6 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



a to b, we will find that we can only imagine it moving 

 from trie one point to the other by supposing it to be, in 

 succession, at each of a great number of intermediate 

 points. If we try to conceptualise continuity we will 

 find that we can treat it only by breaking it up into an 

 infinite number of discontinuous states. What we call 

 mathematical time is really a succession of natural 

 events. The unit of time is the day, or interval between 

 two successive transits of a fixed star. We can live 

 through, or experience this interval, but we can only 

 conceive it by breaking it up into sub-intervals, or 

 seconds, which are the intervals between the successive 

 swings of a pendulum of a certain length. And we must 

 proceed in the same way if we try to conceptualise the 

 time-interval of a second. In short, our concepts of 

 motion, continuity and time involve only our concept of 

 space, but that we intuitively realise all these depends 

 on the fact that we endure. If we feel that one thing 

 happens after another, that a kettle takes three minutes 

 to boil, for instance, that is because we have endured 

 throughout this succession of simultaneous events — the 

 successive positions of the hands of the clock and the 

 temperature of the water. The duration of an organism 

 is the continual accumulation of its experience. 



All this is quite clear and capable of detailed proof. 

 It is no practical inconvenience to us now that we should 

 be unable to represent intellectually parts of our actual 

 experience, but we had to wait for the invention of the 

 methods of the infinitesimal calculus and find ways of 

 replacing our intuitions of motion and time by concepts 

 of space, in order practically to circumvent these 

 disabilities of the intellect. In all the practical affairs 

 of life, therefore, the failure of intelligence to correspond 

 exactly in its operation with intuition does not matter. 



