Herlert Spencer^s Synthetic Pliilosopliy. 97 



our consciousness is affected; and, were "we destitute of 

 hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch, the supposed quali- 

 ties of matter would not, so far as we can know or conceive, 

 have any existence whatever, for by psychological analysis 

 they are reducible to states of consciousness. 



As to space and time, whether we regard them with Kant 

 as forms of sensibility belonging to the subject and not to 

 the object, or adopt Spencer's theory that space is the ab- 

 stract of all relations of position among coexistent states of 

 consciousness or the blank form of all these relations, and 

 that time is the abstract of all relations of position among 

 successive states of consciousness or the blank form in which 

 they are presented and represented, and that both classes of 

 relations are predetermined in the individual, so far as the 

 inherited organization is developed, when it comes into 

 acti^^ty, while both have been developed in the race and are 

 resolvable into relations, coexistent and sequent, between sub- 

 ject and object as disclosed by the act of touch — whichever 

 of these theories we adopt or whatever theory be affirmed, 

 still we know sj^ace and time only as subjective forms, not 

 as external realities. Both space relations and time rela- 

 tions vary with structural organization, position, vital activ- 

 ity, mental development, and condition. 



How great in childhood seemed the height and mass of 

 buildings which now seem small or of but moderate size ! 

 How long the days seemed when we were young ! How 

 short now! How rapidly time passes in agreeable company, 

 how slowly in waiting for a delayed train ! That there is 

 equality or likeness between our differently estimated 

 lengths of distance or duration — but so many variations of 

 subjective relations — and any nexus of external things there 

 is no reason to believe. 



Inability to banish from the mind the idea of space illus- 

 trates Spencer's prime test of truth — viz., the inconceiva- 

 bility of the negation of a proposition. " If space be an 

 universal form of the non-cfjo, it must produce some corre- 

 sponding universal form of the ego — a form which, as being 

 the constant element of all impressions presented in experi- 

 ence, and therefore of all im]n'essions rej)resented in thought, 

 is independent of every jjcniicular impression ; and conse- 

 quently remains when every particular impression is as far 

 as possible banished." Space intuitions are " the fixed func- 

 tions of fixed structures that have become molded into corre- 

 S2)ondence with fixed outer relations " pre-established so far 

 8 



