characteristics, as sensuous and derivative, do not necessarily preclude their being the common possession of all finite beings. THE PARADOX OF INCONGRUOUS COUNTERPARTS The purpose, as already noted, of the above sections II. to IV., as added in the second edition, is to afford ‘confirmation’ of the ideality of space and time. That being so, it is noticeable that Kant has omitted all reference to an argument embodied, for this same purpose, in § 13 of the _Prolegomena_. The matter is of sufficient importance to call for detailed consideration.[623] As the argument of the _Prolegomena_ is somewhat complicated, it is advisable to approach it in the light of its history in Kant’s earlier writings. It was to his teacher Martin Knutzen that Kant owed his first introduction to Newton’s cosmology; and from Knutzen he inherited the problem of reconciling Newton’s mechanical view of nature and absolute view of space with the orthodox Leibnizian tenets. In his first published work[624] Kant seeks to prove that the very existence of space is due to gravitational force, and that its three-dimensional character is a consequence of the specific manner in which gravity acts. Substances, he teaches, are unextended. Space results from the connection and order established between them by the balancing of their attractive and repulsive forces. And as the law of gravity is merely contingent, other modes of interaction, and therefore other forms of space, with more than three dimensions, must be recognised as possible. “A science of all these possible kinds of space would undoubtedly be the highest enterprise which a finite understanding could undertake in the field of geometry.”[625]