82 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



tification of being and persistence; for in the very 

 language he uses he contradicts himself. The lightning 

 flash " ceases to be ; " but it must have been before it 

 could cease to be. Was there no "continuity, or 

 endurance, or fixity, or persistence," during the time 

 and it matters not whether that time was a fraction 

 of a second or a cycle of years precedent to this 

 ceasing ? Is it an illegitimate use of words to speak of 

 something as existing when we know that it will cease 

 to exist ? How are we to express the mode of being 

 of all the ever-changing manifestations of the absolute 

 force ? They are ; they cease to be : in the very re- 

 cognition of their ceasing to be there is an affirmation 

 that they have been. It would close a great number 

 of debated questions, if it were received as the law of 

 our intelligence and of being, that all existence of 

 which we have consciousness is continued existence 

 without origin or end. But we are not here concerned 

 with questions of ontology ; our business, meanwhile, 

 is but to interrogate consciousness and to ascertain 

 what this the only available witness has to testify. 

 The deliverance of consciousness is, as we have seen, 

 simply attestation of the existence of something out- 

 side itself, not dependent on the percipient mind for 

 its beginning or its continuance. The lightning flash, 

 of which there has been momentary cognition, may, 

 for all consciousness can attest, have originated at that 

 instant and have at that instant ceased to be. Our 

 consciousness of it is the act of perception, and nothing 



