philosophers for the furtherance of their dogmatic ends, and much was imported into it which does not belong to it at all. Hence arose propositions such as the following: “All that is has its cause”—“the effect cannot contain more than the cause, thus nothing that was not also in the cause”—“_causa est nobilior suo effectu_,” and many others just as unwarranted. The following subtilty of that insipid gossip Proclus affords an elaborate and specially lucid example of this. It occurs in his “_Institutio Theologica_,” § 76: “Παν το απο ακινητου γιγνομενον αιτιας, αμεταβλητον εχει την ὑπαρξιν; παν δε το απο κινουμενης, μεταβλητην; ει γαρ ακινητον εστι παντῃ το ποιουν, ου δια κινησεως, αλλ᾽ αυτῳ τῳ ειναι παραγει το δευτερον αφ᾽ ἑαυτου.” (_Quidquid ab immobili causa manat, immutabilem habet essentiam [substantiam]. Quidquid vero a mobili causa manat, essentiam habet mutabilem. Si enim illud, quod aliquid facit, est prorsus immobile, non per motum, sed per ipsum Esse producit ipsum secundum ex se ipso._) Excellent! But just show me a cause which is not itself set in motion: it is simply impossible. But here, as in so many cases, abstraction has thought away all determinations down to that one which it is desired to make use of without regard to the fact that the latter cannot exist without the former. The only correct expression of the law of causality is this: _Every change has its cause in another change which immediately precedes it_. If something _happens_, _i.e._, if a new state of things appears, _i.e._, if something is _changed_, then something else must have _changed_ immediately before, and something else again before this, and so on _ad infinitum_, for a _first_ cause is as impossible to conceive as a beginning of time or a limit of space. More than this the law of causality does not assert. Thus its claims only arise in the case of _changes_. So long as nothing changes there can be no question of a cause. For there is no _a priori_ ground for inferring from the existence of given things, _i.e._, states of matter, their previous non-existence, and from this again their coming into being, that is to say, there is no _a priori_ ground for inferring a change. Therefore the mere existence of a thing does not justify us in inferring that it has a cause. Yet there may be _a posteriori_ reasons, that is, reasons drawn from previous experience, for the assumption that the present state or condition did not always exist, but has only come into existence in consequence of another state, and therefore by means of a change, the cause of which is then to be sought, and also the cause of this cause. Here then we are involved in the _infinite regressus_ to which the application of the law of causality always leads. We said above: “_Things_, _i.e._, _states or conditions of matter,_” for _change_ and _causality_ have only to do with states or conditions. It is these states which we understand by _form_, in the wider