THE DOCTRINE OF ENERGY 105 



consistent spatial condition ; but the differences in 

 the characters of visual Space, as it is called, and the 

 spatial content of my activity, reflect the differences 

 in the series of energetic transmutations with which 

 they are respectively connected. 



We see more clearly, therefore, with the aid of the 

 doctrine of Energy, the import of the theory of 

 transcendental aesthetic enunciated by Kant, who 

 first pointed out that there are elements, and those 

 the most necessary and universal, in the sense- 

 presentation which bear the character of ideality as 

 fully as the most subjective efforts of our ideative 

 activity. More particularly do we illustrate the 

 ideality of Space as a cognition precedent to ex- 

 perience. It is because general laws constantly 

 operative regulate the transmutations which con- 

 stitute the individual's Presentment that it is 

 possible for him to abstract from and generalise the 

 data of sense ; and it is because the subjective pro- 

 cess of Ideation, by which we mean our represen- 

 tative mental activity in its widest sense, consists 

 also in transmutations under the same general laws 

 of the same portion of the energetic organism, that 

 it is possible to frame general ideas. These general 

 laws of organic transmutation are the a priori con- 

 ditions of the necessary determination in time of all 

 existences in the world of phenomena. 



