Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/86

 72 HOWAED V. KNOX: is to say, in order to remove what he takes to be the one remaining obstacle to a complete identification of the real with the work of the mind, he rejects the distinction which forms the starting point of his entire argument, on the ground that it is the work of the mind as opposed to the real. IV. The peculiar tangle, to which we have drawn attention in the preceding part, is to some extent explicable by the fact that the proof brought forward by Green, with wearisome reiteration, to establish the non-temporal character of thought, is made up of a twofold ignoratio elenchi. And it may paren- thetically be remarked, that this proof, inasmuch as it makes no pretence of discriminating between true thought and false, places error on the same footing of eternity as truth. The proof in question partly consists in maintaining (quite rightly) that the parts of the judgment are not successive : " There may be a change into a state of consciousness of change, and a change out of it, on the part of this man or that; but within the consciousness itself there can be no change, because no relation of before and after, of here and there, between its constituent members between the presen- tation, for instance, of point A and that of point B in the process which forms the object of the consciousness "- 1 One might as pertinently argue that because H 2 is not first H 2 and then 0, that therefore H 2 cannot be in time. The argument, in fact, will not hold water. This confusion, now, between eternity and indivisibility of the judgment serves to eke out a similar, though more subtle, confusion between eternity and continuity of consciousness. Green lays it down, in the most unqualified manner, that " a consciousness of certain events cannot be anything that . . . succeeds them. It must be equally present to all the events of which it is the consciousness." 2 The assertion herein contained, if deprived of the support of the first- mentioned fallacy, has absolutely no other justification than is afforded by the contention that " in order that successive feelings may be related objects of experience, even objects related in the way of succession, there must be in conscious- ness an agent which distinguishes itself from the feelings, uniting them in their severally, making them equally present in their succession ". 3 Which contention is, to say the 1 Op. cit., 18. 2 Op. cit., 16. 3 Op. cit., 32. Cf. Works, ii., 170 : " No doubt an act of consciousness is an event in the individual's history . . . but it would not be a thought