[107] For instance, in Fries' "Kritik der Vernunft," vol. ii. p. 85.
[108] I lifted from thine eyes the darkness which covered them before. (Tr.'s Ad.)
§ 24. _Of the Misapplication of the Law of Causality._
From the foregoing exposition it follows, that the application of the causal law to anything but _changes_ in the material, empirically given world, is an abuse of it. For instance, it is a misapplication to make use of it with reference to physical forces, without which no changes could take place; or to Matter, _on_ which they take place; or to the world, to which we must in that case attribute an absolutely objective existence independently of our intellect; indeed in many other cases besides. I refer the reader to what I have said on this subject in my chief work.[109] Such misapplications always arise, partly, through our taking the conception of cause, like many other metaphysical and ethical conceptions, in far _too wide_ a sense; partly, through our forgetting that the causal law is certainly a presupposition which we bring with us into the world, by which the perception of things outside us becomes possible; but that, just on that account, we are not authorized in extending beyond the range and independently of our cognitive faculty a principle, which has its origin in the equipment of that faculty, nor in assuming it to hold good as the everlasting order of the universe and of all that exists.
[109] "Die Welt a. W. u. V." 2nd edition, vol. ii. ch. iv. p. 42 _et seqq._; 3rd edition, vol. ii. p. 46 _et seqq._
§ 25. _The Time in which a Change takes place._
As the Principle of Sufficient Reason of Becoming is exclusively applicable to _changes_, we must not omit to mention here, that the ancient philosophers had already raised the question as to the time in which a change takes place, there being no possibility of it taking place during the existence of the preceding state nor after the new one has supervened. Yet, if we assign a special time to it between both states, a body would, during this time, be neither in the first nor in the second state: a dying man, for instance, would be neither alive nor dead; a body neither at rest nor in movement: which would be absurd. The scruples and sophistic subtleties which this question has evoked, may be found collected together in Sextus Empiricus "Adv. Mathem." lib. ix. 267-271, and "Hypat." iii. c. 14; the subject is likewise dealt with by Gellius, l. vi. c. 13--Plato[110] had disposed somewhat cavalierly of this knotty point, by maintaining that changes take place _suddenly_ and occupy _no time at all_; they occur, he says, in the ἐξαίφνης (_in repentino_), which he calls an ἄτοπος φύσις, ἐν χρόνῳ οὐδὲν οὖσα; a strange, timeless existence (which nevertheless comes within Time).