Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/312

 occur in inverse proportion to the quantity of the matter, this law only constitutes a principle of mechanics, hut not of dynamics, i.e., it is a law of motions, following from attractive forces, not the proportion of attractive forces themselves, and applying generally, to all moving forces. If, therefore, a magnet he attracted by another similar magnet, and again by the same magnet enclosed in a wooden box double its weight, in the latter case this will impart more relative motion to the first [magnet] than in the former, although the wood, which increases the quantity of its matter, adds nothing to its attractive power, and proves no magnetic attraction of the box. Newton says (cor. 2, prop. 6, lib. III., Princip. Phil. Nat.): "If the æther or any other body existed without weight, it would, inasmuch as it differs from any other matter in nothing but in form, be capable of being transformed little by little through a gradual change of this form into a matter of the same kind as that which has the greatest weight; and conversely, this latter, by a gradual change of its form, might lose all its weight, which is contrary to experience," etc. Thus he did not even exclude the æther (much less other matters) from the law of attraction. What kind of matter, then, could remain for him, by the mere impact of which the approach of bodies to one another could be regarded as merely apparent attraction? One cannot, therefore, adduce the great founder of the theory of attraction as our precursor, if one takes the liberty of substituting for the true attraction which lie maintained, a false one, and for assuming the necessity of an impulse through impact, in order to explain the phenomena of approach. He justly made abstraction of all hypotheses, in solving the problem, as to the cause of the universal attraction of matter; for this problem is physical or metaphysical, but not mathematical, and although in the preface to the second edition of his Optics, he says: ne quis gravitatem inter essentiales corporum proprietates me habere existimet, quæstionem unam de ejus causa investiganda subjeci, one can easily see that the dislike his contemporaries, and perhaps he himself, had to the conception of an original attraction, made him at issue with himself. For he could not say, unconditionally, that the attractive forces of two planets