Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/366

 354 EDMUND MONTGOMERY : enduring is requisite to this purpose ; for our sense of identical subjectiveness, which accompanies all experience, does not itself bring experience with it. Therefore, the consciousness of our own selves, as experiencing, presupposes something enduringly given in perception. The above proof rests, as Kant himself was well aware, on the assumption that appearances in space are really re- ceived, and not originated by us ; that they are, in fact, forcibly imprinted on the passive receptivity of the outer sense. And it is this compulsory character of percepts that supplies Kant with a distinction between real experience and the spontaneous creations of fancy. We have, however, to play into the hands of Transcenden- talism by conceding that this ingenious thrust at Idealism does not prove very efficacious on close examination. Not thus easily can we ever hope to glide out of the magic bonds of individual consciousness. It may be simply asked : If something enduringly given in space is needed to consolidate and to verify inner experience, how then is, for instance, the experience of a piece of music effected ? Nothing at all enduring is given in perception of this kind. Everything is occurring exclusively in time. Nevertheless we are con- scious of a consolidated experience, which we believe to be as real as any experience that comes to us through the agency of space. This very plain consideration renders it altogether evident that the principle, force, or subject, which consolidates into experience the momentarily lapsing ele- ments of feeling is, in every instance of inner or outer ap- perception, the one synthetising power that constitutes our own unitary consciousness ; a power placed by Kant and the Traiiscendentalists in the intelligible Ego, manifest in the synthetical unity of apperception, and functioning through the categories. The persistency of space-manifestations has thus likewise to be attributed to the combining and consoli- dating power of our own being. We can now very well see, how, by force of the assump- tion of a synthetising principle of the intelligible order, Transcendentalism has thus far gained the day over all realistic suppositions on the sensorial side. It may confi- dently proceed to further conquests. If it is really the intelligible Ego that combines the manifold of sense in a unitary consciousness, then as previously stated nothing ever so elementary can be detected uncombined in consciousness, nothing that is not already forming part of the unitary system of mental recognition. Anything like a passive appearance, in Kant's