Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/298



Material substance is that in space, which for itself, namely, separated from all else existing outside it in space, is movable. The motion of a part of matter whereby it ceases to be a part, is separation. The separation of the parts of a matter is physical division.

Observation.

The conception of a substance signifies the ultimate subject of existence, namely, that which does not itself belong, as mere predicate to the existence of another. Now matter is the subject of all that, in space, which can be counted [as belonging] to the existence of things; for outside it, no subject would be able to be conceived, but space itself; and this is not a conception containing anything existent, but merely the necessary conditions of the external relation of possible objects to our sense. Matter then, as the movable in space, is substance therein. But just in the same way are all its parts substances, in so far as one can say of them that they are subjects, and not merely predicates of other matters; and hence must again themselves be termed matter. But they are themselves subjects, if they are something movable existing in space, and hence not in combination with other adjacent parts. The independent motion of matter, then, or any of its parts, is a demonstration at once, that this movable, and every movable part of it, is substance.

Matter is divisable to infinity into parts, of which each is again matter.

Demonstration.

Matter is impenetrable by its own original force of extension (proposition 3); but this is only the result of the repulsive forces of each point in a space filled with matter. Now the space that is filled by matter is