of a manifold, you will remember that I demonstrated the following: A manifold that is given as a manifold—i.e., in the character of manifold-ness, and specifically in the character of spatially one-outside-another and one-next-to-another [299]—that manifold, insofar as it is given and given as a manifold with the above characteristics, can be understood only by way of a pre-view or pre-understanding of manifoldness as such, in this case, of apartness as such. Without such a pre-understanding of apartness as such, it would be utterly impossible for anything spatial to be given. We need not have a concept—a specific categorial consciousness—of a manifold qua apartness. The unthematic pre-view suffices. And according to Kant this pure manifold—space—is something that, by its very way of being, has to be given. Space is a given-and-presented [Raum ist Gegeben-Vorgestellt].

To make that clearer: “Given” is distinct from “thought.” So “given” means: not thought, neither produced nor producible by the understanding and its basic activity of combining. This manifold is encountered in the field of the outer senses; and we will not take it only as a spatial one-outside-another. That manifold is not articulated simply in such a way that, within the manifold, one thing is distinguished from another, and that other from yet another, etc., so that, within this given manifold, this would not be that, and that would not be this. In other words, what we encounter is not a simply multitudo, as the Scholastics would put it, something “just-different-in-general.” The character of manifoldness in this manifold that we encounter is not a simple empty otherness. No, we encounter the manifold in terms of its manifoldness. This manifoldness must itself be given in its own particular way, because the articulations made on the basis of this manifoldness are relevant to the issue in this sense: This is not simply different from that, but is next to that, and that is behind this; and yet another is under or over that. These specific characters—next to, behind, in front of, under—are ones that, even if I had all the time in the world, I could never conjure up by pure thought out of the mere distinction of one thing from another. [300] Next to, behind, in front of, under—these have to be given—which means that, of their essence, they are the pre-viewed that is given in a pre-view. And as what is essentially given—i.e., given as this determinate manifoldness as such—they are the condition that makes possible a determining comprehension of a specific “next to” or “over” or “under.”

Therefore, these features—next to, over, under, in front of, behind—that make up the pure manifoldness of space in general, are conditions of possibility of every possible determinate spatial relation. That means that “next to,” “over,” and “under” are not determinate kinds of relations—they are not species of the genus “relation-in-general”—any more than intuition is a species of concept. “Relation-in-general” simply can