Section 4 - On the principle of the form of the intelligible world

Summary

§16

Those who take space and time for some real and absolutely necessary bond, as it were, linking all possible substances and states, do not think that anything further is required in order to understand how a certain originary relation, as the fundamental condition of possible influences and the principle of the essential form of the universe, should belong to a plurality of existing things. For, since whatever things exist are, in their opinion, necessarily somewhere, it appears superfluous to them to enquire why these same things are present to each other in a fixed manner. For this, it seems to them, would be determined in itself by the entirety of space, which includes all things. But, apart from the fact that this concept, as has already been demonstrated, rather concerns the sensitive laws of the subject than the conditions of the objects themselves, even if you were to grant to this concept the greatest possible reality, it would still only signify the intuitively given possibility of universal co-ordination. Accordingly, the following question, which can only be solved by the understanding, remains untouched, namely: what is the principle upon which this relation of all substances itself rests, and which, when seen intuitively, is called space? The hinge, then, upon which the question about the principle of the form of the intelligible world turns is this: to explain how it is possible that a plurality of substances should be in mutual interaction with each other, and in this way belong to the same whole, which is called a world. We are not here contemplating the world in respect of its matter, that is to say, in respect of the natures of the substances of which it consists, whether they are material or immaterial. We are contemplating the world in respect of its form, that is to say, in respect of how, in general, a connection between a plurality of substances comes to be, and how a totality between them is brought about.