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204 THE WILL IN NATURE.
this question and others related to it, shows wh&t is the
nature of that empirical reality itself. 1
And seventy years after the Critique of Pure Reason
had appeared and filled the world with its fame, these
gentlemen dare to serve up such gross absurdities, which
were done away with long ago, and to return to former
barbarism. If Kant were to come back and see all this
mischief, he would feel like Moses on returning from
Mount Sinai, when he found his people worshipping the
golden calf, and dashed the Tables to pieces in his anger.
But if Kant were to take things as tragically as Moses, I
2 "
should console him with the words of Jesus Sirach : He
that telleth a tale to a fool speaketh to one in a slumber ;
1 In the Scholium to the eighth of the definitions he has placed at the
top of his
is, empty, from relative, or filled Time, and likewise absolute from relative
Space. He says, p. 11 : Tempus, spatium, locum, motum, ut omnibus
"
Principia," Newton quite rightly distinguishes absolute, that
notissima, non definio. Notandum tamen quod VULGUS (that is, professors
like those I have been mentioning) quantitates hasce non aliter quam ex
relatione ad sensibilia concipiat.
Et inde oriuntur praejudicia quacdam,
quibus tollendis convenit easdem in absolutas et rclativas, veras et ap-
parentes, mathematical et vulgar es distingui. And again (p. 12):
I. Tempus absolutum, verum et mathematicum, in se et natura ma
sine relatione ad externum quodvis, aequabiliter fluit, alioque nomine
dicitur Duratio: relativwn, apparens et vulgare est sensibilis et extem-a
quaevis Durationis per motum mensura (seu accurata seu inaequabilis]
qud vulgus vice veri temporis utitur ; ut Hora, Dies, Mensis, Annus.
II. Spatium absolutum, natura sua sine relatione ad externum quodvis,
semper manet similare et immobile: relativum est spatii hujus mensura
seu dimensio quaelibet mobilis, quae a sensibus nostris per situm
suum ad corpora definitur, et a vulgo pro spatio immobili :
usurpatur
situm suum
uti dimensio spatii subterranei } acrei vel coelestis definita per
ad terram.
But even Newton never dreamt of asking how we know these two
infinite entities, Space and Time ; since, as he here impresses on us, they
do not fall within the range of the senses and how we know them more
;
over so intimately, that we are able to indicate their whole nature and
rule down to the minutest detail. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
2 Bcclesiasticus xxii. 8.