Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/98

 86 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR. ^mysteries than philosophical conclusions, let us examine a little more closely the reasoning on which they are based. The natural, indeed the only, foundation on which we can rest any theory about consciousness in general is of course, an analysis of our own consciousness in particular ; and it is this analysis which, in Green's hands, yields the first of the s above paradoxes, namely, that to begin to know is an event or phenomenon, to know is not. This timeless character of knowledge is proved by an examination of " the content of a knowing consciousness ". If we consider such a content, as, for example, a proposition of Euclid, we no doubt find, as Green points out, that the system of relations of which it consists is in a sense independent of time. It is the same at one period as at another, nor is there any succession between its parts. And this is no doubt equally true when the " content of the knowing consciousness " is a relation of succession in time. The content for example of a conscious- ness which knows that George IV. succeeded George III. does not consist of two successive acts of apprehension, but in the single apprehension of two successive events. But though this be so, yet surely it is only by that very process of " illegitimate abstraction " which in other connexions the Neo-Kantians so energetically denounce, that we can draw from such premisses the desired conclusion. Separate the relations known from the knowing subject, the content of. 'consciousness from consciousness itself, and knowledge may seem independent of time. But if we refuse thus to separate verbally what can never be separated really, it immediately becomes plain that knowing is as much an event in the history of mind as learning or as forgetting. Though we may say, if we please, with the Idealists, that everything which exists, exists only so far as it is known, yet is it necessary to add that, if other minds resemble ours, every- thing which is known is known by a particular consciousness at a particular time. The language of Green himself is a witness to the impossibility of excluding time from any account of knowledge as a concrete fact. For when he assures us that the elements of the thing known are " neces- sarily present together," are "neither before nor after one another," are not separated by " any lapse of time, however minute," what is he doing but telling us that they are all apprehended by the same knowing subject at the same time ? And how can the knowing subject apprehend things at the same time, unless it apprehends them at some particular time ? And how can that which it does at some particular time be other than an event in its history ?