as it was regarded as
the only material of our science, it reflected back on all science
something of the relativity which strikes a scientific knowledge of
spirit; and thus the perception of bodies, which is the beginning of the
science of bodies, seemed itself to be relative. Relative, therefore,
seemed to be sensuous intuition. But this is not the case if
distinctions are made between the different sciences, and if the
scientific knowledge of the spiritual (and also, consequently, of the
vital) be regarded as the more or less artificial extension of a certain
manner of knowing which, applied to bodies, is not at all symbolical.
Let us go further: if there are thus two intuitions of different order
(the second being obtained by a reversal of the direction of the first),
and if it is toward the second that the intellect naturally inclines,
there is no essential difference between the intellect and this
intuition itself. The barriers between the matter of sensible knowledge
and its form are lowered, as also between the "pure forms" of
sensibility and the categories of the understanding. The matter and form
of intellectual knowledge (restricted to its own object) are seen to be
engendering each other by a reciprocal adaptation, intellect modeling
itself on corporeity, and corporeity on intellect.

But this duality of intuition Kant neither would nor could admit. It
would have been necessary, in order to admit it, to regard duration as
the very stuff of reality, and consequently to distinguish between the
substantial duration of things and time spread out in space. It would
have been necessary to regard space itself, and the geometry which is
immanent in space, as an ideal limit in the direction of which material
things develop, but which they do not actually attain. Nothing could be
more contrary to the letter, and perhaps also to the spirit, of the
_Critique of Pure Reason_. No doubt, knowledge is presented to us in it
as an ever-open roll, experience as a push of facts that is for ever
going on. But, according to Kant, these facts are spread out on one
plane as fast as they arise; they are external to each other and
external to the mind. Of a knowledge from within, that could grasp them
in their springing forth instead of taking them already sprung, that
would dig beneath space and spatialized time, there is never any
question. Yet it is indeed beneath this plane that our consciousness
places us; there flows true dura