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32 THE FOURFOLD ROOT. [CHAP. IV.
only perceptible when filled. Their perceptibility is Hatter,
to which I shall return further on, and again in 21. If
Time were the only form of these representations, there
could be no coexistence, therefore nothing permanent and
no duration. For Time is only perceived when filled, and
its course is only perceived by the changes which take place
in that which fills it. The permanence of an object is
therefore only recognized by contrast with the changes going
on in other objects coexistent with it. But the represen
tation of coexistence is impossible in Time alone ; it de
pends, for its completion, upon the representation of Space ;
because, in mere Time, all things follow one another, and
in mere Space all things are side by side ; it is accordingly
only by the combination of Time and Space that the repre
sentation of coexistence arises.
On the other hand, were Space the sole form of this class
of representations, there would be no change ; for change
or alteration is succession of states, and succession is only
possible in Time. We may therefore define Time as the
possibility of opposite states in one and the same thing.
Thus we see, that although infinite divisibility and infi
nite extension are common to both Time and Space, these
two forms of empirical representations differ fundamen
tally, inasmuch as what is essential to the one is without
any meaning at all for the other : juxtaposition having no
meaning in Time, succession no meaning in Space. The
empirical representations which belong to the orderly com
plex of reality, appear notwithstanding in both forms to
the intimate union of both is the condition of
gether ; nay,
reality which, in a sense, grows out of them, as a product
grows out of its factors. Now it is the Understanding
which, by means of its own peculiar function, brings about
this union and connects these heterogeneous forms in such
a manner, that empirical reality albeit only for that
Understanding arises out of their mutual interpenetra-