The inertia of matter is and means nothing but its lifelessness, as matter in itself. Life means the capacity of a substance, to act from an internal principle, determining a finite substance to change, and a material substance to rest or motion, as change of its state. ...Thus all matter as such is lifeless. The proposition of inertia says so much and no more. If we seek the cause of any change of matter whatsoever in life, we shall have to seek it at once in another substance, distinct from matter, although bound up with it.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The inertia of matter is and means nothing but its lifelessness, as matter in itself. Life means the capacity of a substance, to act from an internal principle, determining a finite substance to change, and a material substance to rest or motion, as change of its state. ...Thus all matter as such is lifeless. The proposition of inertia says so much and no more. If we seek the cause of any change of matter whatsoever in life, we shall have to seek it at once in another substance, distinct from matter, although bound up with it." in the context of "Immanuel Kant, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (1786) Tr. Ernest Belfort Bax, as translated in Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1883) Third Division: Metaphysical Foundations of Mechanics, Proposition 3, pp. 222-223." to mean that wisdom is timeless.