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

II. As a confirmation of this theory of the ideaHty both of the external and of the internal sense, and therefore of all objects of the senses as mere phenomena, we may particularly remark, that everything in our knowledge which belongs to intuition (excluding therefore the feelings of pain and pleasure, and the will, which are no knowledge at all) contains nothing but mere relations, namely, of the places in an intuition (extension), change of places (motion), and laws, according to which that change is determined (moving forces). Nothing is told us thereby as to what is present in the place, or what, besides the change of place, is active in the things. A thing by itself, however, cannot be known by mere relations, and we may, therefore, fairly conclude that, as the external sense gives us nothing but representations of relations, that sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an object to the subject, and not what is inside the object by itself. The same appHes to internal intuition. Not only do the representations of the external senses constitute its proper material with which we fill our mind, but time, in which these representations are placed, and which precedes even our consciousness of them in experience, nay, forms^ the formal condition of the manner in which we place them in the mind, contains itself relations of succession, coexistence, and that which must be coexistent with succession, namely, the permanent. Now that which, as a representation, can precede every act of thinking something, is the intuition : and, if it contains nothing but relations, then the form of intuition. As this represents nothing except what is being placed in the mind, it can itself be the manner only in which the mind, through its own activity, that is,

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by this placing of its representation, is affected by itself, in other words, an internal sense with respect to its form. Whatever is represented by a sense is so far always phenomenal, and we should therefore have either to admit no internal sense at all, or the subject, which is its object, could be represented by it as phenomenal only, and not, as it might judge of itself, if its intuition were spontaneous only, -that is, if it were intellectual. The difficulty here Hes wholly in this, how a subject can have an internal intuition of itself: but this difficulty is common to every theory. The consciousness of self (apperception) is the simple representation of the ego, and if by it alone all the manifold (representations) in the subject were given spontaneously, the inner intuition would be intellectual. In man this consciousness requires internal perception of the manifold, which is previously given in the subject, and the manner in which this is given in the mind without spontaneity, must, on account of this difference, be called sensibility. If the faculty of self-consciousness is to seek for, that is, to apprehend, what lies in the mind, it must affect the mind, and can thus only produce an intuition of itself. The form of this, which lay antecedently in the mind, determines the manner in which the manifold exists together in the mind, namely, in the representation of time. The intuition of self, therefore, is not, as if it could represent itself immediately and as spontaneously and independently active, but according to the manner in which it is internally affected, consequently as it appears to itself, not as it is.

III. If I say that the intuition of external objects and the selfintuition of the mind, represent both (viz. the objects and the mind) in space and time, as they affect our senses, that is, as they appear, I do not mean, that these objects are mere illusion. For the objects, as phenomena, nay, even the properties which we ascribe to them, are always looked upon as something really given : and all we do is, that, as their quality depends only on the manner of intuition on the part of the subject in relation to a given object, we distinguish the object, di?, phenomenon, from itself, as an object by itself. Thus, if I assert that the quality of space and time, according to which, as a condition of their existence, I accept both external objects and my own soul, lies in my manner

734 Supplement XI of intuition and not in these objects by themselves, I do not mean to say that bodies seem only to exist outside me, or that my soul seerns only to be given in my self-consciousness. It would be my own fault, if I changed that, which I ought to count as phenomenal, into mere illusion.^