SPACE A TRANSITORY FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 259 



I 



^■pnstructions by which Kant sought to damage the 

 ^^onceptlon. It is 7tot unknowable, and has nothing 

 to do with what Kant strangely called Noiimena 

 (objects of thought), because they were unthinkable. 

 And, secondly, it is not the abstract conception of 

 a world in general. It is a real existence, which is 

 legitimately, and perhaps necessarily, inferred from 

 the discords of the phenomenal world. And though 

 our data may not at first enable us to assert much 

 more than its real existence, there is no reason why 

 similar inferences should not eventually give us 

 more definite information as to the nature of that 

 existence. 



The final solution, therefore, may be briefly stated 

 as being that the subjectivity of Space, or at least 

 of the infinity involved in its conception, is likely 

 to be brought out in the future evolution of the 

 world, and this solution has the advantage of har- 

 monizing with two such important doctrines as those 

 of Evolution and of Idealism : and Idealism would 

 surely be a still more futile and useless doctrine 

 than its worst enemies or wildest champions would 

 assert, if it cannot be appealed to to rescue philo- 

 sophy from this perplexity. 



§ II. The infinity of Time, however, can not 

 be disposed of so easily by a decree of subjectivity. 

 For the reality of Time is involved in the reality 

 of the world-process. Now a process need not be 

 in Space (as, e.g., a process of thought), and the 

 world-process may therefore retain its meaning,, 

 even though spatial extension be nothing more than 

 a passing phase of that process in our consciousness ;. 

 but the subjectivity of Time would destroy the 

 whole meaning and reality of the world-process, 

 and negate the idea of the world as an evolution. 



