Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

V. To say that time is infinite means no more than that every definite quantity of time is possible only by limitations of one time which forms the foundation of all times. The original representation of time must therefore be

^ I retain the reading of the First Edition, vor derselben, nicht durch dieselbe. Von denselben, the reading of later editions, is wrong; the emendation of Rosenkranz, vor denselben, nicht durch dieselben, unnecessary. The Second Edition has likewise vor derselben.

26 Of Time given as unlimited. But when the parts themselves and every quantity of an object can be represented as determined by limitation only, the whole representation cannot be given by concepts (for in that case the partial representations come first), but it must be founded on immediate intuition.^

Conclusions from the foregoing concepts

a. Time is not something existing by itself, or inherent in things as an objective determination of them, something therefore that might remain when abstraction is made of all subjective conditions of intuition. For in the former case it would be something real, without being a real object. In the latter it could not, as a deter- [p. 33] mination or order inherent in things themselves, be antecedent to things as their condition, and be known and perceived by means of synthetical propositions a priori. All this is perfectly possible if time is nothing but a subjective condition under which alone ^ intuitions take place within us. For in that case this form of internal intuition can be represented prior to the objects themselves, that is, a priori.

b. Time is nothing but the form of the internal sense, that is, of our intuition of ourselves, and of our internal state. Time cannot be a determination peculiar to external phenomena. It refers neither to their shape, nor their position, etc., it only determines the relation of representations in our internal state. And exactly because this internal intuition supplies no shape, we try to make good this deficiency by means of analogies, and represent

1 Here follows in the Second Edition, Supplement X. ^ Read allein instead of allc.

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to ourselves the succession of time by a line progressing to infinity, in which the manifold constitutes a series of one dimension only; and we conclude from the properties of this line as to all the properties of time, with one exception, i.e. that the parts of the former are simultaneous, those of the latter successive. From this it becomes clear also, that the representation of time is itself an intuition, because all its relations can be expressed by means of an external intuition.

c. Time is the formal condition, a priori, of all phenomena whatsoever. Space, as the pure form of all [p. 34] external intuition, is a condition, a priori^ of external phenomena only. But, as all representations, whether they have for their objects external things or not, belong by themselves, as determinations of the mind, to our inner state, and as this inner state falls under the formal conditions of internal intuition, and therefore of time, time is a condition, a priori, of all phenomena whatsoever, and is so directly as a condition of internal phenomena (of our mind) and thereby indirectly of external phenomena also. If I am able to say, a priori, that all external phenomena are in space, and are determined, a priori, according to the relations of space, I can, according to the principle of the internal sense, make the general assertion that all phenomena, that is, all objects of the senses, are in time, and stand necessarily in relations of time.

If we drop our manner of looking at ourselves internally, and of comprehending by means of that intuition all external intuitions also within our power of representation, and thus take objects as they may be by themselves, then time is nothing. Time has objective validity

28 Of Time