A SPECIAL LOOK AT SPACE AND TIME.
Through scientific idealism, fully examined, Kant proved that matter is a
manufacture of sense. We have not followed the order of his work, but have
gone straight to the heart of it. His own beginning was the dissection of
space and time. Still, he implied therein, if only in one remark, all that
has here been stated.
"If I take [says Kant] from our representation of a body, all that the
understanding thinks as belonging to it, as substance, force,
divisibility, and also whatever belongs to sensation, as impenetrability,
hardness, color, there is still something left us from this empirical
intuition, namely _extension and shape_. These belong to pure intuition,
which exists _a priori_ in the mind, as a mere form of sensibility, and
without any real object of the senses or any sensation."
Students of Kant have known, in a general way, that he attributed
"extension" to "bodies," as derived by them from _a priori_ mind. _Space_
is so derived; hence all things _in_ space, which is the "form," the
"condition" of their existence, must partake of its nature, which is pure
extension, pure "given quantity," as he designates it. But why does the
_shape_ of a material body belong to "pure intuition," and _come from
mind_? Simply because the shape (let it be of a stone) is merely the
_objected_ "_synthesis of apprehension_," in which the properties of the
stone, as impressions of sense, are _unified_, but in accordance with
their special variety. The shape is their "figurative synthesis," their
"_synthesis speciosa_." Now, in the meaning of Kant, and in the nature of
the case, space is _made_ in precisely the same _manner_ as a stone; only
the stone is full of diverse properties--special effects on sense, got
from some impinging background of matter--some "noumenon"--while space has
no properties at all, except additions and divisions of _itself_--spaces.
In other words, the stone is a _special_ relation between mental synthesis
and sensuous susceptibility, the latter being in particular impact with
some noumenal non-ego, and being definitely _filled_ from it. Space, on
the other hand, is a _general_ relation between the same mental synthesis
and the same sensuous susceptibility, the latter holding _no contents_
from any noumenon, yet being recipient to _all_ possibility of noumenal
impact. Hence, space is just "the synthesis of apprehension" itself, set
in self-reflex, objected, phenomenated. The stone, in its unity, its form,
its "shape," is this objected synthesis of apprehension, _filled_ with
certain sensuous effects. The synthesis of apprehension, again, as the
condition of any special "shape" into which it may be stuffed, is of
course _a priori_ to _the_ stuffed shape; so space is _a priori_ to the
stone in space. Once again, space is the outward representation, the very
double to the eye, of the synthesis of apprehension; for space is just the
_visible synthesis of the apprehended_--the transparent base of
co-existence for all external things.
It must be remembered that the synthesis of apprehension, as the "mind" of
"sense," is itself a _double_, containing the pure conjunctive unity of
"unconscious understanding" as an active factor, and susceptibility to
impact as a passive factor. In the conjoined relation of these two factors
every material phenomenon gets to exist; so there must be _some_ relation
of space to _every_ external object, and to _all_ external objects--which
is to say at once that space is _infinite_, both in extent and
divisibility, so far as it can apply to objects _at all_.
And here, too, is the reason that the contained character, the constituent
quality, of space--meaning what Kant termed the "form of the
intuition"--is essentially plural. This constituent quality of space is a
_re_-presentation of mind, as at once active and passive, receptive and
reflexive--as fundamental _a priori_ self-separateness. But _space
itself_, as a _whole_, is the _synthesis_ of this self-separateness. It is
self-unity of self-separateness, _materialized_. Space, made of spaces, is
a thing identical in form and contents. Kant said:
"Space _re_-presented as an _object_ (as geometry really requires it to
be) contains more than the mere _form of the intuition_; namely, a
combination of the manifold given according to the form of sensibility
into a representation that can be intuited; so the _form of the
intuition_ gives us merely the manifold, but the _formal intuition_ gives
unity of re-presentation. In the 'AEsthetic,' [the first division of _The
Critique of Pure Reason_], I regarded this unity as belonging entirely to
sensibility, for the purpose of indicating that it antecedes all
conceptions, although it presupposes a synthesis which does not belong to
sense, through which, however, all our conceptions of space and time are
possible.... By means of this unity alone (the understanding determining
the sensibility) space and time are given as intuitions."
It is easy enough to follow out the genesis of time, in the same way as
the genesis of space. The constituent quality of space and time is the
same in both, and is subject in both to the same act of synthesis, in
order that the essential plurality of "the form of intuition" may be
created into the unity of "the formal intuition" itself--the single thing,
space or time. But time is the "form" of "_in_-ternal sense," as Kant put
it, while space is the "form" of "_ex_-ternal sense"--sense being to Kant
not its physical organs (which are matter), but mental _susceptibility_ as
distinguished from mental _synthesis_. Every phenomenon in space is made
of active subjective-synthesis, passive subjective-susceptibility, and
noumenal impact. Space and time themselves are made of the synthesis and
the susceptibility alone. But pure synthesis, which means just pure
identity of awareness, can _have_ no "susceptibility," cannot be
_occupied_, without _change of state_; and any change of state in a pure
general awareness forms succession of states, or, as Kant said,
"_generates time_." But conjunction, again, of synthesis and
susceptibility must be the relating of separates, with reference to the
objective as well as the subjective factor. As objective effect this
relation is pure co-existence of separates in time, through outness from
each other--space. All objects, impressions, "effects of sense," must take
the order of time; but "objects of internal sense" (feelings, or
emotions), having no direct filling from noumena, are not objects in
space. Thus, while space is pure synthesis of apprehension _ex_-ternally
objected, time is the same pure synthesis of apprehension _in_-ternally
objected.