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NATURE 
[Fan. 27, 1870 
ERDPLTERS FO THE EDIPOR 
[The Editor does not hold himself responsible far opinions expressed 
by his Correspondents. No notice is taken of anonymous 
communications. | 
Kant’s View of Space 
AxtTHouGH I do not feel myself called upon to modify in 
the least what was said in my former letter on this subject, the 
three letters which appear to-day in answer to it are too impor- 
tant to be left unnoticed. 
The case is briefly this: In the ‘‘ History of Philosophy” I 
had to expound Kant’s doctrine, and to criticise it, not only 
in itself, but in reference to the great question of the origin 
of knowledge. In the pages of exposition I wz/formly speak of 
Space and Time as foims of Intuition; no language can be 
plainer. I also mark the distinction between Sensibility and 
Understanding, as that of Intuition and Thought. After enu- 
merating the Categories, I add, ‘‘In those Categories Kant finds 
the pure forms of the Understanding. They render Thought 
possible.” 
But when, ceasing to expound the system, I had to criticise it, 
and especially to consider it in reference to the great question ; 
there was no longer any need to adhere to a mode of expression 
which would have been obscure and misleading, I therefore 
wuformly class Space and Time among the forms of Thought, 
connecting them with the doctrine of Necessary Truths and 
Fundamental Ideas, which, according to the @ friord school, are 
furnished ready-made—brought by the Mind as its native dowry, 
not evolved in it through Experience. 
Now the question is, Have I put language into Kant’s mouth 
which he would disclaim, or is such language misleading? That 
Kant would have said the language was not what he had em- 
ployed, I freely admit; but that he would have disclaimed it as 
misrepresenting his meaning, I deny. I was not bound to follow 
his language when the task of exposition was at an end; but 
only bound not to translate his opinions into language which 
would distort them. 
In classing Space and Time among the Forms of Thought I 
classed them desde the Categories of the Understanding and the 
Ideas of Reason, 7.¢., the purely intellectual conditions existing 
a priori im the Mind. ‘The Mind is said by Kant to be endowed 
with three faculties—Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. 
The activity of the Mind is threefold—Intuitive Thought, Con- 
ceptive or Discursive Thought, and Regulative Thought. There 
could not be an equivoque in my using the word Thought in its 
ordinary philosophical acceptation as expressive of all mental 
activity whatever, exclusive of mere sensation ; although Kant 
assigns a more restricted meaning in his technical use of the 
word, 7.c., what we call Logic. And that Kant meant nothing 
opposed to the ordinary interpretation is obvious. It is obvious 
because, as I said in my former letter, Intuition without Thought 
is mere sensuous impression. Mr, Sylvester demurs to this, 
so I will show it in a single citation :—‘‘In the transcendental 
“Esthetic,” says Kant, “we will first isolate Sensibility by 
separating from it all that the Understanding through its concepts 
thinks therewith, so that nothing but empirical Intuition remains. 
Secondly, we will lop off from this empirical Intuition every- 
thing relating to Sensation (Ampfindung); so that thereby 
nothing will remain but pure Intuition and the mere form of 
phenomena, which is the one thing that Sensibility can furnish @ 
Priort, By this investigation it will appear that there are two 
pure forms of sensuous Intuition which are 2 for? principles of 
Cognition.” (‘*Kritik,” § 1. ed. Hartenstein, p. 61). 
Mr. Sylvester correctly says, that Intuition and Thought are 
not convertible terms. But he is incorrect in assuming that they 
differ as potential and actual; they differ as species and genus; 
therefore whatever is a form of Intuition, though not a form of 
Logic, must be a form of Thought ; unless intuitive Thought be 
denied altogether. How little Kant denied it is evident in every 
section of his work. In asserting that Space and Time as In- 
tuitions belong to the subjective constitution of the Mind—sué- 
Jectiven Beschaffenheit unseres Gemiiths (p. 62)—he expresses this ; 
but it is unequivocally expressed in the following definition :— 
“A perception, when it refers solely to the subject, as a modifi- 
cation of its states, is sezsa/ion, an objective perception is cogni- 
tion: this ts either Intuition or Concept, ‘intuitus vel conceptus.’” 
(“Kritik,” p. 294.) Is not thought implied in cognition ? 
