302 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



removing of " all extra-organic objects from the field of consciousness " 

 by " the shutting of the eyes and the stopping of ears, " do not " at once 

 decide in favour of all experiences being internal," but it does seem uncon- 

 vincing merely to suggest that " the object thus detached from the knowing 

 subject's body becomes less interesting ; it no longer attracts attention, 

 nor does it ofier a sufficient number of habitual starting-points for the 

 activity of discriminating and comparing to be directed upon it." ^ Evan- 

 escent perpetual objects, like sparks from a fire or coloured stars from a 

 rocket, seem to capture attention, strike in upon the mind and leave upon 

 it, in the form of memory images, effects of their influence. Our own move- 

 ments, or movements in things themselves, perpetually seem to alter our 

 perceptual fields, and to leave the effects of these perceptual fields on memory 

 because they compel all physical objects to be evanescent for perception. 

 Memory images seem to insist upon causality in perception, because they 

 seem to be obvious effects of the object upon the subject. They also, because 

 they seem more fitted for the role of immanent objects than physical things, 

 throw doubts upon the percept's claim to immanency. Lossky is compelled 

 to HOMOGENISE percept and memory image, and this homogenising is cer- 

 tainly violently opposed to the obvious difference between our mental 

 reactions towards them. He suggests that association by contiguity may 

 rest " upon a relation which holds throughout reality between the past 

 and the present — a relation of ground and consequent which implies that, 

 whenever some elements of a whole are found, its other elements must also 

 really be present in one form or another. In that case, the memories engen- 

 dered by association would themselves be simply a species of indirect 

 perception, a sort of clairvoyance of the past." ^ The phrase " indirect 

 perception " plainly indicates the homogenising of memory and present per- 

 ception which is completed when he writes : " Every element of reality, 

 even a fleeting event in the far-ofi past, remains eternally one and the same, 

 identical with itself," ^ The flight of a shooting star, with its beginning 

 and end, has a continued existence, according to this doctrine, in the memories 

 of observers ; it seems also to multiply that continued existence if there 

 be more observers than one. These observers must be placed appropriately 

 both in space and time to see the original event, they can refer to it in their 

 memories virtually at any subsequent time and in any subsequent place. 

 This latter independence of place and time is most simply, as it is most 

 usually, explained by the permanent " immanence " of memory images in 

 their containing minds : these images are methods of reference to the 

 original event impressed by it upon the mind of the knower. If an eagle 

 soars in the air, the event may be immanent in the knowing processes of a 

 hundred knowers : this plurality of immanence lies perplexingly at the 

 very basis of Lossky 's theory of perception. Each observer must be suit- 

 ably placed to see the eagle, and must observe it at the moment of flight. 

 Ten years after, when these hundred knowers meet together in a place far 

 removed from the original site of the event, they may remember their common 

 experience. They may remember it singly in difierent places and at different 

 times. If the original event is present in each remembrance and in judg- 

 ments based upon them, Lossky is obviously compelled, since " it seems 

 impossible for an event separated from the knowing subject by an interval 

 of space and time to be present in his acts of judgment," to af&rm that 

 " ontology must therefore construct such a theory of space and time as 

 would dissipate the seeming impossibility." * Even if ontology does suc- 

 ceed in harmonising the call made by the original event upon the observer 

 to be appropriately placed in time and space, with its subsequent indepen- 

 dence of them, there still remain further difficulties. 



^ The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge (Duddington's trans.), pp. 99-100. 

 2 Ibid., p. 339. * Ibid., p. 272. * Ibid., p. 274. 



