Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - Kant's Conception of the Leibniz Space and Time Doctrine (The Philosophical Review, 1897-07-01).pdf/4

№ &#93; diamond, an extension or diffusion of reésistance.” This capacity for union with different qualities, of course, makes extension a peculiarly general quality. It is called by Leibniz “the object of the common sense, that is, of the spirit (l’esprit)”; and in several parts of the Nouveaux Essais it is clearly implied that the consciousness of these primary qualities is distinct, as over against the confused perception of the secondary qualities,—tastes, odors, and colors. Leibniz teaches, therefore, that extension is a phenomenal attribute of things, never appearing by itself, but always in connection with some other visual or tactual attribute.

But even if Leibniz were supposed to teach that extension, like duration, is what Kant calls an adstractum reale, it would not follow that this is his teaching about space and time, for one of the most significant features of his doctrine is the clear distinction of space and time from extension and duration. There are passages, it is true, especially in the Nouveaux Essais, where the words espace and étendu, temps and durée are used without discrimination, yet the opposition is very definitely made. In the fifth letter of Leibniz to Clarke, for instance, it is supported by the remark that things, while they change their time relations and their position in space, still retain their form and their duration. ”Finite space is not the extension of bodies, as time is not duration. … Everything has its own extension and its own duration, but does not have its own time, and does not occupy (ne garde point) its own space.” Another clear statement to the same effect occurs in the Examen des principes de Malebranche: “Duration and extension are the attributes of things, but time and space are regarded (sont pris) as outside of things, and serve to measure them.”