Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/319

 as it seems to follow, must contain several repulsive points, which contradicts the assumption, and was above refuted (proposition 4) under the name of a sphere of repulsion of the simple in space. But there is a distinction to be made between the conception of a real space, that can be given, and the mere idea of a space, simply conceived for the determination of the relations of given spaces, but which is in reality no space. In the case cited of a supposed physical monadology, there ought to be real spaces, to be filled from a point dynamically, namely, by repulsion, for they [the monads] existed as points, before any possible generation of matter from them, and defined by the proper sphere of their activity, the portion of the space to be filled, which could belong to them. In the hypothesis in question, therefore, the matter cannot be regarded as infinitely divisible and as quantum continuum; for the parts, directly repelling one another, have notwithstanding a determinate distance from one another (the sum of the diameter of the sphere of their repulsion) [while] on the contrary, when we, as really happens, think of matter as continuous quantity, no distance whatever of the directly repelling parts obtains, and consequently, no increasing or diminishing sphere of its immediate activity. Matters however can be expanded or compressed (like the air), and in this case we conceive a distance of their nearest parts as capable of increasing or diminishing. But because the nearest parts of a continuous matter touch one another, whether they are farther expanded or compressed, the distances from one another are conceived as infinitely small, and this infinitely small space, as filled in a greater or less degree by its force of repulsion. The infinitely small mediate space is not however distinguishable from contact, and thus it is only the idea of space, which serves to render intuitable the expansion of matter as continuous quality, but whether it is really thus cannot be conceived. When, therefore, it is said: the repulsive forces of the parts of matter immediately driving one another, stand in inverse proportion to the cube of their distances, this only signifies that they stand in inverse proportion to the corporeal spaces that are conceived between parts immediately touching one another notwithstanding, and