84 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. [CHAP 



time or space. The sweetness of sugar is neither before 

 nor after its weight and solubility. The hardness of a 

 metal, its colour, weight, opacity, malleability, electric and 

 chemical properties, are all coexistent and coextensive, per- 

 vading the metal and every part of it in perfect community, 

 none before nor after the others. In our words and symbols 

 we cannot observe this natural condition ; we must name 

 one quality first and another second, just as some one must 

 be the first to sign a petition, or to walk foremost in a pro- 

 csssion. In nature there is no such precedence. 



I find that the opinion here stated, to the effect that 

 relations of space and time do not apply to many of our 

 ideas, is clearly adopted by Hume in his celebrated Trea- 

 tise on Human Nature (vol. i. p. 410). He says : J " An 

 object may be said to be no where, when its parts are not so 

 situated with respect to each other, as to form any figure 

 or quantity ; nor the whole with respect to other bodies so 

 as to answer to our notions of contiguity or distance. Now 

 this is evidently the case with all our perceptions and 

 objects, except those of sight and feeling. A moral reflection 

 cannot be placed on the right hand or on the left hand 

 of a passion, nor can a smell or sound be either of a circular 

 or a square figure. These objects and perceptions, so far 

 from requiring any particular place, are absolutely incom- 

 patible with it, and even the imagination cannot attribute 

 it to them." 



A little reflection will show that knowledge in the 

 highest perfection would consist in the simultaneous pos- 

 session of a multitude of facts. To comprehend a 

 science perfectly we should have every fact present with 

 every other fact. We must write a book and we must read 

 it successively word by word, but how infinitely higher 

 would be our powers of thought if we could grasp the 

 whole in one collective act of consciousness ! Compared 

 with the brutes we do possess some slight approximation 

 to such power, and it is conceivable that in the indefinite 

 future mind may acquire an increase of capacity, and be 

 less restricted to the piecemeal examination of a subject. 

 But I wish here to make plain that there is no logical 

 foundation for the successive character of thought and 

 reasoning unavoidable under our present mental conditions. 

 1 Book i., Part iv., Section 5. 



