[555] The date of Kant’s Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume.
[556] Cf. below, p. 161 ff.
[557] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 D: “Those who defend the reality of space conceive it either as an absolute and immense receptacle of possible things—a view which appeals not only to the English [thinkers] but to most geometricians—or they contend that it is nothing but a relation holding between existing things, which must vanish when the things are removed, and which is thinkable only in actual things. This latter is the teaching of Leibniz and of most of our countrymen.” That the account of Leibniz’s teaching given in the paragraphs under consideration is not altogether accurate, need hardly be pointed out. Kant, following his usual method in the discussion of opposing systems, is stating what he regards as being the logical consequences of certain of Leibniz’s tenets, rather than his avowed positions.
[558] Cf. A 275-6 = B 331-2: “Leibniz conceived space as a certain order in the community of substances, and time as the dynamical sequence of their states. But that which both seem to possess as proper to themselves, in independence of things, he ascribed to the confused character of their concepts, asserting this confusion to be the reason why what is a mere form of dynamical relations has come to be regarded as a special intuition, self-subsistent and antecedent to the things themselves. Thus space and time were [for Leibniz] the intelligible form of the connection of things (substances and their states) in themselves.” Cf. also Prolegomena, § 13, Anm. i.
[559] Kant has stated that both views conflict with “the principles of experience.” But his criticisms are not altogether on that line. The statement strictly applies only to his criticism of the Leibnizian view. Cf. Dissertation, § 15 D: “That first inane invention of reason, assuming as it does the existence of true infinite relations in the absence of all interrelated entities, belongs to the realm of fable. But those who adopt the other view fall into a much worse error. For whereas the former place an obstacle in the way only of certain rational concepts, i.e. concepts that concern noumena, and which also in themselves are extremely obscure bearing upon questions as to the spiritual world, omnipresence, etc., the latter set themselves in direct antagonism to the phenomena themselves and to geometry, the most faithful interpreter of all phenomena. For—not to dwell upon the obvious circle in which they necessarily become involved in defining space—they cast geometry down from its position at the highest point of certitude, and throw it back into the class of those sciences the principles of which are empirical. For if all modifications of space are derived only through experience from external relations, geometrical axioms can have only comparative universality, like that acquired through induction, in other words, such as extends only as far as observation has gone. They cannot lay claim to any necessity save that of being in accordance with the established laws of nature, nor to any precision except of the artificial sort, resting upon assumptions. And as happens in matters empirical, the possibility is not excluded that a space endowed with other original modifications, and perhaps even a rectilineal figure enclosed by two lines, may sometime be discovered.” Cf. above, p. 114; below, p. 290.
[560] In B 155 n. Kant distinguishes between motion of an object in space, and motion as generation of a geometrical figure. The former alone involves experience; the latter is a pure act of the productive imagination, and belongs not only to geometry but also to transcendental philosophy. This note, as Erdmann has pointed out (Kriticismus, pp. 115, 168), was introduced by Kant into the second edition as a reply to a criticism of Schütz. The distinction as thus drawn is only tenable on the assumption of a pure manifold distinct from the manifold of sense.
[561] A 230 = B 283. Cf. above, pp. 57, 118; below, pp. 185-6, 257.
[562] A 41 = B 58.
[563] Cf. below, pp. 359-60.
[564] Les Données Immédiates, p. 75.