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48 THE FOURFOLD ROOT. [CHAP. IV.
shown at length that this favourite conception is inadmis
sible. It may be remarked, that authors usually have re
course to it just when their insight is becoming less clear,
and this accounts for the frequency of its use. Nay, it is
precisely when a writer conies to the end of his conceptions,
that the word reciprocity presents itself more readily
than any other ;
it may, in fact, be looked upon as a kind
of alarm-gun, denoting that the author has got out of his
depth. It is also worthy of remark, that the word Week-
selwirlcung, literally reciprocal action or, as we have pre
ferred translating it, reciprocity is only found in the
German language, and that there is no precise equivalent
for it in daily use in any other tongue.
From the law of causality spring two corollaries which,
in virtue of this origin, are accredited as cognitions a priori,
therefore as unquestionable and without exception. They
are, the law of inertia and that of permanence of substance.
The first of these laws avers, that every state in which a
body can possibly be consequently that of repose as well
as that of any kind of movement must last for ever with
out change, diminution, or augmentation, unless some cause
supervenes to alter or annul it. But the other law, by which
the eternity of Matter is affirmed, results from the fact, that
the law of causality is exclusively applicable to states of
bodies, such as repose, movement, form, and quality, since it
presides over their temporal passing in or out of being ;
but
that it is by no means applicable to the existence of that which
endures these states, and is called Substance, in order pre
cisely to express its exemption from all arising and perish
ing. Substance is permanent means, that it can neither pass
into, nor out of being : so that its quantity existing in the
universe can neither be increased nor diminished. That
we know this a priori, is proved by the consciousness of
unassailable certainty with which, when we see a body dis
appear whether it be by conjuring, by minute subdivision,