in Time alone: that single representation must always vanish and be superseded by others, in virtue of a law which we cannot determine a priori, but which depends upon circumstances soon to be mentioned. It is moreover a well-known fact, that the imagination and dreams reproduce the immediate presence of representations; the investigation of that fact, however, belongs to empirical Psychology. Now as, notwithstanding the transitory, isolated nature of our representations with respect to their immediate presence in our consciousness, the Subject nevertheless retains the representation of an all-comprehensive complex of reality, as described above, by means of the function of the Understanding; representations have, on the strength of this antithesis, been viewed, as something quite different when considered as belonging to that complex than when considered with reference to their immediate presence in our consciousness. From the former point of view they were called real things; from the latter only, representations ἐξοχήν. This view of the matter, which is the ordinary one, is known under the name of Realism. On the appearance of modern philosophy, Idealism opposed itself to this Realism and has since been steadily gaining ground. Malebranche and Berkeley were its earliest representatives, and Kant enhanced it to the power of Transcendental Idealism, by which the co-existence of the Empirical Reality of things with their Transcendental Ideality becomes conceivable, and according to which Kant expresses himself as follows:[1] "Transcendental Idealism teaches that all phenomena are representations only, not things by themselves." And again:[2]
