absolute space is laid at the foundation of all [these]. But how do we come by this singular conception, and on what rests the necessity of its employment?
It can be no object of experience; for space without matter is no object of perception, and yet is a necessary conception of the Reason, and therefore nothing but a a mere idea. For in order that motion may be given even as phenomenon, an empirical presentation of space in respect of which the movable has to change its relation is required. But space, which is to be perceived, must be material, and therefore in accordance with the conception of a matter generally, itself movable. Now, in order to conceive it as moved, one has only to conceive it as contained in a space of greater compass, and to assume the latter as resting. But this admits of being treated similarly as regards a still more extended space, and so on to infinity, without ever attaining through experience to an immovable (immaterial) space, in respect of which any matter could have absolute motion or rest attributed to it; but the conception of these relational determinations will have to be constantly changed, according as the movable is considered as in relation to one or the other of these spaces. Now, as the condition of regarding anything as resting or moved is always again and again conditioned to infinity in relative space, it thence appears: firstly, that all motion or rest is merely relative, and that neither can be absolute, i.e., that matter can merely be conceived in relation to matter as moved or resting, but not in respect of mere space without matter; in other words, that absolute motion, such, namely, as is conceived without any reference of one matter to another, is simply impossible: secondly, [it will appear] that for this very reason no conception of motion or rest, in relative space, valid for every phenomenon, is possible, but that a space must be conceived, in which the latter itself can be thought of as moved, hut whose determination does not depend on any other empirical space, and hence is not again conditioned, that is, an absolute space to which all relative motions may "be referred, ami in which everything empirical is movable; [and this] in order that all mi it inns (if the material in the same can be valid as merely relative to one another,
