This is an extremely inadequate statement of the Critical standpoint,
but it excellently illustrates Kant’s perverse interpretation of
Berkeley’s teaching.
To these criticisms Kant gives less heated but none the less explicit
expression in the second edition of the _Critique_. He is now much more
careful to avoid subjectivist modes of statement. His phenomenalist
tendencies are reinforced, and come to clearer expression of all that
they involve. The fourth _Paralogism_ with its sympathetic treatment of
empirical idealism is omitted, and in addition to the above passage Kant
inserts a new section, entitled _Refutation of Idealism_, in which he
states his position in a much more adequate manner.
=IV. B 71.=--Kant continues the argument of A 39.[617] If space and time
condition all existence, they will condition even divine existence, and
so must render God’s omniscience, which as such must be intuitive, not
discursive, difficult of conception. Upon this point Kant is more
explicit in the _Dissertation_.[618]
“_Whatever is, is somewhere and sometime_, is a spurious axiom....
By this spurious principle all beings, even though they be known
intellectually, are restricted in their existence by conditions of
space and time. Philosophers therefore discuss every form of idle
question regarding the locations in the corporeal universe of
substances that are immaterial--and of which for that very reason
there can be no sensuous intuition nor any possible spatial
representation--or regarding the seat of the soul, and the like.
And since the sensuous mixes with the intellectual about as badly
as square with round, it frequently happens that the one disputant
appears as holding a sieve into which the other milks the he-goat.
The presence of immaterial things in the corporeal world is
virtual, not local, although it may conveniently be spoken of as
local. Space contains the conditions of possible interaction only
when it is between material bodies. What, however, in immaterial
substances constitutes the external relations of force between them
or between them and bodies, obviously eludes the human
intellect.... But when men reach the conception of a highest and
extra-mundane Being, words cannot describe the extent to which they
are deluded by these shades that flit before the mind. They picture
God as present in a place: they entangle Him in the world where He
is supposed to fill all space at once. They hope to make up for the
[spatial] limitation they thus impose by thinking of God’s place
_per eminentiam_, _i.e._ as infinite. But to be present in
different places at the same time is absolutely impossible, since
different places are mutually external to one another, and
consequently what is in several places is outside itself, and is
therefore present to itself outside itself--which is a
contradiction in terms.