The Metaphysics of a Naturalist 
67 
inherent in our subjectivity.^^ The three fundamental categories 
or forms of thinking are mode, time and space which afford us 
the ^This-now-here’’ of experience. This is the psychic present 
experience. The psychological past and future experience is 
always a ^That-then-there’’^" 
23. Time and extension.^® 
Time is a pregnant illustration of the tendency of the mind to 
effect a complete synthesis and to set up an abstraction as a 
symbol of the synthesis. Time is not given in experience. It 
is not seen to be the necessary form of inner experience until the 
synthesis is effected. What we really have is a series of sequences. 
Time as continuous is reached by the same kind of process as 
gives us number or quantity as continuous — a late and com- 
plicated acquisition. Every possible interpolation in the series 
of sequences finds the organism receptive. We are not, for exam- 
ple, conscious of our organic sensations as continuous; but, when- 
ever attention is directed to them, they emerge. They are, we 
conclude, continuous. This is not an immediate apprehension, 
but a synthetic judgment. Our experience is indeed discon- 
tinuous, but various considerations lead us to fill the hiatuses. 
It may be added that we only incidentally become aware of the 
discontinuity. What then is the neurological basis of sequence? 
Something perhaps like the following. Vestige a in cell I awakens 
a certain interneuritic reaction. Upon this the similar vestige h 
is superposed without introducing any new reaction. This 
state affects consciousness in the manner interpreted as identity. 
Again upon vestige a vestige c, which tends to produce a different 
reaction, is imposed; and this change is interpreted as 
The same thing is true if the cortical image be objectively caused 
and then repeated. If I gaze on an object and after closing 
my eyes a moment again view it, a sense of identity is produced. 
If again we superpose upon a, which is now a vestigial image, 
an objectively produced image of the same kind. A, the resultant 
is not pure identity nor is it dissimilarity. Vestige a has not the 
same penumbra of subcortically produced elements which A 
has. In the first case the presentation is 0 and in the second 
^^Psychological Review, voL 11, 1904, p. 401. 
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. 1, 1904, p. 373. 
Cf. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, October 27, 1904, 
p. 602; and Monist, January, 1905, p. 79. 
