All phenomena contain, as regards their form, an intuition in space and
time, which lies à priori at the foundation of all without exception.
Phenomena, therefore, cannot be apprehended, that is, received into
empirical consciousness otherwise than through the synthesis of a
manifold, through which the representations of a determinate space or
time are generated; that is to say, through the composition of the
homogeneous and the consciousness of the synthetical unity of this
manifold (homogeneous). Now the consciousness of a homogeneous manifold
in intuition, in so far as thereby the representation of an object is
rendered possible, is the conception of a quantity (quanti).
Consequently, even the perception of an object as phenomenon is
possible only through the same synthetical unity of the manifold of the
given sensuous intuition, through which the unity of the composition of
the homogeneous manifold in the conception of a quantity is cogitated;
that is to say, all phenomena are quantities, and extensive quantities,
because as intuitions in space or time they must be represented by
means of the same synthesis through which space and time themselves are
determined.
An extensive quantity I call that wherein the representation of the
parts renders possible (and therefore necessarily antecedes) the
representation of the whole. I cannot represent to myself any line,
however small, without drawing it in thought, that is, without
generating from a point all its parts one after another, and in this
way alone producing this intuition. Precisely the same is the case with
every, even the smallest, portion of time. I cogitate therein only the
successive progress from one moment to another, and hence, by means of
the different portions of time and the addition of them, a determinate
quantity of time is produced. As the pure intuition in all phenomena is
either time or space, so is every phenomenon in its character of
intuition an extensive quantity, inasmuch as it can only be cognized in
our apprehension by successive synthesis (from part to part). All
phenomena are, accordingly, to be considered as aggregates, that is, as
a collection of previously given parts; which is not the case with
every sort of quantities, but only with those which are represented and
apprehended by us as extensive.
On this successive synthesis of the productive imagination, in the
generation of figures, is founded the mathematics of extension, or
geometry, with its axioms, which express the conditions of sensuous
intuition à priori, under which alone the schema of a pure conception
of external intuition can exist; for example, “be tween two points only
one straight line is possible,” “two straight lines cannot enclose a
space,” etc. These are the axioms which properly relate only to
quantities (quanta) as such.