142 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[cii. 



XXXVJI. 



Instance 

 of this 

 lieing 

 lielievcJ 

 in. 



difference of opposition in space, or difi'erence of position 

 in time, or difference in the sense of uniikeness. But 

 thougli the notion of a consciousness which is not de- 

 veloped in time, and which remains unchanged through 

 time, is not capable of being imagined by us, whose con- 

 sciousness has been developed in so totally different a 

 manner, yet the possibility of it is capable of being be- 

 lieved. It has been a favourite notion with some Christian 

 mystics, that the happiness of a future state may be a 

 perfectly unchangeable state of bliss, so as to exclude all 

 sense of the succession of feelings, and consequently all 

 consciousness of time. This notion has been thus ex- 

 pressed in the well-known lines — 



" Nothing there is to come, and nothing past, 

 But one eternal now doth ahvay last." 



I quote these, not as having myself any sympathy with 

 the feeling they express, but merely in. order to show that 

 the notion of a consciousness which does not exist in time 

 has proved itself before now to be believable. 



