KANT'S OPINION.
97. Kant uses the same theory to explain time that he used to explain space. Time, according to him, is nothing in itself, neither is it any thing in things; it is a subjective condition of intuition, a form of the internal sense, by means of which phenomena are presented to us as successive, just as space was the form by which they are presented as continuous. To speak frankly, it seems to me that this is saying nothing; it affirms a well-known fact, but does not explain it. Who does not know that what we perceive we perceive in succession—that we perceive even our own perceptions in succession? But what is succession? This is what he ought to have explained.
98. Kant says that time is only in us; but I should like to ask him, if succession is only in us. He pretends that we know nothing of the external world, but that we perceive certain appearances, or phenomena; but he does not deny that beyond the appearance there may be a reality. If this reality is possible, changes are possible in it; andchange cannot be conceived without succession, nor succession without time.
99. According to Kant, the ideas of space and time areà priori, they cannot be empirical, or experimental; for in that case they could not be the basis of science; we could only affirm what we had experienced, and this only with respect to the cases in which we have experienced it. This is true, and I have demonstrated it in the last chapter; but, conceding this priority, it proves nothing in favor of Kant's system. The ideas of space and time, althoughà priori, may nevertheless correspond to something in reality, as follows from the theory by which I have explained them.
100. Time is not any thing which subsists by itself, but it is not equally certain that it does not belong, as an objective determination, to things, and that nothing remains of it, if we abstract it from all the subjective impressions of intuition. I have demonstrated that time does not subsist by itself, and that a duration without any thing which endures, is an absurdity; but it does not follow from this that the order represented by the idea of time is not something real in the objects. Abstracting it from our intuition, there still remains something which verifies the propositions by which we express the properties of time.
101. The German philosopher makes time purely subjective, and relies on the following argument: "If time were a condition belonging to the things themselves, or an order, it could not precede the objects as a condition of them, and be known and perceivedà prioriby synthetical judgments. This last is easily explained if time is nothing but the subjective condition under which all intuitions are possible in us. For then this form of the internal intuition can be represented before the objects, and consequentlyà priori....
"If we abstract our manner of perceiving ourselves internally, and of embracing, by means of this intuition, all external intuitions in the faculty of representation, and consequently take objects just as they may be in themselves, time is nothing....
"I can say that my representations are successive, but this only means that we are conscious of them in a succession,—that is, in a form of the internal sense. Time would not therefore be any thing in itself, nor a determination inherent in things."[30]
102. It is easy to see that the philosopher is struggling between two difficulties. The first is, how to explain the necessity involved in the idea of time, if he makes it proceed from experience. The second is, how, if it is not derived from experience, it can be found really in things, or, at least, how we can know that it is found in them.
Hence, he concludes, that it is not possible to save the necessity involved in the idea of time, unless by making it a purely subjective fact, a form of an intuition, entirely independent of the reality of things.
It seems to me, that by attending to the principles established above, we can give an objective value to time, independently of our intuition, and explain its relations to experience, without destroying the necessity contained in its idea.