CHAPTER III.

INSUFFICIENCY OF THE OLD AND OUTLINES OF A NEW DEMONSTRATION.

§ 15. _Cases which are not comprised among the old established meanings of the Principle._

From the summary given in the preceding chapter we gather, that two distinct applications of the principle of sufficient reason have been recognized, although very gradually, very tardily, and not without frequent relapses into error and confusion: the one being its application to judgments, which, to be true, must have a reason; the other, its application to changes in material objects, which must always have a cause. In both cases we find the principle of sufficient reason authorizing us to ask _why?_ a quality which is essential to it. But are all the cases in which it authorizes us to ask _why_ comprised in these two relations? If I ask: Why are the three sides of this triangle equal? the answer is: Because the three angles are so. Now, is the equality of the angles the cause of the equality of the sides? No; for here we have to do with no change, consequently with no effect which must have a cause.--Is it merely a logical reason? No; for the equality of the angle is not only a proof of the equality of the sides, it is not only the foundation of a judgment: mere conceptions alone would never suffice to explain why the sides must be equal, because the angles are so; for the conception of the equality of the sides is not contained in that of the equality of the angles. Here therefore we have no connection between conceptions and judgments, but between sides and angles. The equality of the angles is not the _direct_, but the _indirect_ reason, by which we know the equality of the sides; for it is the reason why a thing is such as it is (in this case, that the sides are equal): the angles being equal, the sides must therefore be equal. Here we have a necessary connection between angles and sides, not a direct, necessary connection between two judgments.--Or again, if I ask why _infecta facta_, but never _facta infecta fieri possunt_, consequently why the past is absolutely irrevocable, the future inevitable, even this does not admit of purely logical proof by means of mere abstract conceptions, nor does it belong either to causality, which only rules _occurrences_ within Time, not Time itself. The present hour hurled the preceding one into the bottomless pit of the past, not through causality, but immediately, through its mere existence, which existence was nevertheless inevitable. It is impossible to make this comprehensible or even clearer by means of mere conceptions; we recognise it, on the contrary, quite directly and instinctively, just as we recognize the difference between right and left and all that depends upon it: for instance, that our left glove will not fit our right hand, &c. &c.

Now, as all those cases in which the principle of sufficient reason finds its application cannot therefore be reduced to logical reason and consequence and to cause and effect, the law of specification cannot have been sufficiently attended to in this classification. The law of homogeneity, however, obliges us to assume, that these cases cannot differ to infinity, but that they may be reduced to certain species. Now, before attempting this classification, it will be necessary to determine what is peculiar to the principle of sufficient reason in all cases, as its special characteristic; because the conception of the genus must always be determined before the conception of the species.

§ 16. _The Roots of the Principle of Sufficient Reason._

_Our knowing consciousness, which manifests itself as outer and inner Sensibility_ (or receptivity) _and as Understanding and Reason, subdivides itself into Subject and Object and contains nothing else. To be Object for the Subject and to be our representation, are the same thing. All our representations stand towards one another in a regulated connection, which may be determined_ À PRIORI, _and on account of which, nothing existing separately and independently, nothing single or detached, can become an Object for us_. It is this connection which is expressed by the Principle of Sufficient Reason in its generality. Now, although, as may be gathered from what has gone before, this connection assumes different forms according to the different kinds of objects, which forms are differently expressed by the Principle of Sufficient Reason; still the connection retains what is common to all these forms, and this is expressed in a general and abstract way by our principle. The relations upon which it is founded, and which will be more closely indicated in this treatise, are what I call the Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Now, on closer inspection, according to the laws of homogeneity and of specification, these relations separate into distinct species, which differ widely from each other. Their number, however, may be reduced to _four_, according to the _four_ classes into which everything that can become an object for us--that is to say, all our representations--may be divided. These classes will be stated and considered in the following four chapters.

We shall see the Principle of Sufficient Reason appear under a different form in each of them; but it will also show itself under all as the same principle and as derived from the said root, precisely because it admits of being expressed as above.