Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 4.djvu/353

 constituents into which our knowledge may be analysed, for we find that all events are necessarily arranged by us in a time-series, and when we look at our knowledge as a whole, time appeal's to be not so much an element of what is known, as a form in which certain elements are arranged: and hence, if we make within knowledge a distinction of subjective and objective, it may rather be ascribed to the former aspect than to the latter. But the distinction of subjective and objective within knowledge is a purely abstract one. All is equally subjective, or equally objective, so that from the relation of time as a form to other logical elements of knowledge we can make no inference as to its objective validity.

In another direction, however, Kant carries on the work of Leibnitz. We have seen that he regards time as the ‘conditio cognoscendi’ of succession; in the same way he holds that the course of time, — the succession within it, — requires a permanent background (i.e. not in time) against which it takes place, as we should otherwise fall into an ‘infinite process.’ We can compare two periods of time only over against a permanent, for if we compared them by a standard which was itself in process of change, this change would require another standard of measurement, and so on ‘ad infinitum.’ Thus it is over against a permanent matter in space that our sensations appear to us as fleeting, changing, in time; and on the other hand the presence of a permanent subject to the sensations is equally necessary. The flow of time accordingly seems conditioned by two permanents. Kant however confuses two things, the origin of our knowledge of time or change, and the condition of there being such a change. We learn to know change first through the differences in a material reality given us as permanent, but later found to be only relatively so. But it is self-evident that a matter of this kind could not be the condition of the changes either in us or in itself The reality which is the source of change cannot be material in the ordinary sense; (even the ‘force’ or ‘energy’ of the physicists is immaterial). On the other hand a permanent subject is at once the condition of knowledge of change and of its existence. What Kant proves is that time cannot stand alone, — neither it nor the events which take place in it can have an existence independent of each other, while the events on their part cannot hang in the air, as particular existences, but must be changes of something, which accordingly persists in time, or may from one point of view be said to be out of time, while its changes are “in time.” This is the meaning of Kant’s contention, but it does not justify his theory of the mere subjectivity of time.

In the necessity of a permanent subject all modern theories