Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/272



METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PHORONOMY.

Matter is the movable in space; space, which is itself movable, is termed material or relative space; that in which all motion must in the last resort be conceived (which is therefore itself absolutely immovable), is termed pure or absolute space.

Observation 1.

As in Phoronomy nothing is to be discussed but motion, its subject, namely matter, has here no other quality attributed to it than movability. It can therefore itself be valid for one point so far, and in Phoronomy we abstract from all internal construction, hence also, from the quantity of the movable, and concern ourselves only with motion, and what can be regarded as quantity therein (velocity and direction). If the expression body is sometimes used here, it occurs only to anticipate in a measure the application of the principles of Phoronomy to the following more definite conceptions of matter, in order that the exposition may be less abstract and more comprehensible.

Observation 2.

If I am to explain the conception of matter not by a predicate, applying to it as object, but only by the relation to the faculty of knowledge, in which the presentation can be primarily given me, matter is every object of the external sense, and this would be its mere metaphysical explanation. But space would be simply the form of all external sensuous intuition (whether this accrued to the external