But this distinction between appearance and phenomenon is not held to by Kant. He more usually speaks of the categorised objects as appearances. The term phenomenon is of comparatively rare occurrence in the _Critique_. This has been concealed from English readers, as both Meiklejohn and Max Müller almost invariably translate _Erscheinung_ phenomenon. The statement that appearance is the _object_ of an empirical intuition raises a very fundamental and difficult question, namely, as to the relation in which representation stands to the represented.[366] Frequently Kant’s argument implies this distinction, yet constantly he speaks and argues as if it were non-existent. We have to recognise two tendencies in Kant, subjectivist and phenomenalist.[367] When the former tendency is in the ascendent, he regards all appearances, all phenomena, all empirical objects, as representations, modifications of the sensibility, merely subjective. When, on the other hand, his thinking is dominated by the latter tendency, appearances gain an existence independent of the individual mind. They are known through subjective representations, but must not be directly equated with them. They have a genuine objectivity. To this distinction, and its consequences, we shall have frequent occasion to return. The phenomenalist standpoint is dominant in these first two paragraphs of the _Aesthetic_, and it finds still more pronounced expression in the opening of the third paragraph. “That in the appearances which _corresponds_ (_correspondirt_) to sensation, I call its matter.” This sentence, through the use of the term corresponds, clearly implies a distinction between sensation and the real object apprehended in and through it. That, in turn, involves a threefold distinction, between sensation as subjective content (= appearance in the strict sense), the real enduring object in space (= phenomenon, the categorised object, appearance in its wider and more usual sense), and the thing in itself.[368] Yet in the immediately following sentence Kant says that “the matter of all appearance is given _a posteriori_.” By “matter of appearance” Kant must there mean sensations, for they alone are given _a posteriori_.[369] On this view the phenomena or empirical objects reduce to, and consist of, sensations. The intermediate term of the above threefold distinction is eliminated. The matter of appearance does not correspond to, but itself _is_, sensation. Thus in these successive sentences the two conflicting tendencies of Kant’s teaching find verbal expression. They intervene even in the preliminary definition of his terms. This fundamental conflict cannot, however, be profitably discussed at this stage.