Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/295

 space, as an essential property of all matter, rests, this elasticity must be termed original; seeing that it cannot be derived from any other property of matter. All matter is accordingly originally elastic.

Note 2.

Because beyond every extending force a greater moving force can be found, which might work against it," and would thus diminish the space it is seeking to extend; in which case the latter would be termed a compressive force; so for every matter a compressive force must be able to be found, capable of driving it from every space it tills into a narrower space.

A matter penetrates another in its motion when it completely abolishes the space of its extension by compression.

Observation.

When, in the sucker of an air-pump that is filled with air, the piston is driven nearer the bottom, the air-matter is compressed. Now if this compression could be carried so far that the piston completely touched the bottom (without the least amount of air escaping), the air-matter would be penetrated; for the matters, between which it is, leaving no superfluous room for it, it would exist between the bottom and the piston, without occupying a space. This penetrability of matter by external compressive forces, if one were willing to assume, or even conceive, such, would be termed mechanical. I have reasons for distinguishing by such a limitation, this penetrability of matter from another [kind], the conception of which is perhaps just as impossible as that of the present, and of which I may hereafter have occasion to make some mention.