This can be done as follows. The essential characteristic of a
geometrical judgement is not that it takes place prior to experience,
but that it is not based upon experience. Thus a judgement, arrived at
by an activity of the mind in which it remains within itself and does
not appeal to actual experience of the objects to which the judgement
relates, is implied to hold good of those objects. If the objects were
things as they are in themselves, the validity of the judgement could
not be justified, for it would involve the gratuitous assumption that
a necessity of thought is binding on things which _ex hypothesi_ are
independent of the nature of the mind. If, however, the objects in
question are things as perceived, they will be through and through
conditioned by the mind's perceiving nature; and, consequently, if a
geometrical rule, e. g. that a three-sided figure must have three
angles, is really a law of the mind's perceiving nature, all
individual perceptions, i. e. all objects as perceived by us, will
necessarily conform to the law. Therefore, in the latter case, and in
that only, will the universal validity of geometrical judgements be
justified. Since, then, geometrical judgements are universally valid,
space, which is that of which geometrical laws are the laws, must be
merely a form of perception or a characteristic of objects as
perceived by us.
This appears to be the best form in which the substance of Kant's
argument, stripped of unessentials, can be stated. It will be
necessary to consider both the argument and its conclusion.