Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/313

 —for instance, Jupiter and Saturn—which they show in the equal distances of their satellites (whose mass is unknown), is proportioned to the quantity of the matter of these heavenly bodies, if he did not assume that they attracted other matter merely as matter—in other words, according to a universal property of the same.

A moving force, by which matters can directly act upon one another only in the common surface of contact, I call a superficial force; but that whereby one matter can directly act on the parts of the other beyond the surface of contract, a penetrative force.

Note.

The repulsive force, by means of which matter fills a space, is a merely superficial force. For the parts touching each other mutually limit each other's sphere of action, and the repulsive force cannot move any more distant part, except by means of those lying between, and an immediate effect of a matter, passing straight through these, on another, by means of the forces of extension, is impossible. An attractive force, on the contrary, by means of which a matter occupies a space, without filling it, by which therefore it acts on other distant [matters] through empty space, and whose action thus posits no matter intervening [would have] no limits. Now it is thus that the original attraction which makes matter itself possible, must be conceived, and which is hence a penetrative force, and for this reason alone always proportioned to the quantity of the matter.

The original attractive force, on which the possibility of matter itself as such rests, extends itself directly throughout the universe to infinity, from every part of the same to every other part.