It is strange that a natural phenomenon which learned men have taken some trouble to analyse, should find expression in the following commonplace phrase. “From the clash of opinions light is generated.” If this phrase were not only on our lips, but also implanted in our mind, we should more readily have grasped the physiological fact of sensation.
Sensation plays such an important part in the world of humanity, that all the sciences, both physical and moral, deal with it; but we, who grumble so readily and continuously at feeling either too hot or too cold, probably never enquire what philosophy has to do with purely bodily impressions.
Sensations come to us from without, but they would leave us in a condition of perturbation only, if whilst receiving them we were passive as a mirror on which external objects are reflected; we might have continued to sleep—perchance to dream—if a mental act on our part did not mark the awakening of our intelligence when in contact with the material world, and thus have proved the existence of a power within us hitherto latent, but quite capable of accepting, knowing, and realising sensations which come to us without having been summoned.
We are nearing the solution of the problem. Descartes had asked: How we know. Kant had clearly explained that all our knowledge has its commencement in our senses, which give us pure intuitions, that is to say, a clear direct view of external objects, and he also proved that intelligence would not have been aroused without the aid of material objects. But still greater discoveries awaited Kant.
We feel that nothing in ourselves is so free as thought. It comprehends the whole world, it mounts to the stars, it descends to the bowels of the earth, arrested perhaps in its path by special objects on which it dwells at will; but although free to encircle the universe, it may not choose its path, thought is obliged—like the sun—to follow one which has been previously traced out for it; of this we can readily convince ourselves.
Space and Time.
All objects of which we become conscious must be placed by us in the imagination side by side in space, and at a distance from ourselves, here or there; as being now present, or as having been, or about to be; but always in succession, i.e., in time, time past, present and future.
According to Kant, Space and Time are two fundamental or inevitable conditions of all sensuous manifestations, and he was the first to observe that they are imposed by so absolute a power that no effort, on our part, would enable us to escape from them, any more than we could avoid seeing the light of day at noon, unless we are either blind or have our eyes shut.
We must make it clear that what we call Space and Time, being forms of our sensuous intuition, do not exist apart from ourselves, or, as Max Müller says, “depend on us as recipients, as perceivers.” It is we who say there can be no Here without a There, and no Now without a Then; and this is necessary, since we are dependent on the mould of our minds, which work in accordance with their constitutions.