an
object?'; for both questions involve the thought of a mere
representation, i. e. of an apprehension which as yet is not the
apprehension of anything.

[24] Cf. p. 180, and pp. 280-3.

These questions, when their real nature is exhibited, are plainly
absurd. Kant's special theory, however, enables him to evade the real
absurdity involved. For, according to his view, a representation is
the representation or apprehension of something only from the point of
view of the thing in itself. As an appearance or perhaps more strictly
speaking as a sensation, it has also a being of its own which is not
relative[25]; and from this point of view it _is_ possible to speak of
'mere' representations and to raise questions which presuppose their
reality.[26]

[25] Cf. p. 137 init.

[26] The absurdity of the problem really propounded is also
concealed from Kant in the way indicated, pp. 180 fin.-181
init.

But this remedy, if remedy it can be called, is at least as bad as the
disease. For, in the first place, the change of standpoint is
necessarily illegitimate. An appearance or sensation is not from any
point of view a representation in the proper sense, i. e. a
representation or apprehension of something. It is simply a reality to
be apprehended, of the special kind called mental. If it be called a
representation, the word must have a new meaning; it must mean
something represented, or presented,[27] i. e. object of apprehension,
with the implication that what is presented, or is object of
apprehension, is mental or a modification of the mind. Kant therefore
only avoids the original absurdity by an illegitimate change of
standpoint, the change being concealed by a tacit transition in the
meaning of representation. In the second place, the change of
standpoint only saves the main problem from being absurd by rendering
it insoluble. For if a representation be taken to be an appearance or
a sensation, the main problem becomes that of explaining how it is
that, beginning with the apprehension of mere appearances or
sensations, we come to apprehend an object, in the sense of an object
in nature, which, as such, is not an appearance or sensation but a
part of the physical world. But if the immediate object of
apprehension were in this way confined to appearances, which are, to
use Kant's phrase, determinations of our mind, our apprehension would
be limited to these appearances, and any apprehension of an objec