| The case is the same with representations in time. |
| But time and space, with all phenomena therein, are not in themselves things. |
| They are nothing but representations and cannot exist out of and apart from the mind. |
| Nay, the sensuous internal intuition of the mind (as the object of consciousness), the determination of which is represented by the succession of different states in time, is not the real, proper self, as it exists in itself--not the transcendental subject--but only a phenomenon, which is presented to the sensibility of this, to us, unknown being. |
| This internal phenomenon cannot be admitted to be a self-subsisting thing; for its condition is time, and time cannot be the condition of a thing in itself. |
| But the empirical truth of phenomena in space and time is guaranteed beyond the possibility of doubt, and sufficiently distinguished from the illusion of dreams or fancy--although both have a proper and thorough connection in an experience according to empirical laws. |
| The objects of experience then are not things in themselves, but are given only in experience, and have no existence apart from and independently of experience. |
| That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time. |
| For that which stands in connection with a perception according to the laws of the progress of experience is real. |
| They are therefore really existent, if they stand in empirical connection with my actual or real consciousness, although they are not in themselves real, that is, apart from the progress of experience. |
| There is nothing actually given--we can be conscious of nothing as real, except a perception and the empirical progression from it to other possible perceptions. |
| For phenomena, as mere representations, are real only in perception; and perception is, in fact, nothing but the reality of an empirical representation, that is, a phenomenon. |
| To call a phenomenon a real thing prior to perception means either that we must meet with this phenomenon in the progress of experience, or it means nothing at all. |
| For I can say only of a thing in itself that it exists without relation to the senses and experience. |
| But we are speaking here merely of phenomena in space and time, both of which are determinations of sensibility, and not of things in themselves. |
| It follows that phenomena are not things in themselves, but are mere representations, which if not given in us--in perception--are non-existent. |
| The faculty of sensuous intuition is properly a receptivity--a capacity of being affected in a certain manner by representations, the relation of which to each other is a pure intuition of space and time--the pure forms of sensibility. |
| These representations, in so far as they are connected and determinable in this relation (in space and time) according to laws of the unity of experience, are called objects. |
| The non-sensuous cause of these representations is completely unknown to us and hence cannot be intuited as an object. |
| For such an object could not be represented either in space or in time; and without these conditions intuition or representation is impossible. |
| We may, at the same time, term the non-sensuous cause of phenomena the transcendental object--but merely as a mental correlate to sensibility, considered as a receptivity. |