into being the presentations and so perception itself. It is in the former sense that "time is only the form of the inner sense." But, in the deduction of the categories, transcendental imagination itself, though attributed to an ego unconditioned by time as the form of inner sense, is yet characterized as an activity; so that temporal lapse cannot be excluded from it. In the activity of understanding, sense and thinking are not to be separated; and Kant in the Analytic maintains this separation only for expository reasons. Reason, too, is an activity, in which, indeed, sense does not participate, but which is unambiguously characterized as a temporal lapse; so that time is presupposed independently of the inner sense. Kant's statement, that pure reason is not subject to the form of time, is reconcilable with the necessity of temporal lapse in the activity of the reason, if we understand by the temporal lapse, not time as the form of inner sense, not duration and succession, but transcendental time, as, in the transcendental ego, it lies at the basis of the inner sense as the condition of its possibility. The Critique teaches the empirical reality of time, but denies its transcendental reality. But to time as the form of all spontaneous activity we cannot deny transcendental reality also. The empirical reality of time is possible only on the basis of transcendental time as the condition of all reality. Sensibility, understanding, and reason are phenomena, to which as the real corresponds the energy of sense-activity and thought. Kant calls this the Gemüt. The transcendental condition of all being and activity, free from all temporal determination (duration or succession), — energy acting in ceaseless flow without beginning or end, − this, too, involves time as transcendental reality. Time is thus real not as existing in itself, but as that logical determination under which the transcendental activity functions in our consciousness. If now the transcendental reality of time is not to remain exclusively logical, it must be given in conscious being and activity independent of thinking and inner sense; we must be conscious of it as of a continuous ribbon that unites all the items of conscious life. Temporal continuity is given us a priori, the certainty of flowing time independent of the particular content of sensation, — time that closes all the gaps of conscious being (as the empty time of sleep). Time has an independent, homogeneous continuity, not due to inner sense. Our thinking infinitely transcends the temporal limits of empirical time. The time to which we ascribe transcendental reality is the condition of all perception, and therefore cannot be given or known through perception.
The Order of the Hegelian Categories in the Hegelian Argument. M. W. Calkins. Mind, 47, pp. 317-340.
Hegel's immediate followers regarded the order of the categories as inevitable. Modern commentators usually hold that the order depends wholly on extraneous grounds. The truth probably lies between these two extremes. Much repetition passes for progress; and identical categories,
