trative of an original synthetic activity. But Kant failed to 

 adduce an abiding account of the understanding because a proper 

 investigation was inhibited by his fundamental presupposition. 

 To assume certain " stems of knowledge", instead of ascertaining 

 by analysis the classes of knowledge, inevitably invites failure. 



It was this very same mistake which forced Kant to seek some 

 nexus or link between sensibility and the understanding, in other 

 words, which made necessary the schematism of the categories. 

 Because of his unfortunate mode of procedure, Kant is face to 

 face with what is really, on his basis, an insuperable difficulty. 

 No one, says Kant can hold that causality, to instance one of his 

 categories, can be seen through the senses or that it is contained 

 in the phenomena. The "pure concepts of the understanding, as 

 compared with empirical or sensuous impressions in general, are 

 entirely heterogeneous". 1 But since knowledge is possible only 

 through the union of categories, or concepts of the understanding, 

 and empirical or sensuous impressions, there must be some way 

 of bringing these two heterogeneous stems' of knowledge into 

 relation. How is this to be done? Kant attempts the reconcilia- 

 tion by making use of one of the pure forms of perception, viz. time. 

 Time, as the formal condition of all phenomena is homogeneous, 

 on the one side, with the categories, and, on the other, with the 

 phenomena, and so, Kant claims, it renders possible the applica- 

 tion of the former to the latter. But such a solution is really no 

 solution at all. Phenomena and the categories are heterogeneous. 

 This Kant has assumed. Phenomena he says are composed of 

 matter, sensations, and form, space and time. By what right, 

 now, can a part of phenomena, time, be said to be homogeneous 

 with the categories when such a homogeneity is denied to the 

 whole? It is only by ignoring his first assumption that Kant, in 

 this latter assumption, effects a union of sensibility and under- 

 standing. Furthermore, why single out time to perform this 

 unifying function? True, on Kant's basis, space does not apply 

 so generally as time, since the latter is the formal condition of 

 both outer and inner sense. But is there any possible reason 

 why the categories might not be mediated to external, though 

 not to internal, phenomena through the schema of space as well 



^p. Cit. P. 112. 



112 



