Page:Our knowledge of the external world.djvu/132

 (3) The question of time, so long as we confine ourselves to one private world, is rather less complicated than that of space, and we can see pretty clearly how it might be dealt with by such methods as we have been considering. Events of which we are conscious do not last merely for a mathematical instant, but always for some finite time, however short. Even if there be a physical world such as the mathematical theory of motion supposes, impressions on our sense-organs produce sensations which are not merely and strictly instantaneous, and therefore the objects of sense of which we are immediately conscious are not strictly instantaneous. Instants, therefore, are not among the data of experience, and, if legitimate, must be either inferred or constructed. It is difficult to see how they can be validly inferred; thus we are left with the alternative that they must be constructed. How is this to be done?

Immediate experience provides us with two time-relations among events: they may be simultaneous, or one may be earlier and the other later. These two are both part of the crude data; it is not the case that only the events are given, and their time-order is added by our subjective activity. The time-order, within certain limits, is as much given as the events. In any story of adventure you will find such passages as the following: “With a cynical smile he pointed the revolver at the breast of the dauntless youth. ‘At the word three I shall fire,’ he said. The words one and two had already been spoken with a cool and deliberate distinctness. The word three was forming on his lips. At this moment a blinding flash of lightning rent the air.” Here we have simultaneity—not due, as Kant would have us believe, to the subjective mental apparatus of the dauntless youth, but given as objectively as the revolver and the lightning.