Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/300

 space by its mere driving force, and not by means of other equal repulsive forces, is impossible. In order to make this, and thereby also the demonstration of the previous proposition apparent, one must assume that $$A$$ is the place

of a monad in space, that $$ab$$ is the diameter of the sphere of its repulsive force, and therefore that $$aA$$ is its semi-diameter; so between $$a$$, where the impression of an external monad in space, occupying the sphere in question, is understood, and the central point of the latter [viz., the sphere], $$A$$, $$a$$ point $$c$$ is possible to be indicated (in accordance with the infinite divisibility of space). Now, if $$A$$ resist that which seeks to impress itself on $$a$$, $$c$$ must resist both the points $$A$$ and $$a$$. For if this were not so, they would approach one another with impunity; consequently $$A$$ and $$a$$ would meet in the point $$c$$, i.e. the space would be penetrated. Something must thus exist in $$c$$ that resists the impression of $$A$$ and $$a$$, and thus repels the monad $$A$$ as much as it is repelled by it. As now, repulsion is a movement, $$c$$ is something movable in space; in other words, matter, and the space between $$A$$ and $$a$$, could not be filled by the sphere of the activity of a single monad, neither could the space between $$c$$ and $$A$$, and so on to infinity.

When mathematicians conceive the repulsive forces of the parts of elastic mailers in their greater or lesser compression, as increasing or diminishing in a certain proportion to their distances from one another (for instance, that the smallest parts of the air repel each other in inverse proportion to their distance's from one another, because their elasticity stands in inverse proportion to the spaces in winch they are compressed), one would wholly mistake their meaning and misapply their language Were one to attribute to the conception in the object itself, what [nevertheless] necessarily belongs to the process of the construction of a conception. For, according to tho above, all contact can be conceived as an infinitely small