(consequently, also, of the determinability of the former in the
latter), and that is more than the simple consciousness of my
representation. It is, in fact, the same as the empirical
consciousness of my existence, which can only be determined in
relation to something, which, while connected with my existence, is
external to me. This consciousness of my existence in time is,
therefore, identical with the consciousness of a relation to something
external to me, and it is, therefore, experience, not fiction,
sense, not imagination, which inseparably connects the external with
my internal sense. For the external sense is, in itself, the
relation of intuition to something real, external to me; and the
reality of this something, as opposed to the mere imagination of it,
rests solely on its inseparable connection with internal experience
as the condition of its possibility. If with the intellectual
consciousness of my existence, in the representation: I am, which
accompanies all my judgements, and all the operations of my
understanding, I could, at the same time, connect a determination of
my existence by intellectual intuition, then the consciousness of a
relation to something external to me would not be necessary. But the
internal intuition in which alone my existence can be determined,
though preceded by that purely intellectual consciousness, is itself
sensible and attached to the condition of time. Hence this
determination of my existence, and consequently my internal experience
itself, must depend on something permanent which is not in me, which
can be, therefore, only in something external to me, to which I must
look upon myself as being related. Thus the reality of the external
sense is necessarily connected with that of the internal, in order
to the possibility of experience in general; that is, I am just as
certainly conscious that there are things external to me related to
my sense as I am that I myself exist as determined in time. But in