reason, both a parte ante and a parte post. The validity of the principle of sufficient reason is so involved in the form of consciousness that we absolutely cannot imagine anything objective of which no why could further be demanded; thus we cannot imagine an absolute absolute, like a blind wall in front of us. That his convenience should lead this or that person to stop at some point, and assume such an absolute at pleasure, is of no avail against that incontestable certainty a priori, even if he should put on an air of great importance in doing so. In fact, the whole talk about the absolute, almost the sole theme of philosophies since Kant, is nothing but the cosmological proof incognito. This proof, in consequence of the case brought against it by Kant, deprived of all right and declared outlawed, dare no longer show itself in its true form, and therefore appears in all kinds of disguises – now in distinguished form, concealed under intellectual intuition or pure thought; now as a suspicious vagabond, half begging, half demanding what it wants in more unpretending philosophemes. If an absolute must absolutely be had, then I will give one which is far better fitted to meet all the demands which are made on such a thing than these visionary phantoms; it is matter. It has no beginning, and it is imperishable; thus it is really independent, and quod per se est et per se concipitur; from its womb all proceeds, and to it all returns; what more can be desired of an absolute? But to those with whom no critique of reason has succeeded, we should rather say –
"Are not ye like unto women, who ever
Return to the point from which they set out,
Though reason should have been talked by the hour?"
That the return to an unconditioned cause, to a first beginning, by no means lies in the nature of reason, is, moreover, practically proved by the fact that the primitive religions of our race, which even yet have the greatest number of followers upon earth, Brahmanism and
