which is preceded by a period in which nothing exists),
an existence which presupposes no other condition than that of time;
and, instead of limits of extension, boundaries of
the universe. But
the question relates to the
mundus phænomenon, and its quantity;
and in this case we cannot make abstraction of the conditions of
sensibility, without doing away with the essential reality of this
world itself. The world of sense, if it is limited, must necessarily
lie in the infinite void. If this, and with it space as the
a priori
condition of the possibility of phenomena, is left out of view, the
whole world of sense disappears. In our problem is this alone
considered as given. The
mundus intelligibilis is nothing but the
general conception of a world, in which abstraction has been made of
all conditions of intuition, and in relation to which no synthetical
proposition— either affirmative or negative— is possible.