Download (PDF, 23.58MB) - Plurality Press

46 THE FOURFOLD ROOT. [CHAP. IV.
process lie created or brought forth the -world, showing
whether he be within or without it, and so forth, as if
Philosophy were Theology, and as if it sought
for en
lightenment concerning God, not concerning the Universe!"
The Cosmological Proof, with which we here have to do,
and to which the above apostrophe is addressed, consists
thus, properly speaking, in the assertion, that the principle
of the sufficient reason of becoming, or the law of causality,
necessarily leads to a thought which destroys it and de
clares it to be null and void. For the causa prima (absolutum)
can only be reached by proceeding upwards from con
sequence to reason, through a series prolonged ad libitum ;
but it is impossible to stop short at the causa prima with
out at once annulling the principle of sufficient reason.
Having thus briefly and clearly shown the nullity of the
Cosmological Proof, as I had in my second chapter already
shown the nullity of the Ontological Proof, the sympa
thizing reader may perhaps expect me to do the same with
respect to the Physico-theological Proof, which is a great
deal more plausible. As, however, this belongs by its
nature to a different department of philosophy, it would
be quite out of place here. I therefore refer him to Kant s
Critique of Pure Reason, as well as to his Critique of
the Faculty of Judgment, where he treats this subject ex
professo ; I likewise refer him, as a complement to Kant s
purely negative procedure, to my own positive one in
l
a work which, though small in bulk, is
Will in Nature,"
" The
rich and weighty in content. As for the indifferent reader,
he is free to let this and indeed all my writings pass down
unread to his descendants. It matters not to me ; for I am
here, not for one generation only, but for many.
Now, as the law of causality is known to us a priori, and is
therefore a transcendental law, applicable to every possible
1 The translation of which follows the Fourfold Root in the present
volume.