AND ITS SELF-CONSEKVATION. 13 



which we call space. For we can only know space as 

 the negative of body.* It is not even true that space 

 has extension, for space just is extension, pure and sim- 

 ple. That is its one positive characteristic* In its object- 

 ive character, it is nothing else than indistinguishable, 

 immovable, boundless externality. It is the pure blank 

 form of perfect continuity. No power can quarry out a 

 block of space and carry it away. 



Subjectively considered, on the other hand, space is, as 

 we have seen, the pure form or mode of all possible per- 

 ceptions of external objects. So that, on the one hand, 

 space proves to be a universal and necessary condition of 

 the existence of all possible objects of sensation; while, on 

 the other hand, it is seen to be a universal and necessary 

 form or mode of the subjective fact or act of sensation 

 itself. 



2. Time as a condition of sensation. But besides 

 perceptions of external objects, there are perceptions of 

 changes in those objects, and not only so ; there are also 

 perceptions of internal states of consciousness and of 

 transition from one to another of these states. 



These transitions, however, involve, or rather are 

 themselves forms of, succession. But it is precisely the 

 relation of succession that constitutes time. Thus, just 

 as no object can be perceived except as in space, so no 

 change in a perception, implying change in a perceived 

 object, can take place otherwise than as in time. Time 



* Strictly speaking, a point is the true negation of space. But it is such 

 merely as the simplest phase of limit ; and limit can be realized only in and 

 through body. So that the point, which is the abstract negation of space, 

 may be regarded as the initial phase of body which is the concrete negation, 

 that is, the realization, of space. In other words, the point is the transition 

 from pure to empirical space. 



