Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/361

300 beyond the dead fact of their concomitancy! But why not? Surely the concomitance of the two is in Time, and conditioned by Time; that at least is indisputable, is involved in calling the relation concomitance. If it can be shown, now, that Time is no “thing-in-itself,” no thing existing of itself independently of minds, but must be explained as a peculiar form of consciousness, in each of us, that cannot be conceived of as derived from any possible communication ab extra, and consequently must be acknowledged as the expression of our mental self-activity, we shall clearly have connected our empirical consciousness, our varying flood of serial experiences, our states of mind, with our active unit-being, and shall have lodged this our active identity in the eternal world, or order, in the only sense in which such an order of existence can be made intelligible.

I must not delay you with prolonged or intricate proofs that the real nature of Time is such as I have described, though such proofs are indeed numerous and prolific. It is enough for our purposes to-night to call attention, first, to the simple fact that we cannot rationally entertain the proposition that there is, or can be, no Time, — which shows that the consciousness of Time is inseparable from our essential being; in other words, is intrinsic in it. Secondly, let us attend to the more significant fact, that we are conscious of Time as a unity at once absolutely com-