318 ON LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 



Time, indeed, is to us only relative. We cannot conceive an 

 eternity past, or an eternity future ; neither can we conceive Time 

 compressed into nought or annihilated. Time is to us, therefore, 

 only apprehensible as a condition under which we think. Time is 

 a condition of Thought. 



In the same manner, Space is to us only another necessary con- 

 dition of Thought. In itself it is absolutely inconceivable. We 

 can only think of it as "an indefinite whole," or "an indefinite part." 

 We can only conceive of it while passing a judgment regarding the 

 relation of things as they are in it — as they are external in relation 

 to one another, or as they are one within the other. 



It is evident that the relations of things thought of under the 

 conditions of Time and of Space involve the judgments of Duration 

 and of Motion. 



Thought, under the condition of Space, involves the judgment 

 of matter as not annihilable. We cannot conceive aught as 

 capable of being expanded in Space, or compressed Space into 

 annihilation. 



The irresistible judgment of Causality is passed by our self- 

 consciousness by virtue of the necessity it is under of judging of 

 existence under the condition of Time. We cannot think of a 

 thing but as an existence. We cannot think of a thing except 

 under the condition of Time ; that is, we are under the necessity 

 of considering it as only a new form of what existed before it. 

 Therefore we cannot think of it as absolutely commencing per se. We 

 are able to conceive the creation of a world, this, indeed, as easily as 

 the creation of an atom. But what is our thought of creation 1 it 

 is not a thought of the mere springing of nothing into something. 

 On the contrary, creation is conceived, and is by us conceivable, 

 only as the evolution of existence from possibility into actuality by 

 the fiat of the Deity. 



We have up to this point assumed that the brute is not self- 

 conscious ; that it is only conscious ; that it only does not con- 

 found itself with the objects it perceives. 



If this be the case it must be inferred that the animal intelli- 

 gence does not pass a judgment in an act of consciousness. The 

 act is intuitive. It is not an act of thought. 



If so, also, time cannot be a condition in any act of the animal 



