105. All our sensations are, either more or less, connected with extension; although if we consider sensation _a priori_ by itself, and independently of all habit, it would seem as though only the sensations of sight and touch were necessarily connected with an extended object. It does not seem to me that the loss of these two senses would necessarily involve the privation of the impressions of hearing or smelling, or, perhaps, even of taste; for although it is true that the sensations of touch, such as hardness or softness, etc., are always united with the sensations of the palate; it is equally certain that those sensations are wholly distinct from the sensation of taste, and we have no reason for asserting that they cannot be separated from it. 106. Extension, considered in us or in its intuition, may be regarded as a necessary condition of our sensitive faculties. Kant saw this, but he exaggerated it when he denied the objective reality of space, asserting that space is only a subjective condition _a priori_ without which we cannot receive impressions, the form of phenomena, that is, of appearances, but nothing in reality. I have already said that space, as distinguished from bodies, is nothing, but the object of the idea of space is the extension of bodies; or, rather, this extension is the foundation from which we deduce the general idea of space, and is contained in this idea. 107. To say, as Kant does, that space is the form under which the phenomena are presented to us, and that it is a necessary subjective condition of their perception, is equivalent to saying that the phenomena which are presented as extended, require that the mind should be capable of perceiving extension. This is very true, but it throws no light on the nature of the idea of space, either in itself or in its object. "Space," says Kant, "is no empirical conception which is derived from external experience. For in order that certain sensations may be referred to something out of me, that is, to something in another part of space than that in which I am, and in order that I may conceive them as outside of and near one another, and, consequently, not only as separated, but also as occupying separate places, the conception of space must be placed as the foundation. Therefore, the conception of space cannot be obtained by experience from the relations of the external phenomenon, but this external experience itself is possible only by this conception."[48] [48] Kant, _Transc. Æstœœh._ I. Absch. § 2, 1.