| The absolute totality of this series would be actually attained and given to the mind, if the regress could arrive at simple parts. |
| But if all the parts in a continuous decomposition are themselves divisible, the division, that is to say, the regress, proceeds from the conditioned to its conditions in infinitum; because the conditions (the parts) are themselves contained in the conditioned, and, as the latter is given in a limited intuition, the former are all given along with it. |
| This regress cannot, therefore, be called a regressus in indefinitum, as happened in the case of the preceding cosmological idea, the regress in which proceeded from the conditioned to the conditions not given contemporaneously and along with it, but discoverable only through the empirical regress. |
| We are not, however, entitled to affirm of a whole of this kind, which is divisible in infinitum, that it consists of an infinite number of parts. |
| For, although all the parts are contained in the intuition of the whole, the whole division is not contained therein. |
| The division is contained only in the progressing decomposition--in the regress itself, which is the condition of the possibility and actuality of the series. |
| Now, as this regress is infinite, all the members (parts) to which it attains must be contained in the given whole as an aggregate. |
| But the complete series of division is not contained therein. |
| For this series, being infinite in succession and always incomplete, cannot represent an infinite number of members, and still less a composition of these members into a whole. |
| To apply this remark to space. |
| Every limited part of space presented to intuition is a whole, the parts of which are always spaces--to whatever extent subdivided. |
| Every limited space is hence divisible to infinity. |
| Let us again apply the remark to an external phenomenon enclosed in limits, that is, a body. |
| The divisibility of a body rests upon the divisibility of space, which is the condition of the possibility of the body as an extended whole. |
| A body is consequently divisible to infinity, though it does not, for that reason, consist of an infinite number of parts. |
| It certainly seems that, as a body must be cogitated as substance in space, the law of divisibility would not be applicable to it as substance. |
| For we may and ought to grant, in the case of space, that division or decomposition, to any extent, never can utterly annihilate composition (that is to say, the smallest part of space must still consist of spaces); otherwise space would entirely cease to exist- which is impossible. |
| But, the assertion on the other band that when all composition in matter is annihilated in thought, nothing remains, does not seem to harmonize with the conception of substance, which must be properly the subject of all composition and must remain, even after the conjunction of its attributes in space- which constituted a body--is annihilated in thought. |
| But this is not the case with substance in the phenomenal world, which is not a thing in itself cogitated by the pure category. |
| Phenomenal substance is not an absolute subject; it is merely a permanent sensuous image, and nothing more than an intuition, in which the unconditioned is not to be found. |
| But, although this rule of progress to infinity is legitimate and applicable to the subdivision of a phenomenon, as a mere occupation or filling of space, it is not applicable to a whole consisting of a number of distinct parts and constituting a quantum discretum--that is to say, an organized body. |