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30 THE FOURFOLD ROOT. [CHAP. III.
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 representa
tions stand towards one another in a regulated connection,
which may be determined A PRIORI, and on account of which,
nothing existing separately and independently, nothing single
or detached, can become an Object for us. It is this connec
tion 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 Prin
ciple of Sufficient Eeason ; 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 Eeason. 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.