Again :—‘* The proposition ‘I think’ is an undetermined empiri- 
cal Intuition, z.¢., Perception; consequently, it proves that 
Sensation, which belongs to Sensibility, must lie at the 
basis of this proposition...... I do not mean thereby that the 
‘I’ in the ‘I think’ is an empirical representation (Vors¢el- 
/ung), on the contrary, it is purely intellectual because it belongs to 
thought in general. But without some empirical representation 
which would give Thought its material there could be no such 
act of Thought as the ‘I think’” (p. 324, so/e). 
**Man is always thinking,” says Hegel, ‘‘even when he has 
nothing but intuitions ; dexkend ist der Mensch immer auch wenn 
cr nur anschaut.” (FEncyclop. § 24.) 
If, because Kant has a restricted use of the term Thought, all 
who venture on the more ordinary use are said to misrepresent 
his philosophical meaning, I must call upon those who criticise 
this laxity to refrain henceforth from speaking of Reason as 
Thought, since Kant no less excluded Reason from the proyince 
of the Understanding. If ‘‘the only forms of thought, in Kant’s 
sense, are the Categories,” this sweeps away Reason on the one 
side, as it sweeps away Sensibility on the other; and Ideas are 
not more correctly named Thoughts than Intuitions are. Kant, it 
is true, speaks of the concepts of Reason, and defines an Idea to 
be a ‘* Vernunft begriff” (page 294) ; but Kant, equally and in 
a hundred places, speaks of the “concept of Space” (Begriff des 
Raumes). The truth is, as already intimated, that in spite of his 
technical restriction of Thought to the formation of concepts, he 
recognised intuitive and regulative Thought no less than dis- 
cursive Thought ; nor would his system have had any coherence 
without such a recognition. Why does he call his work the 
“Critik of Pure Reason,” unless he intended to display the 
common intellectual ground of Sensibility, Understanding, and 
Reason? and does not the word Thought, in ordinary philo- 
sophical language mean this activity of the Intellect? When, by 
Sir W. Hamilton, Dr. Whewell, Mr. Spencer, and myself, the 
phrase Forms of Thought is used, does not every reader under- 
stand it as meaning Forms of intellectual activity ? 
In conclusion, I affirm that in the ordinary acceptation of the 
term Thought—the activity of the Mind—Space and Time as 
forms of Intuition are forms of Thought, conditions of mental 
action ; and to suppose that because Kant’s language is different, 
his meaning is misrepresented by classing forms of Intuition 
among the forms of Thought is to misunderstand Kant’s doctrine 
and its purpose, GeorGE HENry LEWEs 
January 22. 
Dr. INGLEBRY, I should think, is quite entitled to say not only 
that Kant might, but that he would, have disclaimed the phrase 
Form of Thought as applied to Space or Time taken simply. 
The remark of Mr. Lewes, that “intuition without thought is 
mere sensuous impression,”—or, as it might have been put, that 
phenomena of sense (constituted such in the forms of Space and 
Time) must further be thought under Categories of Understanding, 
before they can be said to be known or to become intellectual 
experience—cannot be a sufficient reason for making a Form of 
Thought proper out of a Form of Intuition. 
There is, nevertheless (and Mr. Lewes does not fail to suggest 
it), a sense in which, when taken along with the Categories of 
the Understanding, and with or without the Ideas of the Reason, 
the Forms of Intuition may be spoken of as Forms of Thought : 
Thought being understood, with the same extension that Kant 
himself gives to Reason in the title (not the body) of his work, 
as equivalent to faculty of Knowledge in general. It is in this 
sense that Kant calls all the forms alike, @ fyior? principles of 
Knowledge ; and the ambiguity of the word Thought is so well 
recognised, that the English writers, arraigned by Prof. Sylvester, 
take no great liberty, when for their purpose, which commonly 
is the discussion of the general question as to the origin of 
Knowledge, they talk generally of Kant’s “ Forms of Thought.” 
If, indeed, any of them ever speaks of Space as a “form of the 
Understanding,” which was part of the original charge, the case 
is very different ; Kant being so careful with his Verséand. But 
Mr. Lewes at least would never be caught speaking thus, even 
though his main reason for merging Intuition in Thought might 
seem to justify this also. G. CROOM ROBERTSON 
University College, January 22. 
You will perhaps permit me to make a remark on a controversy 
at present going onin your columns. There has seldom, I believe, 
been a grosser or more misleading perversion of the Critical 
Philosophy than ascribing to Kant the view that Space and Time 
are in any meaning of the terms “forms of thought.” One of 
his chief grounds of complaint against Leibnitz is, that the latter 
“intellectualised these forms of the sensibility” (Meiklejohn’s 
Translation of the ‘ Critick,” p, 198): and lest the import of this 
