Again, Kant must allow--as indeed he normally does--that these states of ours are related by way of succession. Hence, since these states are really our states and not appearances produced by our states, these being themselves unknown, time, as a relation of these states, must itself be real, and not a way in which we apprehend what is real. It must, so to say, be really in what we apprehend about ourselves, and not put into it by us as perceiving ourselves.
The objection, then, comes to this. Kant must at least concede that we undergo a succession of changing states, even if he holds that _things_, being independent of the mind, cannot be shown to undergo such a succession; consequently, he ought to allow that time is not a way in which we apprehend ourselves, but a real feature of our real states. Kant's answer[15] does not meet the point, and, in any case, proceeds on the untenable assumption that it is possible for the characteristic of a thing to belong to it as perceived, though not in itself.[16]
Kant's theory of space, and, still more, his theory of time, are bewildering subjects. It is not merely that the facts with which he deals are complex; his treatment of them is also complicated by his special theories of 'sense' and of 'forms of perception'. Light, however, may be thrown upon the problems raised by the _Aesthetic_, and upon Kant's solution of them, in two ways. In the first place, we may attempt to vindicate the implication of the preceding criticism, that the very nature of knowledge presupposes the independent existence of the reality known, and to show that, in consequence, all idealism is of the variety known as subjective. In the second place, we may point out the way in which Kant is misled by failing to realize (1) the directness of the relation between the knower and the reality known, and (2) the impossibility of transferring what belongs to one side of the relation to the other.