34* KANT. knovvnJi)tJ3i«j=e Felaticns. The phenomenon is a sum total I
- oTmere relations. In regard to matter we know only-
extension, motion, and the laws of this motion or forces (attraction, repulsion, impenetrability), but all these are merely relations of the thing to something else, that is, , external relations. Where is the inner side which underlies this exterior, and which belongs to the object in itself? This is never to be found in the phenomenon, and no mat- ter how far the observation and analysis of nature may advance (a work with unlimited horizons !) they reach nothing but portions of space occupied by matter and effects which matter exercises, that is, nothing beyond that which is comparatively internal, and which, in its turn, consists of external relations. The absolutely inner side of matter is a mere fancy ; and if the complaint that the " inner side " of things is concealed from us is to mean that we do not comprehend what the things which appear to us may be in themselves, it is unjust and irrational, for it demands that we should be able to intuit without senses, in other words, that we should be other than men. The transcendent questions concerning the noumenqn of things ' are unanswerable ; we know ourselves, even, only as phenomena ! A phenomenon consists in nothing but the V relation of something in general to the senses. It is indubitable that something corresponds to phe- nomena, which, by affecting our sensibility, occasions sensations in us, and thereby phenomena. The very word, the very concept, "phenomenon," indicates a relation to something which is not phenomenon, to an object not dependent on the sensibility. What this may be continues hidden from us, for knowledge is impossible without intui- tion. Things in themselves are unknowable. Neverthe- less the idea (it must be confessed, the entirely empty idea) of this ".transcendental object," as an indeterminate some- what = X which underlies phenomena, is not only allowable, but, as a limiting concept, unavoidable in order to confine the pretensions of sense to the only field which is acces- sible to it, that is, to the field of phenomena. The inference " space and time are nothing but represen- tations and representations are in us, therefore space and 1/
