We have here before us a question of difficulty, analogous to the
question of nominalism and realism. But when once it has been clearly
formulated, logic leaves room for one answer only. How can a past idea be
present? Can it be present vicariously? To a certain extent, perhaps; but
not merely so; for then the question would arise how the past idea can
be related to its vicarious representation. The relation, being between
ideas, can only exist in some consciousness: now that past idea was in no
consciousness but that past consciousness that alone contained it; and
that did not embrace the vicarious idea.
Some minds will here jump to the conclusion that a past idea cannot in
any sense be present. But that is hasty and illogical. How extravagant,
too, to pronounce our whole knowledge of the past to be mere delusion!
Yet it would seem that the past is as completely beyond the bonds of
possible experience as a Kantian thing-in-itself.
How can a past idea be present? Not vicariously. Then, only by direct
perception. In other words, to be present, it must be _ipso facto_
present. That is, it cannot be wholly past; it can only be going,
infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable past date. We are
thus brought to the conclusion that the present is connected with the
past by a series of real infinitesimal steps.
It has already been suggested by psychologists that consciousness
necessarily embraces an interval of time. But if a finite time be meant,
the opinion is not tenable. If the sensation that precedes the present
by half a second were still immediately before me, then, on the same
principle the sensation preceding that would be immediately present, and
so on _ad infinitum_. Now, since there is a time, say a year, at the end
of which an idea is no longer _ipso facto_ present, it follows that this
is true of any finite interval, however short.
But yet consciousness must essentially cover an interval of time; for
if it did not, we could gain no knowledge of time, and not merely no
veracious cognition of it, but no conception whatever. We are, therefore,
forced to say that we are immediately conscious through an infinitesimal
interval of time.
This is all that is requisite. For, in this infinitesimal interval,
not only is consciousness continuous in a subjective sense, that is,
considered as a subject or substance having the attribute of duration;
but also, because it is immediate consciousness, its object is _ipso
facto_ continuous. In fact, this infinitesimally spread-out consciousness
is a direct feeling of its contents as spread out. This will be further
elucidated below. In an infinitesimal interval we directly perceive the
temporal sequence of its beginning, middle, and end,—not, of course,
in the way of recognition, for recognition is only of the past, but in
the way of immediate feeling. Now upon this interval follows another,
whose beginning is the middle of the former, and whose middle is the end
of the former. Here, we have an immediate perception of the temporal
sequence of its beginning, middle, and end, or say of the second, third,
and fourth instants. From these two immediate perceptions, we gain a
mediate, or inferential, perception of the relation of all four instants.
This mediate perception is objectively, or as to the object represented,
spread over the four instants; but subjectively, or as itself the subject
of duration, it is completely embraced in the second moment. [The reader
will observe that I use the word _instant_ to mean a point of time, and
_moment_ to mean an infinitesimal duration.] If it is objected that,
upon the theory proposed, we must have more than a mediate perception
of the succession of the four instants, I grant it; for the sum of the
two infinitesimal intervals is itself infinitesimal, so that it is
immediately perceived. It is immediately perceived in the whole interval,
but only mediately perceived in the last two thirds of the interval.
Now, let there be an indefinite succession of these inferential acts of
comparative perception; and it is plain that the last moment will contain
objectively the whole series. Let there be, not merely an indefinite
succession, but a continuous flow of inference through a finite time;
and the result will be a mediate objective consciousness of the whole
time in the last moment. In this last moment, the whole series will
be recognised, or known as known before, except only the last moment,
which of course will be absolutely unrecognisable to itself. Indeed,
even this last moment will be recognised like the rest, or, at least be
just beginning to be so. There is a little _elenchus_, or appearance
of contradiction, here, which the ordinary logic of reflection quite
suffices to resolve.