Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/75

 world has no beginning in time he is bound to grant infinity to each point of time, and so an infinite succession of things has passed away in the universe. But infinity of a series consists in the impossibility of its completion by successive syntheses. Therefore an eternal progression of the world is impossible. Hence a beginning of the world is a necessary condition of its existence, which was to be proved. Let us take the other concept. The world now appears as an eternal given whole consisting of things which have a simultaneous existence. Now we can conceive of the mass of a quantity, which can only be regarded under certain conditions, in no other way than by means of the synthesis of its parts, and we conceive the totality of the quantity by means of the completed synthesis or repeated additions of the unity to itself. Thus, in order to conceive of the universe as a whole which fills all space, the successive syntheses of the parts of an infinite universe must be regarded as being completed, that is an eternity of time must in calculating all coexisting things, be regarded as having existed, but this is impossible. Therefore an unending aggregate of actual things cannot be regarded as a given whole and therefore also not as coexistent. A world is therefore extension in space which is not unlimited and which has therefore bounds. And this was the second thing to be proved."

These statements are copied from a well-known book which made its appearance in 1781 and is entitled "The Critique of Pure Reason," by Immanuel Kant. They can be read there in Part I, Division 2, second section, second part. "First Antinomy of Pure Reason." To Herr Duehring alone remains the name and fame of having pasted the law of fixed numbers on one of the published thoughts of Kant and of having made the