Chapter XIII: 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 'Æsthetic,' [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.