When something happens, the mere fact of the occurrence, without regard
to that which occurs, is an object requiring investigation. The
transition from the non-being of a state into the existence of it,
supposing that this state contains no quality which previously existed
in the phenomenon, is a fact of itself demanding inquiry. Such an
event, as has been shown in No. A, does not concern substance (for
substance does not thus originate), but its condition or state. It is
therefore only change, and not origin from nothing. If this origin be
regarded as the effect of a foreign cause, it is termed creation, which
cannot be admitted as an event among phenomena, because the very
possibility of it would annihilate the unity of experience. If,
however, I regard all things not as phenomena, but as things in
themselves and objects of understanding alone, they, although
substances, may be considered as dependent, in respect of their
existence, on a foreign cause. But this would require a very different
meaning in the words, a meaning which could not apply to phenomena as
objects of possible experience.
How a thing can be changed, how it is possible that upon one state
existing in one point of time, an opposite state should follow in
another point of time—of this we have not the smallest conception à
priori. There is requisite for this the knowledge of real powers, which
can only be given empirically; for example, knowledge of moving forces,
or, in other words, of certain successive phenomena (as movements)
which indicate the presence of such forces. But the form of every
change, the condition under which alone it can take place as the coming
into existence of another state (be the content of the change, that is,
the state which is changed, what it may), and consequently the
succession of the states themselves can very well be considered à
priori, in relation to the law of causality and the conditions of
time.[32]
[32] It must be remarked that I do not speak of the change of certain
relations, but of the change of the state. Thus, when a body moves in
a uniform manner, it does not change its state (of motion); but only
when all motion increases or decreases.
When a substance passes from one state, a, into another state, b, the
point of time in which the latter exists is different from, and
subsequent to that in which the former existed. In like manner, the
second state, as reality (in the phenomenon), differs from the first,
in which the reality of the second did not exist, as b from zero. That
is to say, if the state, b, differs from the state, a, only in respect
to quantity, the change is a coming into existence of b -a, which in
the former state did not exist, and in relation to which that state is
= O.