in.] INTELLECT AND MATERIALITY 203 



We have treated of the first point elsewhere. As to 

 the second, we will limit ourselves to pointing out that 

 perfect spatiality would consist in a perfect externality 

 of parts in their relation to one another, that is to say, 

 in a complete reciprocal independence. Now, there is no 

 material point that does not act on every other material 

 point. When we observe that a thing really is there where 

 it acts, we shall be led to say (as Faraday 1 was) that all 

 the atoms interpenetrate and that each of them fills the 

 world. On such a hypothesis, the atom or, more generally, 

 the material point, becomes simply a view of the mind, 

 a view which we come to take when we continue far enough 

 the work (wholly relative to our faculty of acting) by 

 which we subdivide matter into bodies. Yet it is undeniable 

 that matter lends itself to this subdivision, and that, in 

 supposing it breakable into parts external to one another, 

 we are constructing a science sufficiently representative 

 of the real. It is undeniable that if there be no entirely 

 isolated system, yet science finds means of cutting up the 

 universe into systems relatively independent of each other, 

 and commits no appreciable error in doing so. What else 

 can this mean but that matter extends itself in space with- 

 out being absolutely extended therein, and that in regarding 

 matter as decomposable into isolated systems, in attribut- 

 ing to it quite distinct elements which change in relation to 

 each other without changing in themselves (which are 

 "displaced," shall we say, without being "altered"), in 

 short, in conferring on matter the properties of pure 

 space, we are transporting ourselves to the terminal point 

 of the movement of which matter simply indicates the 

 direction? 



What the Transcendental Aesthetic of Kant appears 



1 Faraday, A Speculation concerning Electric Conduction (Philosophi- 

 cal Magazine, 3d. series, vol. xxiv.). 



