Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/471

 IDEALISM AND EMPIRICAL REALISM. 457 would be no reason apparent why things existing by them- selves might not have modes of existence like the modes of existence of the sense-objects which are only in us. There would be no justice in maintaining that the time and space of my sense-objects, which are supposed to resemble the time and space of your sense-objects, cannot resemble the time and space of things-in-themselves. In fact I cannot sensibly per- ceive your sense-objects, nor you mine, and yet all we mean when we say that your sense-objects are probably in a time and space like mine is that if I could sensibly perceive yours, or you mine, or if some one being could sensibly perceive both yours and mine, I, or you, or he would find them to be in like times and spaces. And so we do not know but that some being who could sensibly or otherwise perceive things- in-themselves, would find them to be in or to have in and between themselves a time and space like ours. But Kant does not stop at this position. He does not say that our time and space are modes existing in our sense-objects only after and because these exist. He recognises, to be sure, that he finds his own time and space only in his sensible objects after he has them. 1 Yet he maintains that his time and space are distinctive forms (or moulds) existing in him prior to his having any sense-objects, hence independent of his sense-objects, and that the existence of his sense-objects, as successive and extended things, is consequent to, and dependent upon, the existence of his forms, time and space. From this doctrine it would result that things-in-themselves could not be in any time and space, but could at best only have some time and space in them, just as my time and space are in me as a sub jecft-in-my self, so that they would be merely other subjects-in-themselves (or monads). For it would be absurd to suppose that a thing existing by itself, as an entity self-contained, could exist in something like something exist- ing in a subject-in-itself as a form of its representations or modifications. This reasoning, however, does not apply to things conceived of merely as " transcendental objects " rela- tively to us ; for such objects might exist in a time and space, themselves forms in another being, say God, as maintained in the Berkeieyan system. A time and space like our forma- tive times and spaces could, of course, be objective to all of us, existing apart from all men, but only by residing in another percipient Being. And transcendental objects need not be things-in-themselves, strictly so called, although does not appear to have recognised this distinction; 1 III., 33, 243, 322 n.