If in the disclosures which Kant's wonderful acumen gave to the world
there is anything true beyond the shadow of a doubt, this is to be
found in the Transcendental Aesthetics, that is to say, in his
doctrine of the ideality of Space and Time. On such solid foundations
is the structure built that no one has been able to raise even an
apparent objection. It is Kant's triumph, and belongs to the very small
number of metaphysical theories which may be regarded as really proved,
and as actual conquests in that field of research. It teaches us that
Space and Time are the forms of our own faculty of intuition, to which
they consequently belong, and not to the objects thereby perceived;
and further, that they can in no way be a condition of things in
themselves, but rather attach only to their mode of =appearing=,
such as is alone possible for us who have a consciousness of the
external world determined by strictly physiological limits. Now, if to
the Thing in itself, that is, to the Reality underlying the kosmos, as
we perceive it, Time and Space are foreign; so also must multiplicity
be. Consequently that which is objectivated in the countless phaenomena
of this world of the senses cannot but be a unity, a single indivisible
entity, manifested in each and all of them. And conversely, the web of
plurality, woven in the loom of Time and Space, is not the Thing in
itself, but only its =appearance-form=. Externally to the thinking
subject, this appearance-form, as such, has no existence; it is merely
an attribute of our consciousness, bounded, as the latter is, by
manifold conditions, indeed, depending on an organic function.