100. Time is not any thing which subsists by itself, but it is not equally certain that it does not belong, as an objective determination, to things, and that nothing remains of it, if we abstract it from all the subjective impressions of intuition. I have demonstrated that time does not subsist by itself, and that a duration without any thing which endures, is an absurdity; but it does not follow from this that the order represented by the idea of time is not something real in the objects. Abstracting it from our intuition, there still remains something which verifies the propositions by which we express the properties of time. 101. The German philosopher makes time purely subjective, and relies on the following argument: "If time were a condition belonging to the things themselves, or an order, it could not precede the objects as a condition of them, and be known and perceived _à priori_ by synthetical judgments. This last is easily explained if time is nothing but the subjective condition under which all intuitions are possible in us. For then this form of the internal intuition can be represented before the objects, and consequently _à priori_.... "If we abstract our manner of perceiving ourselves internally, and of embracing, by means of this intuition, all external intuitions in the faculty of representation, and consequently take objects just as they may be in themselves, time is nothing.... "I can say that my representations are successive, but this only means that we are conscious of them in a succession,--that is, in a form of the internal sense. Time would not therefore be any thing in itself, nor a determination inherent in things."[30] [30] Trans. Æsth. II., A. § 6. w. f. 102. It is easy to see that the philosopher is struggling between two difficulties. The first is, how to explain the necessity involved in the idea of time, if he makes it proceed from experience. The second is, how, if it is not derived from experience, it can be found really in things, or, at least, how we can know that it is found in them. Hence, he concludes, that it is not possible to save the necessity involved in the idea of time, unless by making it a purely subjective fact, a form of an intuition, entirely independent of the reality of things. It seems to me, that by attending to the principles established above, we can give an objective value to time, independently of our intuition, and explain its relations to experience, without destroying the necessity contained in its idea. CHAPTER XIV. FUNDAMENTAL EXPLANATION OF THE OBJECTIVE POSSIBILITY AND OF THE NECESSITY OF THE IDEA OF TIME. 103. Things in themselves, abstracted from our intuition, are susceptible of change. Where there is change, there is succession, and where there is succession, there is a certain order in the things which succeed,--an order which is really in the things themselves, although it does not subsist by itself, separated from them.