Now others among our German "traders in philosophy" again try to get rid of the obnoxious Kant in a different way: instead of attacking his philosophy point-blank, they rather seek to undermine the foundations on which it is built. These people however are so utterly forsaken by all the gods and by all power of judgment, that they attack _à priori_ truths: that is to say, truths as old as the human understanding, nay, which constitute that understanding itself, and which it is therefore impossible to contradict without declaring war against that understanding also. So great however is the courage of these gentlemen. I am sorry to say I know of three,[174] and I am afraid there are a good many more at work at this undermining process, who have the incredible presumption to maintain the _à posteriori_ origin of Space as a consequence, a mere relation, of the objects _within it_; for they assert that Space and Time are of empirical origin and attached to those bodies, so that [according to them] Space first arises through our perception of the juxtaposition of bodies and Time likewise through our perception of the succession of changes (_sancta simplicitas!_ as if the words "collateral" and "successive" would have any sense for us without the antecedent intuitions of Space and of Time to give them a meaning); consequently, that if there were no bodies, there would be no Space, therefore if they disappeared Space also must lapse, and that if all changes were to stop, Time also would stop.[175] [174] (_a_) Rosenkranz, "Meine Reform der Hegelschen Philosophie," 1852, especially p. 41, in a pompous, dictatorial tone: "I have explicitly said, that Space and Time would not exist if Matter did not exist. Æther spread out within itself first constitutes real Space, and the movement of this æther and consequent real genesis of everything individual and separate, constitutes real Time." (_b_) L. Noack, "Die Theologie als Religionsphilosophie," 1853, pp. 8, 9. (_c_) V. Reuchlin-Meldegg, Two reviews of Oersted's "Geist in der Natur" in the Heidelberg Annals, Nov.-Dec., 1850, and May-June, 1854. [175] Time is the condition of the _possibility_ of succession, which could neither take place, nor be understood by us and expressed in words, without Time. And Space is likewise the condition of the _possibility_ of juxtaposition, and Transcendental Æsthetic is the proof that these conditions have their seat in the constitution of our head. [Add. to 3rd ed.]