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FIRST CLASS OF OBJECTS FOB THE SUBJECT. 49
by combustion, volatilisation, or indeed any process what
ever we all nevertheless firmly assume that its sub
stance, i.e. its matter, must still exist somewhere or other
in undiminished quantity, whatever may have become
of its form ; likewise, when we perceive a body suddenly in
a place where it was not before, that it must have been
brought there or formed by some combination of invisible
particles for instance, by precipitation but that it, i.e.
its substance, cannot have then started into existence ;
for this implies a total impossibility and is utterly incon
ceivable. The certainty with which we assume this before
hand (a priori) , proceeds from the fact, that our Understand
ing possesses absolutely no form under which to conceive
the beginning and end of Matter. For, as before said, the
law of causality the only form in which we are able to
conceive changes at all is solely applicable to states of
bodies, and never under any circumstances to the existence
of that which undergoes all changes : Matter. This is why I
place the principle of the permanence of Matter among the
corollaries of the causal law. Moreover, we cannot have
acquired a posteriori the conviction that substance is per
manent, partly because it cannot, in most instances, be
empirically established; partly also, because every em
pirical knowledge obtained exclusively by means of induc
tion, has only approximate, consequently precarious, never
unconditioned, certainty. The firmness of our persuasion as
to this principle is therefore of a different kind and nature
from our security of conviction with regard to the accuracy
of any empirically discovered law of Nature, since it has an
entirely different, perfectly unshakable, never vacillating
firmness. The reason of this is, that the principle ex
. presses a transcendental knowledge, i.e. one which deter
mines and fixes, prior to all experience, what is in any way
possible within the whole range of experience ; but, pre
cisely by this, it reduces the world of experience to a mere
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