Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/188

 as determining and not as being determined, and the position of each towards any other admits the question as to its position with reference to some other line, which second position necessarily determines the first and makes it that which it is. It is therefore just as impossible to find an end a parte ante in the series of links in the chain of Reasons of Being as in that of Reasons of Becoming, nor can we find any a parte post either, because of the infinity of Space and of the lines possible within Space. All possible relative spaces are figures, because they are limited; and all these figures have their Reason of Being in one another, because they are conterminous. The series rationum essendi in Space therefore, like the series rationum fiendi, proceeds in infinitum; and moreover not only in a single direction, like the latter, but in all directions.

Nothing of all this can be proved; for the truth of these principles is transcendental, they being directly founded upon the intuition of Space given us a priori.

§ 38. Reason of being in Time. Arithmetic.
Every instant in Time is conditioned by the preceding one. The Sufficient Reason of Being, as the law of consequence, is so simple here, because Time has only one dimension, therefore it admits of no multiplicity of relations. Each instant is conditioned by its predecessor; we can only reach it through that predecessor: only so far as this was and has elapsed, does the present one exist. All counting rests upon this nexus of the divisions of Time, numbers only serving to mark the single steps in the succession; upon it therefore rests all arithmetic likewise, which teaches absolutely nothing but methodical abbreviations of numeration. Each number pre-supposes its predecessors as the reasons of its being : we can only reach the number ten by passing through all the preceding numbers, and it is only