Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/387

 OBJECTIVE TIME RELATIONS OF PHENOMENA. 365 not be directly determined, but only through a concept of the understanding When I conclude that two objects (the earth and the moon) must be coexistent, because percep- tions of them can follow upon one another in both ways, I do this on the presupposition that the objects themselves reciprocally determine their position in time, hence are not isolated, but stand in causal community or a relation of reciprocal influence. It is only on the condition of reci- procity between phenomena, through which they form a whole, that I can represent them as coexistent. Coexistence and succession can be represented only in a permanent substratum; they are merely the modes in which the permaacntLexists. Since time (in which all change takes place, but which itself abides and does not change) in itself cannot be perceived, the substratum of simultaneity and succession must exist in phenomena themselves : the permanent in relation to which alone all the time relations of phenomena can be determined, is substance ; that which alters is its determinations, accidents, or special modes of existing. Alteration, i. e., origin and extinction, is true of states only, which can begin and cease to be, and not of sub- stances, which change {sick verdndern), i. e., pass from one mode of existence into another, but do not 2At.ev {wechseln)^ i. e., pass from non-existence into existence, or the reverse. It is the permanent alone that changes, and its states alone that begin and cease to be. The origin and extinc- tion of substances, or the increase and diminution of their quantum, would remove the sole condition of the empirical unity of time ; for the time relations of the coexistent and the successive can be perceived only in an identical substratum, in a permanent, which exists always. The law " From nothing nothing comes, and nothing can return to nothing," is everywhere assumed and has been fre- quently advanced, but never yet proved, for, indeed, it of time. The ball lying on a soft cushion is simultaneous, it is true, with its effect, the depression in the cushion. " But I, nevertheless, distinguish the two by the time relation of dynamical connection. For if I place the ball on the cushion, its previously smooth surface is followed by a depression, but if there is a depression in the cushion (I know not whence) a leaden ball does not follow from it. "