64 ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. 



§ 19. Turning now from the outer to the inner world, 

 let us contemplate, not the agencies to which we ascribe our 

 subjective modifications, but the subjective modifications 

 themselves. These constitute a series. Difficult as we find 

 it distinctly to separate and individualize them, it is never- 

 theless beyond question that our states of consciousness oc- 

 cur in succession. • 



Is this chain of states of consciousness infinite or finite? 

 We cannot say infinite ; not only because we have indirectly 

 reached the conclusion that there was a period when it com- 

 menced, but also because all infinity is inconceivable — an 

 infinite series included. We cannot say finite; for we have 

 no knowledge of either of its ends. Go back in memory as 

 far as we may, we are wholly unable to identify our first 

 states of consciousness: the perspective of our thoughts 

 vanishes in a dim obscurity where we can make out nothing. 

 Similarly at the other extreme. "We have no immediate 

 knowledge of a termination to the series at a future time; 

 and we cannot really lay hold of that temporary termination 

 of the series reached at the present moment. For the state 

 of consciousness recognized by us as our last, is not truly our 

 last. That any mental affection may be contemplated as one 

 of the series, it must be remembered — represented in 

 thought, not presented. The truly last state of conscious- 

 ness is that which is passing in the very act of contemplating 

 a state just past — that in which we are thinking of the one 

 before as the last. So that the proximate end of the chain 

 eludes us, as well as the remote end. 



" But," it may be said, " though we cannot directly 

 know consciousness to be finite in duration, because neither 

 of its limits can be actually reached; yet we can very well 

 conceive it to be so." Xo : not even this is true. In the first 

 place, we cannot conceive the terminations of that conscious- 

 ness which alone we really know — our own — any more than 

 we can j9<?rceive its terminations. For in truth the two acts 

 are here one. In either case such terminations must be, 



