Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/107

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As for the proofs of a priori consciousness in us, these have perhaps been clearly enough given in the analysis by which it was shown that the several elements are prerequisite not only to the conception of evolution, but to our human experience itself, and to the system of Nature into which they organise that experience. This is the case, at any rate, with all the elements except Time and Space, and is emphatically so with the most important conditions of the notion Evolution, namely, the Pure Ideals; and, among these, preeminently with the Moral Ideal. But as a difficulty about the a priori or ideal character of Time and Space disturbs many minds, it may be necessary in part to restate what has already been said in proof of the ideality of Time, and to reinforce this by certain new points. I speak only of Time, because the same reasoning, obviously, must also apply to Space.

The necessarily a priori nature of Time can be shown, even should we grant for the sake of argument that the dispute over hereditary transmission of acquired characters, now going on in the school of evolution between the Spencerians and Weismann, were decided in favour of the former, and that transmission were a fact. For transmission of acquired habit can never explain the infinity and necessity of Time. Nor can this infinity and necessity be explained away by the theory that it arises from a confusion of