Kant offers no proof of his assertion that space can be intuited in image as empty of all sensible content; and as a matter of fact the assertion is false. Doubtless the use of the vague term _Vorstellung_ is in great part responsible for Kant’s mistaken position. So long as imagination and thought are not clearly distinguished, the assertion is correspondingly indefinite. Pure space may possibly be _conceived_, but it can also be conceived as altogether non-existent. If, on the other hand, our imaginative power is alone in question, the asserted fact must be categorically denied. With the elimination of all sensible content space itself ceases to be a possible image. Kant’s proof thus rests upon a misstatement of fact. In a second respect Kant’s proof is open to criticism. He takes the impossibility of imagining space as absent as proof that it originates from within. The argument is valid only if no other psychological explanation can be given of this necessity, as for instance through indissoluble association or through its being an invariable element in the given sensations. Kant’s ignoring of these possibilities is due to his unquestioning belief that sensations are non-spatial, purely qualitative. That is a presupposition whose truth is necessary to the cogency of the argument. =Third Argument.=--This argument, which was omitted in the second edition, will be considered in its connection with the transcendental exposition into which it was then merged. =Fourth (in second edition, Third) Argument.=--The next two arguments seek to show that space is not a discursive or general concept but an intuition. The first proof falls into two parts, (_a_) We can represent only a single space. For though we speak of many spaces, we mean only parts of one and the same single space. Space must therefore be an intuition. For only intuition is thus directly related to a single individual. A concept always refers indirectly, _per notas communes_, to a plurality of individuals. (_b_) The parts of space cannot precede the one all-comprehensive space. They can be thought only in and through it. They arise through limitation of it. Now the parts (_i.e._ the attributes) which compose a concept precede it in thought. Through combination of them the concept is formed. Space cannot, therefore, be a concept. Consequently it must, as the only remaining alternative, be an intuition. Only in an intuition does the whole precede the parts. In a concept the parts always precede the whole. Intuition stands for multiplicity in unity, conception for unity in multiplicity. The first part of the argument refers to the extension, the second part to the intension of the space representation. In both aspects it appears as intuitional.[440]