SECTION II. Of Time.
SS 5 Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception.
1. Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence
nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time
did not exist as a foundation a priori. Without this presupposition we
could not represent to ourselves that things exist together at one and
the same time, or at different times, that is, contemporaneously, or
in succession.
2. Time is a necessary representation, lying at the foundation of
all our intuitions. With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot
think away time from them, and represent them to ourselves as out of
and unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent to
ourselves time void of phenomena. Time is therefore given a priori. In
it alone is all reality of phenomena possible. These may all be
annihilated in thought, but time itself, as the universal condition of
their possibility, cannot be so annulled.
3. On this necessity a priori is also founded the possibility of
apodeictic principles of the relations of time, or axioms of time in
general, such as: "Time has only one dimension," "Different times
are not coexistent but successive" (as different spaces are not
successive but coexistent).
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