NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

obviously enters are diverse in their relations from those chiefly suggestive of space: or rather, things are viewed in distinct bearings in the application of the one or the other notion. In each case, nevertheless, the diversity is only understood by an a priori recognition of the controlling idea of the relation under which it arises. Some objects can be contemplated indifferently in one order of succession or in a reverse order. We may move from A to Z, or return from Z to A. Others, transpiring in time, confine the attention to one direction. We pass from A to Z, but cannot retrace our steps. The cars enter the field of vision at the left, and pass out at the right. In these facts there is an occasion, though not an explanation, of the notion of time. The mind cannot, under the influence of a mere series of sensations, discover this relation; since it is not in and of the sensations, but that which expounds them. Nor can it institute a comparison between the two relations of objects which shall issue in any comprehension of them, without itself supplying the essential conditions of that comparison the notions of space and time. We must either hold that time is an order of sensation, or we must admit it to be that transcendent idea which expounds that order, and is therefore supplied by the mind.

Says Spencer, "As the ideas of space and co-existence are inseparable, so also are the ideas of time and sequence. It is impossible to think of time, without thinking of some succession; and it is equally impossible to think of any succession without thinking of time. Time, like space, can not be conceived except by the establishment of a relation between at least two elements of consciousness, the difference being, that while in the case of space, those two elements are, or seem to be present together, in the case of time they are not present together." Principles of Psychology, page 247.