t in
nature would be impossible.[28] In fact, it is just the view that the
immediate object of apprehension consists in a determination of the
mind which forms the basis of the solipsist position. Kant's own
solution involves an absurdity at least as great as that involved in
the thought of a mere representation, in the proper sense of
representation. For the solution is that appearances or sensations
become related to an object, in the sense of an object in nature, by
being combined on certain principles. Yet it is plainly impossible to
combine appearances or sensations into an object in nature. If a
triangle, or a house, or 'a freezing of water'[29] is the result of
any process of combination, the elements combined must be respectively
lines, and bricks, and physical events; these are objects in the sense
in which the whole produced by the combination is an object, and are
certainly not appearances or sensations. Kant conceals the difficulty
from himself by the use of language to which he is not entitled. For
while his instances of objects are always of the kind indicated, he
persists in calling the manifold combined 'representations', i. e.
presented mental modifications. This procedure is of course
facilitated for him by his view that nature is a phenomenon or
appearance, but the difficulty which it presents to the reader
culminates when he speaks of the very same representations as having
both a subjective and an objective relation, i. e. as being both
modifications of the mind and parts of nature.[30]

[27] _Vorgestellt._

[28] Cf. p. 123.

[29] B. 162, M. 99.

[30] B. 139-42, M. 87-8. Cf. 209, note 3, and pp. 281-2.

We may now turn to Kant's thought of knowledge as a process of
synthesis. When Kant speaks of synthesis, the kind of synthesis of
which he usually is thinking is that of spatial elements into a
spatial whole; and although he refers to other kinds, e. g. of units
into numbers, and of events into a temporal series, nevertheless it is
the thought of spatial synthesis which guides his view. Now we must in
the end admit that the spatial synthesis of which he is thinking is
really the _construction_ or _making_ of spatial objects in the
literal sense. It would be rightly illustrated by making figures out
of matches or spelicans, or by drawing a circle with compasses, or by
building a house out of bricks. Further, if we extend this view of the
process of which Kant is thinking, we hav