Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/364

 as property of matter (repulsion or attraction) since the motion of the one carries with it, at the same time, the opposite and equal motion of the other, and indeed from mere conceptions of a relative motion, if it be considered in absolute space, i.e. according to truth; and it is, therefore, like all that is adequately demonstrable from mere conceptions a law of absolutely necessary counter-motion.

There is no absolute motion, even where a body is conceived as moved in respect of another in empty space; the motion of both being here, not relative to the space surrounding them, but only to that between them, which alone determines their external relation to each other, considered as abstract space, and is thus in its turn, only relative. Hence, absolute motion would be only that accruing to a body without relation to any other matter. But such would be the rectilinear motion of the universe, i.e. the system of all matter. For so long as any other matter existed outside of a matter, even though separated by empty space, the motion would still be relative. For this reason every proof of a law of motion, having as its result, that its contrary would necessarily imply a rectilinear motion of the whole universe as its consequence, is an apodictic demonstration of its truth; simply because absolute motion would thence ensue, which is quite impossible. Of this kind is the law of antagonism in all community of matter through motion. For every deviation from the same would move the common centre of gravity of all matters, in short, the whole universe, from its place, while on the contrary this would not happen if one regarded the latter as turned on its axis, a motion always possible to be conceived, although so far as one can see, there would be no use in assuming it.

The different conceptions of empty space also have their reference to the different conceptions of motion and moving forces. Empty space in a phoronomic sense, also termed absolute space, ought not properly to be called empty space; for it is only the idea of a space, in which I abstract from all particular matter, making it an object of experience, in order to conceive therein, the material, or every empirical space, as movable, and the motion not merely as on one side absolute, but as