Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/600

584 relation of past to future is different from the relation of future to past. The flow of time consists in the fact that, in reference to any individual state of feeling, all others are of two classes, those which affect this one and those which do not. The present is affectible by the past, but not by the future. Time involves a continuity of qualities which undergo a change continuous in time. The development of the human mind has practically extinguished all feelings except a few sporadic kinds. But originally all feelings may have been connected in a way indicated by the tridimensional spread of feelings in the case of colors. And the presumption is that the number of dimensions was endless, for development essentially involves a limitation of possibilities.

Feeling has also a subjective, or substantial, spatial extension. This is a difficult idea to seize, for the reason that it is a subjective, not an objective extension. It is not that we have a feeling of bigness; it is that the feeling, as a subject of inhesion, is big. Since space is continuous, it follows that there must be an immediate community of feeling between parts of mind infinitesimally near together. Without this it would have been impossible for minds external to one another ever to become coordinated, and equally impossible for any coordination to be established in the action of the nerve-matter of one brain. In considering the affection of one idea by another, we encounter three elements: the intrinsic quality of the idea as a feeling; the energy with which it affects other ideas; the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it. As an idea spreads, the first element remains nearly unchanged, the second gets rapidly reduced, the third increases. Now a finite interval of time generally contains an innumerable series of feelings, and when these become welded together in association, the result is a general idea. The first character of an idea resulting from this continuous spreading and generalization is that it is a living feeling. A continuance of this feeling, infinitesimal in duration, but still embracing innumerable parts, and also, though infinitesimal, entirely unlimited, is immediately present. And in its absence of boundedness a vague possibility of more than is present is directly felt.

The mental law follows the forms of logic. By induction, a number of sensations followed by one reaction become united under one general idea followed by the same reaction; by the hypothetical process, a number of reactions called for by one occasion get united in a general idea which is called out by the same occasion; by deduction, the habit fulfils its function of calling out certain reactions on certain occasions. But no mental action seems to be necessary or invariable in its character. The mind is not subject to 'law' in the same rigid sense that matter is. There always remains a certain amount of arbitrary spontaneity in its action without which it would be dead. When we consider that,