This law of the continuity and gradual taking place of all changes which Aristotle was thus the first to lay down and prove, we find stated three times by Kant: in his "Dissertatio de mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma," § 14, in the "Critique of Pure Reason,"[111] and finally in his "Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science."[112] In all three places his exposition is brief, but also less thorough than that of Aristotle; still, in the main, both entirely agree. We can therefore hardly doubt that, directly or indirectly, Kant must have derived these ideas from Aristotle, though he does not mention him. Aristotle's proposition--οὐκ ἔστι ἀλλήλων ἐχόμενα τὰ νῦν ("the moments of the present are not continuous")--we here find expressed as follows: "between two moments there is always a time," to which may be objected that "even between two centuries there is none; because in Time as in Space, there must always be a pure limit."--Thus Kant, instead of mentioning Aristotle, endeavours in the first and earliest of his three statements to identify the theory he is advancing with Leibnitz' _lex continuitatis_. If they really were the same, Leibnitz must have derived his from Aristotle. Now Leibnitz[113] first stated this _Loi de la continuité_ in a letter to Bayle.[114] There, however, he calls it _Principe de l'ordre général_, and gives under this name a very general, vague, chiefly geometrical argumentation, having no direct bearing on the time of change, which he does not even mention. [111] Kant, "Krit. d. r. Vern." 1st edition, p. 207; 5th edition, p. 253. (English translation by M. Müller, p. 182.) [112] Kant, "Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft." End of the "Allgemeine Anmerkung zur Mechanik." [113] According to his own assertion, p. 189 of the "Opera philos." ed. Erdmann. [114] _Ibid._ p. 104. CHAPTER V. ON THE SECOND CLASS OF OBJECTS FOR THE SUBJECT AND THE FORM OF THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON WHICH PREDOMINATES IN IT. § 26. _Explanation of this Class of Objects._