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GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS. 183
thinkers, still persist in audaciously maintaining the con
trary, for the benefit of their old woman s philosophy. I
am not a professor of philosophy, forsooth, that I need
bow to the folly of others.
50. Series of Reasons and Consequences.
According to the law of causality, the condition is itself
always conditioned, and, moreover, conditioned in the same
way; therefore, there arises a series in infinitum a part e
ante. It is just the same with the Reason of Being in
Space : each relative space is a figure ; it has its limits,
by which it is connected with another relative space, and
which themselves condition the figure of this other, and so
But when we
on throughout all dimensions in infinitum.
examine a single figure in itself, the series of reasons of
being has an end, because we start from a given relation,
just as the series of causes comes to an end if we stop at
pleasure at any particular cause. In Time, the series of
reasons of being has infinite extension both a parte ante,
and a parte post, since each moment is conditioned by a
preceding one, and necessarily gives rise to the following.
Time has therefore neither beginning nor end. On the
other hand, the series of reasons of knowledge that
is, a series of judgments, each of which gives logical
truth to the other always ends somewhere, i.e., either in
an empirical, a transcendental, or a metalogical truth. If
the reason of the major to which we have been led is an
empirical truth, and we still continue asking why, it is no
longer a reason of knowledge that is asked for, but a
cause in other words, the series of reasons of knowing
passes over into the series of reasons of becoming. But if
we do the contrary, that is, if we allow the series of reasons
of becoming to pass over into the series of reasons of
knowing, in order to bring it to an end, this is never brought