The untenable character of Kant's position with regard to time and the knowledge of ourselves can be seen in another way. It is not difficult to show that, in order to prove that we do not know _things_, but only the appearances which they produce, we must allow that we do know _ourselves_, and not appearances produced by ourselves, and, consequently, that time is real and not phenomenal. To show this, it is only necessary to consider the objection which Kant himself quotes against his view of time. The objection is important in itself, and Kant himself remarks that he has heard it so unanimously urged by intelligent men that he concludes that it must naturally present itself to every reader to whom his views are novel. According to Kant, it runs thus: "Changes are real (this is proved by the change of our own representations, even though all external phenomena, together with their changes, be denied). Now changes are only possible in time; therefore time is something real."[12] And he goes on to explain why this objection is so unanimously brought, even by those who can bring no intelligible argument against the ideality of space. "The reason is that men have no hope of proving apodeictically the absolute reality of space, because they are confronted by idealism, according to which the reality of external objects is incapable of strict proof, whereas the reality of the object of our internal senses (of myself and my state) is immediately clear through consciousness. External objects might be mere illusion, but the object of our internal senses is to their mind undeniably something real."[13] [12] B. 53, M. 32. [13] B. 55, M. 33. Here, though Kant does not see it, he is faced with a difficulty from which there is no escape. On the one hand, according to him, we do not know things in themselves, i. e. things independent of the mind. In particular, we cannot know that they are spatial; and the objection quoted concedes this. On the other hand, we do know phenomena or the appearances produced by things in themselves. Phenomena or appearances, however, as he always insists, are essentially states or determinations of the mind. To the question, therefore, 'Why are we justified in saying that we do know phenomena, whereas we do not know the things which produce them?' Kant could only answer that it is because phenomena are dependent upon the mind, as being its own states.[14] As the objector is made to say, 'the reality of the object of our internal senses (of myself and my state) is immediately clear through consciousness.' If we do not know things in themselves, because they are independent of the mind, we only know phenomena because they are dependent upon the mind. Hence Kant is only justified in denying that we know things in themselves if he concedes that we really know our own states, and not merely appearances which they produce. [14] Cf. p. 123.