It is well known that philosophers themselves dispute on the true nature of time; and that it is the form of the internal sense is an opinion of Kant's, which is not accepted by many others, and which, as I have shown,[47] he explains badly and proves still worse, although he pretends to have raised his theory to the height of an incontestible doctrine. Whether time is an internal or an external form, whether, even, it is an illusion or a reality, we perceive our numerical identity in its succession; therefore when the German philosopher bases himself on his theory of time, in order to attack the solidity of the argument of consciousness, he rests on a supposition which we are not required to admit, and what is more, he explains this sentiment of identity in terms which no one ever used before him. If he wishes to make time enter into the sentiment of numerical identity, he might say: I find myself in all this time in a numerical identity, or: all this time has passed over me as over an individual unit; but not that we are conscious of time as a thing which is a part of ourselves. If we look to consciousness, we should rather be inclined to believe that time is a sort of successive extension, in which we live, and by which our existence is measured. [47] See Book VIII., Chapters XII. and XIV. 64. "The identity of the person," continues Kant, "must inevitably be found in my consciousness; but if I regard myself from the point of view of another (as the object of his external intuition) this other observer conceives me only in time; for, in the apperception, time is not strictly represented except within me; therefore he will not conclude my objective permanence from the _me_, which he admits, and which accompanies all representations in all time in my consciousness, and in a perfect identity. The time in which the observer places me not being the same which is found in my own sensibility, but that which accompanies his intuition, it follows that the identity which is necessarily joined to my consciousness, is not joined to his, that is, to the external intuition of my subject." It is difficult to understand precisely what Kant means in this passage, and it seems very doubtful whether he understood it himself; however, let us see what can be deduced from it against the permanence of the soul.