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

internal determinations and forces bearing on the internal reality. But what other internal accidents can I think, except those which my own internal sense pre- [p. 266] sents to me, namely, something which is either itself tho2ight, or something analogous to it? Hence Leibniz represented all substances (as he conceived them as noumena), even the component parts of matter (after having in thought removed from them everything implying external relation, and therefore composition also), as simple subjects endowed with powers of representation, in one word, as monads.

IV. Matter and Form

These are two concepts which are treated as the foundation of all other reflection, so inseparably are they connected with every act of the understanding. The former denotes the determinable in general, the latter its determination (both in a purely transcendental meaning, all differences in that which is given and the mode in which it is determined being left out of consideration). Logicians formerly called the universal, matter ; the specific difference, form. In every judgment the given concepts may be called the logical matter (for a judgment) ; their relation, by means of the copula, the form of a judgment. In every being its component parts (essentialia) are the matter ; the mode in which they are connected in it, the essential form. With respect to things in general, unlimited reality was regarded as the matter of all possibility, and the limitation thereof (negation) as that form by which one [p. 267] thing is distinguished from another, according to transcendental concepts. The understanding demands first that something should be given (at least in concept) in order to

2i8 Transcendental Analytic 2be able afterwards to determine it in a certain manner. In the concept of the pure understanding therefore, matter comes before form, and Leibniz in consequence first assumed things (monads), and within them an internal power of representation, in order afterwards to found thereon their external relation, and the community of their states, that is, of their representations. In this way space and time were possible only, the former through the relation of substances, the latter through the connection of their determinations among themselves, as causes and effects. And so it would be indeed, if the pure understanding could be applied immediately to objects, and if space and time were determinations of things by themselves. But if they are sensuous intuitions only, in which we determine all objects merely as phenomena, then it follows that the form of intuition (as a subjective quality of sensibility) comes before all matter (sensations), that space and time therefore come before all phenomena, and before all data of experience, and render in fact all experience possible. As an intellectual philosopher Leibniz could not endure that this form should come before things and determine their possibility : a criticism quite just when he assumed that we see things as they are (though in a confused representation). But as sensuous intuition is a peculiar [p. 268] subjective condition on which all perception a priori depends, and the form of which is original and independent,^ the form must be given by itself, and so far from matter (or the things themselves which appear) forming the true foundation (as we might think, if we judged according to mere concepts), the very possibility of matter presupposes] a formal intuition (space and time) as given.