IV.

But Mr. Spencer adduces a fact, which, if it were as Mr. Spencer represents it, would show an inability on my part of making important distinctions. He says of me:

“He blames the English for mistranslating Kant, since they have said ‘Kant maintained that Space and Time are intuitions,’ which is quite untrue, for they have everywhere described him as maintaining that Space and Time are _forms_ of intuition.”

This is a double mistake: (1) Kant and his translators did not make the distinction of which Mr. Spencer speaks, and (2) the quotation Mr. Spencer makes from my article is represented to mean something different from what it actually means in the context.

Before I speak for myself as to what I actually said, let us state the facts concerning Kant’s usage of the terms “intuitions” and “forms of intuition.”

Kant defines in § 1 of his “Critique of Pure Reason” what he understands by “Transcendental Æsthetic.” He distinguishes between “empirical intuition” (_empirische Anschauung_) and “pure intuition” (_reine Anschauung_). He says:

“That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation, is called an empirical intuition.”

Representations contain besides that which belongs to sensation some other elements. Kant says:

“That which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, I call its _form_.”

And later on he continues:

“This pure form of sensibility I shall call pure intuition.”

These are Kant’s phrases in J. M. D. Meiklejohn’s well known translation. The term “pure intuition” is repeated again and again, and we find frequently added by way of explanation the phrases “as a mere form of sensibility,” “the mere form of phenomena,” “forms of sensuous intuition,” and also (as Mr. Spencer emphasises as the only correct way) “forms of intuition.”

Kant says:

1) “_Diese reine Form der Sinnlichkeit wird auch selber reine Anschauung heissen._ § 1.

2) “_Zweitens worden wir von dieser (der empirischen Anschauung) noch alles abtrennen, damit nichts als reine Anschauung und die blosse Form der Erscheinungen übrig bleibe._ § 1.

3) “_Raum ... muss ursprünglich Anschauung sein._ § 3.

4) “_Der Raum ist nichts anderes als nur die Form aller Erscheinungen äusserer Sinne._ § 3.

5) “_Der Raum aber betrifft nur die reine Form der Anschauung._ (This passage appears in the first edition only, the paragraph containing it is omitted in the second edition.) § 3.

6) “_Die Zeit ist ... eine reine Form der sinnlichen Anschauung...._ § 4.

7) “_Es muss ihr[71] unmittelbare Anschauung zum Grunde liegen._ § 4.

8) “_Die Zeit ist nichts anderes als die Form des inneren Sinnes._ § 6.

9) “_... dass die Vorstellung der Zeit selbst Anschauung sei._ § 6.

10) “_Wir haben nun ... reine Anschauung a priori, Raum und Zeit._ § 10. _Beschluss der transcendentalen Æsthetik._”

These quotations do not pretend to be exhaustive, nor is that necessary for the present purpose.

Kant, as we learn from these quotations, makes no distinction between _reine Anschauung_ and _Form der Anschauung_. He uses most frequently the term _reine Anschauung_ and designates in several places Space and Time simply as _Anschauung_. (See the quotations 3, 7, and 9.) So far as I can gather from a renewed perusal, the expression proposed by Mr. Spencer, “form of intuition,” _Form der Anschauung_, occurs only once and that too in a passage omitted in the second edition.

It is almost redundant to add that the English translators and interpreters of Kant follow the original pretty closely. Accordingly it is actually incorrect “that they have everywhere(!) described Kant as maintaining that Space and Time are _forms_ of intuition.” In addition to the quotations from Meiklejohn, I call Mr. Spencer’s attention to William Flemming’s “Vocabulary of Philosophy” (4th ed., edited by Henry Calderwood) which reads _sub voce_ “Intuition,” p. 228 with reference to Kant’s view:

“Space and time are _intuitions_ of sense.”

To say “Time and Space are forms of intuition” is quite correct according to Kantian terminology. No objection can be made to Mr. Spencer on that ground. But to say “Time and Space are intuitions” is also quite correct, and Mr. Spencer is wrong in censuring the expression.

Why does Mr. Spencer rebuke me so severely on a point which is of no consequence? He appears confident that I have betrayed an unpardonable misconception of Kant’s philosophy. But having pointed out by quotations from Kant that this is not so, I shall now proceed to explain why the quotation which Mr. Spencer makes from my article, although the eight words in quotation marks are literally quoted, is a misquotation. It is torn out of its context. I did not blame the English translators of Kant at all, but I blamed his interpreters, among whom the English interpreters (not all English interpreters, but certainly some of them) are the worst, for “mutilating Kant’s best thoughts, so that this hero of progress appears as a stronghold of antiquated views”; and as an instance I called attention to the misconception of Kant’s term _Anschauung_, saying:

“How different is Kant’s philosophy, for instance, if his position with reference to time and space is mistaken! ‘Time and Space are our _Anschauung_,’ Kant says. But his English translators declare ‘Kant maintained that space and time are intuitions.’ What a difference it makes if intuition is interpreted in the sense applied to it by the English intuitionalist school instead of its being taken in the original meaning of the word _Anschauung_.”

The word “intuition” implies something mysterious; the word _Anschauung_ denotes that which is immediately perceived, simply, as it were, by looking at it. So especially the sense-perceptions of the things before us are _Anschauungen_.

Mr. Spencer, believing that he had caught me in making unawares a blunder, tears the passage out of its context, ignores its purport, makes a point of an antithesis which had nothing in the world to do with the topic under discussion, only to throw on me the opprobrium of incompetence. Even if Mr. Spencer’s antithesis of “intuition” and “forms of intuition” were of any consequence (as, unfortunately for Mr. Spencer, it is not), it would count for nothing against me because I did not speak of “forms” in the passage referred to, I simply alluded to one misinterpretation of the term _Anschauung_, which is quite common among English Kantians. It was not required by the purpose I had in view, to enter into any details as to what kind of _Anschauung_ I meant, and an allusion to “form” or to any other subject would have served only to confound the idea which I intended to set forth in the paragraph from which Mr. Spencer quotes.

Misquotation of this kind, into which Mr. Spencer was inveigled by a hasty reading, should be avoided with utmost care, for it involves an insinuation. It leads away from the main point under discussion to side issues, and it misrepresents the author from whom the quotation is made. It insinuates a meaning which the passage does not bear and which was not even thought of in the context out of which it is torn.

Mr. Spencer quotes the passage as if I had preferred the term “intuition” to the term “form of intuition,” or at least, as if I had no idea that Kant conceives Time and Space as “forms.” Yet Mr. Spencer in trying to make out a point against me betrays his own lack of information. Kant insisted most emphatically on calling the forms of our sensibility (i. e. space and time) “_Anschauungen_.”

But Mr. Spencer’s case is worse still. While he insists upon the statement that according to the translators of Kant space and time are “forms of intuition,” which is at least correct, he uses twice in the very same paragraph the expression that according to Kant “space and time are forms of thought,” which is incorrect. The forms of thought according to Kantian terminology are not space and time but the domain of the transcendental logic. Anyone who confounds the two terms “forms of intuition” and “forms of thought” proves himself unable to form a correct opinion on Kant’s philosophy. That is just characteristic of Kant that he regards time and space not as thought, nor as forms of thought, but as _Anschauungen_ and in contradistinction to sense-intuitions (i. e. sensations) he calls them _reine Anschauungen_ or _Formen der Anschauung_.