origination, alteration, mediation with an Other, though it is a mediation which returns to itself. The living force of what has life consists in making life originate, and the living already is; and so we may indeed say—though it is certainly a bold expression—that such and such a thing originates without originating. It undergoes alteration; every pulsation is an alteration not only in all the pulse-veins, but in all the parts of its entire constitution. In all this change it remains the same individual, and it remains such only in so far as it is this inherently self-altering active force. We may thus say of it that it alters without undergoing alteration, and finally—though we cannot certainly say that of the things—that it previously exists without existing previously, just as we have seen with regard to the cause that it exists previously, is the original cause, while at the same time previously, before its effect, it is not a cause, and so on. It is, however, tedious, and would even be an endless task to follow up and arrange the expressions in which the Understanding presents its finite categories and seeks to give them the character of something permanent.
This annihilation of the category of causality as used by the Understanding takes place in connection with the conception which is expressed by the term Causa Sui. Jacobi, without recognising in it this negation of the finite relation, the speculative element, that is, despatches it simply in a psychological, or, if you like, in a pragmatical fashion. He declares that “it is difficult to conclude from the apodictic proposition, everything must have a cause, that it is possible everything may not have a cause. Therefore it is that the Causa Sui has been invented.” It is certainly difficult for the Understanding not only to have to abandon its apodictic proposition, but to have to assume another possibility which, moreover, has a wrong look in connection with the expression referred to. But it is not hard for
