The point of view which underlies and inspires the argument can be defined even more precisely. Kant’s conclusion may be interpreted in either of two ways. The form of space may precede experience only as a potentiality. Existing as a power of co-ordination,[433] it will come to consciousness only indirectly through the addition which it makes to the given sensations. Though subjective in origin, it will be revealed to the mind only in and through experience. This view may indeed be reconciled with the terms of the proof. But a strictly literal interpretation of its actual wording is more in keeping with what, as we shall find, is the general trend of the _Aesthetic_ as a whole. We are then confronted by a very different and extremely paradoxical view, which may well seem too naive to be accepted by the modern reader, but which we seem forced,[434] none the less, to regard as the view actually presented in the text before us. Kant here asserts, in the most explicit manner, that the mind, in order to construe sensations in spatial terms, must already be in possession of a _representation_ of space, and that it is in the light of this representation that it apprehends sensations. The conscious representation of space precedes in time external experience. Such, then, would seem to be Kant’s first argument on space. It seeks to establish a negative conclusion, viz. that space is not derived from experience. But, in so doing, it also yields a positive psychological explanation of its origin. Those commentators[435] who refuse to recognise that Kant’s problem is in any degree psychological, or that Kant himself so regards it, and who consequently seek to interpret the _Aesthetic_ from the point of view of certain portions of the _Analytic_, give a very different statement of this first argument. They state it in purely logical terms.[436] Its problem, they claim, is not that of determining the origin of our representation of space, but only its logical relation to our specific sense-experiences. The notion of space in general precedes, as an indispensable logical presupposition, all particular specification of the space relation. Consciousness of space as a whole is not constructed from consciousness of partial spaces; on the contrary, the latter is only possible in and through the former.