CHAP. III.] THE EXTERNAL WORLD. 71 



a similarity of feeling between months now and weeks formerly 

 as a result of that change ; but he does not intellectually 

 perceive months to le weeks, though they feel like them 

 to him. 



As to the effect of opium, &c., I readily concede all Mr. 

 Spencer advances, but the matter is of no moment and beside 

 the question. 



With respect to changes produced by &quot; change of position 

 among our experiences,&quot; he remarks (p. 217), as to the re 

 collection of an evening passed somewhere a year ago : 

 &quot; There is a conviction that it was several hours long ; but 

 when contemplated it cannot be made of equal apparent 

 length with the several hours just passed.&quot; I reply to this 

 singularly frivolous remark to the feelings, no ! to the in 

 tellect, yes ! It would be inconvenient as well as useless if our 

 feelings did not change with distance in time as well as in 

 place. Mr. Spencer admits a &quot; CONVICTION,&quot; what more can 

 we possibly require ? He adds (p. 218), &quot; life seems no longer 

 at forty than it did at twenty.&quot; This is not my experience. 

 I can recollect the leading events back year after year for 

 thirty years, which I could not have done at twenty. He 

 also says : &quot; To a lowly-endowed creature, conscious only of 

 internally-initiated changes, it [time] cannot appear what it 

 does to a creature chiefly occupied with changes that are ex 

 ternally initiated ; since, in the last, it is partially dissociated 

 from both orders of changes. Whence it seems inferable that, 

 only partially dissociated as it is, it cannot have in consciousness 

 that qualitative character which absolute dissociation would 

 give it, and which we must suppose it to have objectively.&quot; 

 This he maintains on account of the reason just before given, 

 that &quot;time, considered as an abstract from relations of 

 sequence, must present a different aspect according to the 

 degree of its dissociation from particular sequences.&quot; But to 

 this may be replied: The idea of time is one thing, the 

 possibility of recalling a greater or lesser number of more or 

 less vivid phantasmata of things which happened in a given 

 quantity of time, say a month or year, is a very different one ; 



