[375] Cf. above, p. xxxiii ff.
[376] A 266 = B 322.
[377] In discussing a and b we may for the present identify form with space. The problem has special complications in reference to time.
[378] Cf. B 207.
[379] Herbart’s doctrine of space, Lotze’s local sign theory, also the empiricist theories of the Mills and Bain, all rest upon this same assumption. It was first effectively called in question by William James. Cf. Bergson: Les Données immédiates, pp. 70-71, Eng. trans. pp. 92-3: “The solution given by Kant does not seem to have been seriously disputed since his time: indeed, it has forced itself, sometimes without their knowledge, on the majority of those who have approached the problem anew, whether nativists or empiricists. Psychologists agree in assigning a Kantian origin to the nativistic explanation of Johann Müller; but Lotze’s hypothesis of local signs, Bain’s theory, and the more comprehensive explanation suggested by Wundt, may seem at first sight quite independent of the Transcendental Aesthetic. The authors of these theories seem indeed to have put aside the problem of the nature of space, in order to investigate simply by what process our sensations come to be situated in space and to be set, so to speak, alongside one another: but this very question shows that they regard sensations as inextensive, and make a radical distinction, just as Kant did, between the matter of representation and its form. The conclusion to be drawn from the theories of Lotze and Bain, and from Wundt’s attempt to reconcile them, is that the sensations by means of which we come to form the notion of space are themselves unextended and simply qualitative: extensity is supposed to result from their synthesis, as water from the combination of two gases. The empirical or genetic explanations have thus taken up the problem of space at the very point where Kant left it: Kant separated space from its contents: the empiricists ask how these contents, which are taken out of space by our thought, manage to get back again.” Bergson proceeds to argue that the analogy of chemical combination is quite inapplicable, and that some “unique act very like what Kant calls an a priori form” must still be appealed to. With the Kantian standpoint in this matter Bergson does not, of course, agree. He is merely pointing out what the consequences must be of this initial assumption of inextensive sensations.
[380] Cf. Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume, in its penultimate paragraph.
[381] Cf. Dissertation, last sentence of § 4, quoted below, p. 87.
[382] A 291 = B 347; A 429 = B 457.
[383] Reflexionen, ii. 334.
[384] ii. p. 73.