SPACE 39 



the otherwise mysterious fact that the rising moon appears 

 large while it forms part of the horizon, but after it has risen 

 and taken its place in the plane of the stars, which is so near 

 the extended, it may shrink to a quarter the size it was at 

 first. 



Between our ego, which has no extension at all, and the 

 absolute magnitude of the extended (as the pure form of the 

 local-sense) which embraces the whole world-picture, space 

 lies outspread, as the absolute possibility of motion. All 

 three factors — the ego, space and the extended — are pure 

 forms of intuition, which stand throughout in close relation 

 to one another, and form, as it were, the scaffolding for the 

 whole of intuition. As such, they constitute a unified, 

 indivisible whole, invisible, it is true, but, by means of laws, 

 fitting into its set forms all that our eye can see. 



Beginning with ourselves, there are three phases of vision 

 by means of which we penetrate space — (i) the phase of 

 plastic vision, which lasts so long as the convergent move- 

 ments of the eyes are appreciable, (2) the phase of direct 

 spatial vision, while the accommodation-muscles remain active 

 and direction-signs enable us to perform movements in the 

 third dimension, and (3) the phase of indirect spatial vision, 

 in which, for estimating distance, we rely on the indications 

 offered by object-signs and distance-signs. 



Now, since object-signs were made use of even in the first 

 phase to form material shapes, when they appear alone, as 

 in the third phase, they create there also the plastic forms of 

 objects. Thus the whole of space appears filled with plastic 

 objects, even to its furthermost limits, where the world of 

 objects ends and the extended begins. 



Since it is a form of intuition, the frame of the extended 

 adapts itself to every kind of vision and without altering its 

 own size, whether we observe the starry heaven with the naked 

 eye, or with a huge telescope screw down the moon and stars 



