Every addition to our empirical knowledge, and every advance made in
the exercise of our perception, is nothing more than an extension of
the determination of the internal sense, that is to say, a progression
in time, be objects themselves what they may, phenomena, or pure
intuitions. This progression in time determines everything, and is
itself determined by nothing else. That is to say, the parts of the
progression exist only in time, and by means of the synthesis thereof,
and are not given antecedently to it. For this reason, every transition
in perception to anything which follows upon another in time, is a
determination of time by means of the production of this perception.
And as this determination of time is, always and in all its parts, a
quantity, the perception produced is to be considered as a quantity
which proceeds through all its degrees—no one of which is the smallest
possible—from zero up to its determined degree. From this we perceive
the possibility of cognizing à priori a law of changes—a law, however,
which concerns their form merely. We merely anticipate our own
apprehension, the formal condition of which, inasmuch as it is itself
to be found in the mind antecedently to all given phenomena, must
certainly be capable of being cognized à priori.
Thus, as time contains the sensuous condition à priori of the
possibility of a continuous progression of that which exists to that
which follows it, the understanding, by virtue of the unity of
apperception, contains the condition à priori of the possibility of a
continuous determination of the position in time of all phenomena, and
this by means of the series of causes and effects, the former of which
necessitate the sequence of the latter, and thereby render universally
and for all time, and by consequence, objectively, valid the empirical
cognition of the relations of time.
C. THIRD ANALOGY.
Principle of Coexistence, According to the Law of Reciprocity or
Community.
All substances, in so far as they can be perceived in space at the same
time, exist in a state of complete reciprocity of action.
PROOF.