Probability and Theory of Errors (New York, 1906), pp. 9-10.
[1975]. Direct and inverse ratios have been applied by an ingenious author to measure human affections, and the moral worth of actions. An eminent Mathematician attempted to ascertain by calculation, the ratio in which the evidence of facts must decrease in the course of time, and fixed the period when the evidence of the facts on which Christianity is founded shall become evanescent, and when in consequence no faith shall be found on the earth.—Reid, Thomas.
Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind (Edinburgh, 1812), Vol. 2, p. 408.
CHAPTER XX
THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS, TIME AND SPACE
[2001]. Kant’s Doctrine of Time.
I. Time is not an empirical concept deduced from any experience, for neither co-existence nor succession would enter into our perception, if the representation of time were not given a priori. Only when this representation a priori is given, can we imagine that certain things happen at the same time (simultaneously) or at different times (successively).
II. Time is a necessary representation on which all intuitions depend. We cannot take away time from phenomena in general, though we can well take away phenomena out of time. In time alone is reality of phenomena possible. All phenomena may vanish, but time itself (as the general condition of their possibility) cannot be done away with.
III. On this a priori necessity depends also the possibility of apodictic principles of the relations of time, or of axioms of time in general. Time has one dimension only; different times are not simultaneous, but successive, while different spaces are never successive, but simultaneous. Such principles cannot be derived from experience, because experience could not impart to them absolute universality nor apodictic certainty....