Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/187

150 of experience I may conceive as independent of my present visual experience, as valid even if I died, still more if I closed my eyes or slept. To this independent validity of the possibilities of experience I may be referring, when I talk of something which is independent of my present experience. In talking of the way in which consciousness can refer “beyond itself,” we must not ignore, then, the cases where this reference beyond self is to possible contents of consciousness not here realised, but regarded as permanently realisable. This sort of reference is, as before shown, by no means free from obscurity; but it seems to be a reference often made, and we must take it into account when a realist lays stress upon the tendency of consciousness to look for something independent of its own contents. This independent something may be the independent validity of a “permanent possibility of experience,” in the sense of Kant’s “mögliche Erfahrung,” and of Mill’s famous chapter.

But this reference to the permanent possibilities of experience does not exhaust the sorts of reference to independent reality which we often find in consciousness. At any moment I may think of the past or of future experiences. When I think of them, I refer to what transcends the moment. Yet I do not refer to what transcends all experience, but I refer to what, in its supposed truth, is indeed conceived as independent of the contents of this my momentary memory or expectation. Hope as I will, regret as I will, my past deeds, my future destiny (say, my future experience of growing old), have aspects which are viewed