“This first formal ground is alone inborn, not the space representation itself. For it always requires impressions to determine the faculty of knowledge to the representation of an object (which in every case is its own action). Thus arises the formal intuition, which we name space, as an originally acquired representation (the form of outer objects in general), the ground of which (as mere receptivity) is likewise inborn, and the acquisition of which long antedates the determinate _conception_ of things which are in accordance with this form.”[403] That last remark is confusing. Kant cannot mean that the representation of space is acquired prior to sense-experience, but only that since the mind gains it by reflection upon its own activity, it is among the first things to be apprehended--an extremely questionable assertion, could the premisses be granted. If “the determinate conception of things” comes late, still later must come the determinate conception of anything so abstract as pure space. The above passage thus repeats without essential modification the teaching of the _Dissertation_, and is open to the same objections. This teaching coincides with that of Leibniz in his _Nouveaux Essais_; and in formulating it in the _Dissertation_ Kant was very probably influenced by Leibniz. Though it is an improvement upon the more extreme forms of the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas, it does not go sufficiently far. Now while Kant thus in 1770 and in 1790 so emphatically teaches that the representation of space is not innate, he none the less, in the intermediate period represented by the _Aesthetic_, would seem to maintain the reactionary view. Space is no mere potential disposition. As a conscious representation it lies ready in the mind. What, then, were the causes which constrained Kant to go back upon his own better views and to adopt so retrograde a position? The answer must be conjectural, but may perhaps be found in the other main point in which the teaching of the _Aesthetic_ is distinguished from that of the _Dissertation_. Throughout the _Critique_ Kant insists that space is a form of _receptivity_. It is _given_ to the mind. It has nothing to do with spontaneity or understanding, and therefore cannot be acquired by reflection upon any activity of the mind. But neither can it, as _a priori_, be acquired from without. Consequently it cannot be acquired at all. But if given, and yet not acquired, it must as a representation lie ready in the mind from the very birth of consciousness. Constrained by such reasoning, Kant views it as given in all its completeness just as truly as is a sensation of colour or sound. This conclusion may not be satisfactory. Kant’s candid recognition of it is, however, greatly preferable to the blurring of the issue by most of his commentators.