Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/318

 (in merely mathematical presentation) fills a space dynamically, and the question is, according to what law of infinitely small distances (here equivalent to contact) an original repulsive force (the limitation of which consequently rests merely with the space in which it is diffused) acts at different distances, this force can still less be rendered apparent by divergent repulsive rays from the assumed repellant points, although the direction of the motion has it for a terminus a quo, because the space in which the force must be diffused, in order to act at a distance, is a corporeal space, which is to be conceived as filled. The manner in which this is done, how, namely a point can fill a space corporeally by moving force, that is dynamically, is certainly capable of no further mathematical demonstration, but, it is impossible for rays diverging from a point to render conceivable the repelling force of a corporeally-filled space. The repulsion, at various infinitely small distances, of these mutually repelling points, we could simply estimate in inverse proportion to the corporeal spaces which fill each of these points dynamically; in other words, as the cube of their distances from one another, without our being able to construct them.

4. Thus the original attraction of matter would act in inverse proportion to the square of the distance at all distances, the original repulsion in inverse proportion to the cube at infinitely small distances, and by such an action and reaction of both fundamental forces, matter as a definite degree of the filling of space would be possible; for, insomuch as the repulsion increases in greater degree with approach of the parts than the attraction, the limits of approach beyond which by given attraction no greater is possible, in other words the degree of compression which constitutes the amount of the intensive filling of space, is also determined.

I readily see the difficulty of this mode of explaining the possibility of a matter in general, which consists in that, if a point cannot directly drive another by its repulsive force, without at the same time filling the whole corporeal space, up to the given distance by its force, this,