| There exists either in, or in connection with the world--either as a part of it, or as the cause of it--an absolutely necessary being. |
| PROOF. |
| The world of sense, as the sum total of all phenomena, contains a series of changes. |
| For, without such a series, the mental representation of the series of time itself, as the condition of the possibility of the sensuous world, could not be presented to us.* But every change stands under its condition, which precedes it in time and renders it necessary. |
| Now the existence of a given condition presupposes a complete series of conditions up to the absolutely unconditioned, which alone is absolutely necessary. |
| It follows that something that is absolutely necessary must exist, if change exists as its consequence. |
| But this necessary thing itself belongs to the sensuous world. |
| For suppose it to exist out of and apart from it, the series of cosmical changes would receive from it a beginning, and yet this necessary cause would not itself belong to the world of sense. |
| But this is impossible. |
| For, as the beginning of a series in time is determined only by that which precedes it in time, the supreme condition of the beginning of a series of changes must exist in the time in which this series itself did not exist; for a beginning supposes a time preceding, in which the thing that begins to be was not in existence. |
| The causality of the necessary cause of changes, and consequently the cause itself, must for these reasons belong to time--and to phenomena, time being possible only as the form of phenomena. |
| Consequently, it cannot be cogitated as separated from the world of sense--the sum total of all phenomena. |
| There is, therefore, contained in the world, something that is absolutely necessary--whether it be the whole cosmical series itself, or only a part of it. |
| [*Footnote; Objectively, time, as the formal condition of the possibility of change, precedes all changes; but subjectively, and in consciousness, the representation of time, like every other, is given solely by occasion of perception.] |
| ANTITHESIS. |
| An absolutely necessary being does not exist, either in the world, or out of it--as its cause. |
| PROOF. |
| Grant that either the world itself is necessary, or that there is contained in it a necessary existence. |
| Two cases are possible. |
| First, there must either be in the series of cosmical changes a beginning, which is unconditionally necessary, and therefore uncaused- which is at variance with the dynamical law of the determination of all phenomena in time; or, secondly, the series itself is without beginning, and, although contingent and conditioned in all its parts, is nevertheless absolutely necessary and unconditioned as a whole--which is self-contradictory. |
| For the existence of an aggregate cannot be necessary, if no single part of it possesses necessary existence. |