sense; and only the forms change, the matter is permanent. Thus it is only the form which is subject to the law of causality. But the form constitutes the _thing_, _i.e._, it is the ground of _the difference_ of things; while matter must be thought as the same in all. Therefore the Schoolmen said, “_Forma dat esse rei;_” more accurately this proposition would run: _Forma dat rei essentiam, materia existentiam_. Therefore the question as to the cause of a _thing_ always concerns merely its form, _i.e._, its state or quality, and not its matter, and indeed only the former so far as we have grounds for assuming that it has not _always_ existed, but has come into being by means of a _change_. The union of _form_ and _matter_, or of _essentia_ and _existentia_, gives the _concrete_, which is always particular; thus, the _thing_. And it is the _forms_ whose union with _matter_, _i.e._, whose appearance in matter by means of a _change_, are subject to the law of causality. By taking the conception _too widely_ in the abstract the mistake slipped in of extending causality to the thing absolutely, that is, to its whole inner nature and existence, thus also to matter, and ultimately it was thought justifiable to ask for a cause of the world itself. This is the origin of the _cosmological proof_. This proof begins by inferring from the existence of the world its non-existence, which preceded its existence, and such an inference is quite unjustifiable; it ends, however, with the most fearful inconsistency, for it does away altogether with the law of causality, from which alone it derives all its evidencing power, for it stops at a first cause, and will not go further; thus ends, as it were, by committing parricide, as the bees kill the drones after they have served their end. All the talk about the _absolute_ is referable to a shamefast, and therefore disguised cosmological proof, which, in the face of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” has passed for philosophy in Germany for the last sixty years. What does the absolute mean? Something that is, and of which (under pain of punishment) we dare not ask further whence and why it is. A precious rarity for professors of philosophy! In the case, however, of the honestly expressed cosmological proof, through the assumption of a first cause, and therefore of a first beginning in a time which has absolutely no beginning, this beginning is always pushed further back by the question: Why not earlier? And so far back indeed that one never gets down from it to the present, but is always marvelling that the present itself did not occur already millions of years ago. In general, then, the law of causality applies to all things in the world, but not to the world itself, for it is _immanent_ in the world, not _transcendent; with_ it it comes into action, and _with_ it it is abolished. This depends ultimately upon the fact that it belongs to the mere form of our understanding, like