Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/254

 238 G. E. MOORE : world-process and the empirical present moment of my experience are one and the same present moment". This is true, both with regard to the perceptions of the individual, and to the rate of change in consciousness or matter, when measured by some arbitrary unit. But, when Mr. Hodgson goes on to contradict himself by saying that " we are aware of the distinctions of earlier and later in the successive parts of the content experienced in an empirical present moment of our finite consciousness," that state- ment is just as false. We may know that the parts of what we experience as unsuccessive must really be successive ; but it is inconceivable that we should experience as successive, what, just because we are unable to detect successive parts in our experience of it, we call " our present ". The fallacy, if fallacy it is, consists in confusing inner perception with scientific knowledge of the outer world a confusion which, since Hume, could hardly be made in the case of space, because there inner perception has not the same double bearing. It would, however, be a parallel absurdity to deny the infinite divisibility of space on the ground that the smallest perceptible point was of variable extension. Mr. Bosan- quet's very words that "our present includes duration" imply that it can be measured by the same arbitrary units as physical successions. And the fact is that as soon as w r e per- ceive, and do not merely infer, any succession in our present, it ceases to be our present. To ascribe to the Absolute any power of experiencing past and future as present, would be to put its consciousness on a lower level than ours, since it would be to deprive it entirely of that power of distinguishing successive events which is a condition of our progress in knowledge. I must, therefore, plead guilty to the charge of " mischievous pedantry," with which Mr. Hodgson confutes Lotze, and at the same time may thank him for giving us, in what he regards as a reductio ad absurdum of philosophic thinking, a proof of the unreality of time. The present is not real, because it can only be thought as infinitely small ; and past and future cannot be real, not only because they also must be thought as infinitely divisible, but also because they wholly lack that immediacy, which, accord- ing to Mr. Bradley, is a necessary constituent in reality. But, if neither present, past, nor future is real, there is nothing real left in time as such. At the same time, I must beg Mr. Hodgson not to condemn me too hastily. If he thinks that by such a view I am bound to maintain that I " can count without time, or think without it either," there still remains much to be said. I think I may safely leave to Mr. Bosanquet to defend himself on this count ; but, for my part, I should like, in fairness, to warn Mr. Hodgson that I cannot help making a distinction between the process of thinking and the content of thought. Because I cannot think without taking some time about it, I cannot see it follows that what I think a,bout need also be in time. Mr. Hodgson himself seems to admit