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vol. title: vol. period: 1882 pages in vol.: 229 |
< Anticipations of Experience. (continued from page 13-81) >
position in experience for an absolute position of experience. To take an imaginary illustration from space—Suppose the solar system to be complete in itself without relation to any larger whole. We have here an objective order, the internal relations of which we must by no means disturb. But we might move the whole together as many millions of miles in space away as we please to imagine, and such a movement is not only no break in the unity of the whole, but it would have actually no meaning whatever for us, since there are, ex hypothesi, no external relations by which this change of position in absolute space could be apprehended. Such an absolute space is for us nothing. So it is with time. If I was in a continual state of prevision, if I saw everything that happened a day or a year in advance of other people, the whole objective series would consist in my previsional consciousness just as completely and in as orderly a manner as it could do in the consciousness which followed. So far as unity of experience and laws of nature are concerned, my total cognition would be just as valid, would just as truly represent the order of nature, as yours. Only on the underlying assumption of an “absolute” time, conditioning the occurrence of phenomena otherwise than inter se, can we set up one consciousness against another, or that of ten million against one. But then I am here supposing a total phenomenal unfoldment in the one consciousness in all its integrity, just as in that of the ten million. In that case the intuitions of the former would be “prevision” only in relation to those of the latter. There would be no anticipation of any real objective order, which is, in fact, only the integration of phenomena in possible conscious experience. Nor would a consciousness so intuiting in advance of others be at all more “noumenal” on that account. There would be no such “intrusion of the real in this phenomenal world of ours,” as Mr. Podmore apprehends. And what is this terrible “noumenon”? The identity of the Ego in the whole series of its experience is unthinkable, except as a function of unity. It is this function which makes consciousness possible at all as “now” and “here.” But such a principle of synthesis cannot have its operation bounded by moments. The noumenon stands for the unity of the total determination which the phenomenal consciousness represents as successive. Now given the total determination of the whole empirical series, and remembering that that series belongs, not to an actual individual experience, but to possible experience (which simply means the law of its determination through the forms of our understanding), we can see how phenomenal determination may differ in regard to time in one consciousness and another, and in different states of the same consciousness. We cannot, indeed, in our present ignorance of psychology, shew what the conditions are under which such experiences occur. Yet it is just this very ignorance which makes it rash and unphilosophical to say that there can be no such condition. Mr. Podmore says truly that in the phenomenal world there is no unconditioned. His argument, as I understand it, is that such an intuition as is implied in true prevision (not merely inferential) would be an intrusion of the unconditioned in our experience, because the event in question is made to antecede its own conditions. I have endeavoured to shew that at the root of this apparent difficulty lies the fallacy of “absolute position,” or an “absolute time.” Get the consciousness, even momentarily, on to another plane, and it may encounter its own experience at a different point. What is meant by a plane of consciousness may be explained by the following similitude. Suppose a right-angled triangle of which the base, from the acute to the right angle, represents a sequence of experience in our ordinary time consciousness. Let the apex be the noumenal Ego, or synthetic unity of all the empirical determinations. As we advance along the base (the stream of time), let the side of the triangle behind us close in after us. Between the two sides we may draw any number of lines parallel to the base. We may call each of these lines a plane of consciousness, which would still be phenomenal, because all below the apex is so. Drop a perpendicular from the point of junction of any one of these lines with the side which closes in as we advance along the base, and it will fall in advance of our position on the base. The point whence it falls represents on the upper plane the same condition in the series which we shall get to in our progress along the base when we arrive at the perpendicular. And if our consciousness can be raised up the side of the triangle to the plane whence we dropped our perpendicular, it will there envisage the very same phenomenon which it will “afterwards” encounter on the base. It lies in the future of psychology to discover the condition of such occasional elevations, but the hypothesis is at least conceivable, and suggests the solution of the metaphysical problem.
Let the base B C of the triangle A B C represent a section of the time series in the normal consciousness. And let the apex A stand for the unity of the section—the transcendental apperception, which gathers up and is equivalent to the series. D, E, F angles at the base of the triangles A B D, A B E, A B F, are points of progress in the series from C to B. The lines G H, I K, L M, parallel to the base B C, are, like it, planes of phenomenal consciousness. The explanation of one will suffice for all. From the point G, in the base or plane G H, falls a perpendicular to D, which is a point in the future of a consciousness at C. The only use of this perpendicular is to shew that consciousness at G is at the point represented by D on the base C B. Now the problem is, how, or in what sense, is the consciousness at G “contemporaneous” with the consciousness at C? On the common supposition of an absolute time—a merely empirical supposition derived from our confinement to the base C B—the problem is insoluble, or rather any proposition asserting simultaneity is self-contradictory. But granting that time is merely our mode of consciousness of phenomena as successive, all we have to consider is the succession of phenomena in relation to consciousness. It is, therefore, only by conceiving the transfer of consciousness from one plane to the other (or the interaction of the two planes), as itself a phenomenon, that we can think any relation of time between the two. For it would be absurd and meaningless to say “when the one consciousness is at C the other is at G,” if the “when” could only refer to different points in the same successive series. The two planes might both exist, but would be out of all temporal relation to one another. But given the interaction between them, that interaction mediates the temporal relation, and is itself the phenomenal condition under which the consciousness which was just now at C finds itself suddenly at G. For this phenomenal condition, represented in the diagram by the side of the triangle from C to G, is the equivalent of the series of conditions from C to D. The line C to G is also the hypothenuse in the right-angled triangle G D C, and possibly further reflection might discover an analogous application of the 47th Prop. of the First Book of Euclid to this psychological problem. The mystic significance attached to the hypothenuse by the Pythagoreans should not be forgotten.
<Untitled> (Beauty receives its halo from the radiant soul within...)
Beauty receives its halo from the radiant soul within. A cultured mind gives charm to the face, and a gentle, disciplined and benignant heart shines winningly through features which are not of classic mould. Beauty of person, then, is something which may be cultivated. Hence the aspiration to be beautiful is not a vain one; were it so, kind nature would not have implanted it in our hearts. Women with cultured minds and hearts excel in beauty those who remain ignorant and perverse. From the day when a course of intellectual and spiritual training begins, you may detect an improvement in personal attraction.—Dr. Winchell.
A Case of Obsession.—Another family has been put into the Roche-Gaudon Lunatic Asylum. The father and mother, each about sixty-four, two sons and two daughters, their ages ranging from thirty to eighteen, living at Andonille, were all struck with the same affection. They declared that the evil one was among them, that he got hold of them, and even got into their clothing. They ran about asking for the priest to be sent for to drive off the devil. One of the daughters, saying she was damned, threw herself into a half-frozen pond, and her sister and brothers followed her. Becoming dangerous to themselves, and beginning to show violence to the neighbours, the authorities have thought it best to put them under restraint.—Journal du Magnétisme.
Editor's notes
Sources
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Light, v. 2, No. 68, April 22, 1882, p. 188