[50] Jacobi, "Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza," Beilage 7, p. 414.
How Herr von Schelling finally distinguishes reason from cause, may be seen in his "Aphorisms introductory to the Philosophy of Nature,"[51] § 184, which open the first book of the first volume of Marcus and Schelling's "Annals of Medecine." Here we are taught that gravity is the _reason_ and light the _cause_ of all things. This I merely quote as a curiosity; for such random talk would not otherwise deserve a place among the opinions of serious and honest inquirers.
[51] "Aphorismen zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie."
We have still to record various fruitless attempts which have been made to prove the Principle of Sufficient Reason, mostly without clearly defining in which sense it was taken: Wolf's, for instance, in his Ontology, § 70, repeated by Baumgarten in his "Metaphysics," § 20. It is useless to repeat and refute it here, as it obviously rests on a verbal quibble. Plattner[52] and Jakob[53] have tried other proofs, in which, however, the circle is easily detected. I purpose dealing with those of Kant further on, as I have already said. Since I hope, in the course of this treatise, to point out the different laws of our cognitive faculties, of which the principle of sufficient reason is the common expression, it will result as a matter of course, that this principle cannot be proved, and that, on the contrary, Aristotle's remark:[54] λόγον ζητοῦσι ὧν οὐκ ἔστι λόγος. ἀποδείξεως γὰρ ἀρχὴ οὐκ ἀπόδειξίς ἐστι (_rationem eorum quærant, quorum non est ratio: demonstrationis enim principium non est demonstratio_) may be applied with equal propriety to all these proofs. For every proof is a reference to something already recognised; and if we continue requiring a proof again for this something, whatever it be, we at last arrive at certain propositions which express the forms and laws, therefore the conditions, of all thought and of all knowledge, in the application of which consequently all thought and all knowledge consists: so that certainty is nothing but correspondence with those conditions, forms, and laws, therefore their own certainty cannot again be ascertained by means of other propositions. In the fifth chapter I mean to discuss the kind of truth which belongs to propositions such as these.