Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/479

 IDEALISM AND EMPIRICAL EEALISM. ;<;; ; : -*J465 ally speaks of time and space simply, or at most of " our " time and space, without confining himself to his time and space that is, in the first person, to my time and space. Now, as the unity of the forms of the sensibility is a cardinal feature in Kant's doctrine of time and space, by the slurring of the distinction between individuals of the fact that my sense-objects are not your sense-objects, my forms of my intuition of those objects not your forms, and conversely, however much they may resemble each other, Kant comes to speak simply of one time and of one space, as though there were one time and one space the same for all men (instead of there being as many distinct though similar times and spaces as there are distinct persons). Likewise the unity of experience is a cardinal feature in his doctrine of experience, so that by leaving off the restriction to individuals he comes to speak of one experience, and even, we may add, he goes so far as to speak of one consciousness. And as a consequence from all these, he ends by speaking of one phenomenal world and of one nature. 1 In this view an unexperienced phenom- enal object, such as the wall of my room when my eyes are shut and nobody else is sensibly perceiving it, is simply taken for an object of this one experience, existing in this, one phenomenal world, subject to the laws of this one nature, extended in this one space, enduring or passing in this one time in short being a representation in this one conscious- ness. And past things, of course, are not, but were, real phenomenal objects in the one experience, one world, one space, one time, one consciousness, even though no individual human being or terrestrial animal ever sensibly perceived them or so much as thought of them. In this conception our real phenomenal objects are even more clearly than in the preceding distinguished from our merely imaginary objects 1 "Es ist nur eine Erfahrung, in welcher alle Wahrnehmungen als im durchgangigen und gesetzmassigen Zusammenhange vorgestellt werden ; eben so, wie nur ein Raum und Zeit ist, in welcher alle Formen der Erscheinung und alles Verhaltniss des Seins oder Nichtseins stattfinden," iii., 574. " Es ist nur eine Zeit," 173. He speaks of " die einige allbe- fassende Erfahrung," 399 ; and of the Analogies as exhibiting " alle reale Verkniipfung in einer Erfahrung iiberhaupt," 196, cf. iv., 58, 68, and 359 (Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft}. " ADe Erschein- ungen liegen in einer Natur und mussen darin liegen," iii., 191, cf. 376. " Nimmt man die reine Anschauung des Raumes, so wie dieser . . . nur ein Eaum ist ; so sind dadurch alle Substanzen . . . verbunden und machen ein Ganzes aus, so dass alle Wesen, als Dinge im Raume, zusammen nur eine Welt ausmachen," viii., 545-546 ( Ueber die Fortschritte der Meta- physik), cf. iii., 208. For the one consciousness see iv., 49, 53, 66. Kant does, however, sometimes distinguish between the distinct times of different persons, as in iii., 594-595. 30