[10] The account of the first analogy as a whole makes it necessary to think that Kant in the first two sentences of the proof quoted does not mean exactly what he says, what he says being due to a desire to secure conformity with his treatment of the second and third analogies. What he _says_ suggests (1) that he is about to discuss the implications, not of the process by which we come to apprehend the manifold as temporally related in one of the two ways possible, i. e. either as successive or as coexistent, but of the process by which we decide whether the relation of the manifold which we already know to be temporal is that of succession or that of coexistence, and (2) that the necessity for this process is due to the fact that our _apprehension_ of the manifold is always successive. The context, however, refutes both suggestions, and in any case it is the special function of the processes which involve the second and third analogies to determine the relations of the manifold as that of succession and that of coexistence respectively.
Now, if Kant's thought has been here represented fairly, it is open to the following comments. In the first place, even if his position be right in the main, Kant should not introduce the thought of the _quantity_ of substance, and speak of the quantity as constant. For he thereby implies that in a plurality of substances--if such a plurality can in the end be admitted--there may be total extinction of, or partial loss in, some, if only there be a corresponding compensation in others; whereas such extinction and creation would be inconsistent with the nature of a substance.[12] Even Kant himself speaks of having established the impossibility of the origin and extinction of substance.[13]
[12] I owe this comment to Professor Cook Wilson.