particular nervous process and corresponds with it; I do not find that Will has its counterpart in nervous process at all, though it may have a counterpart in some subtler physical process in intimate association with the nervous process. Mr. Mercier has attempted to explain one peculiarity of Will by his assumption that the nervous process underlying Will is the resultant "of the activities of all the highest nerveregions". But why should either an idea of a movement or the discharge of energy in specific nerve-channels be described as so extensive? The feeling of anger, to which he refers, is just as much such a resultant. Unquestionably it is a fact that Will is regarded as the special expression of the Ego; but for the existence of the supposed physiological counterpart which Mr. Mercier offers of this fact, I can find no warrant alleged. Analogous objections might be urged against Schopenhauer, who, notwithstanding his great glimpse into the foundations of philosophy, committed a grievous failure of psychological insight when he identified every act of Will with a movement of the body. In my view, Will lies on a different plane of consciousness altogether from those other feelings with which it is commonly confused.

There remains the task of completing our analysis of the bare consciousness of a Non-Ego, now that we have reached the conclusion that Will is the primary feeling involved. We shall not first ask what account can be given of this consciousness according to which it will, as a state of consciousness, claim no improper superiority, but fall into an already allotted place in the evolution of mind. It may possibly appear to some that the inquiry if stated in this form precludes to a certain extent an impartial investigation; although to others, on the contrary, it may seem that only when the question is thus treated are we likely to obtain a satisfactory answer. Let us then, without foreclosure of any sort, make the question essentially one of direct introspection. But here another warning must be given. It is a great mistake to suppose that what we describe in its present fully differentiated state always existed so either for us or in reality, i.e., in our consciousness and recognised as there, or in our consciousness albeit unrecognised. The process of thought, in my view, is an evolution, and analogous therefore to the gradual development of the complex grossly-material universe from a nebulous mass or an atom-tornado, of the organism from a relatively homogeneous protoplasm. And the process still continues. It is not by addition of already

formed and clearly distinguished parts that thought grows; it is by the slow differentiation of a single vague thing into many definite things. Further, when we analyse, we analyse for reflection only, not for the real state of consciousness of which we offer an analysis. The meaning of the analysis isthat before I could have the integrated state of consciousness which I am erroneously supposed to analyse (in the strict sense of the word), I must have had certain experiences which, different as they appear in my quasi-analysis, I now class and label easily enough, but which never previously were really distinct so far as concerns their relation to the "complex" state. For the present reflecting me, certain states of consciousness are both separate and recognised as separate; but for the past experiencing me these states of consciousness were, in the first stage, neither recognised as separate nor actually separate, and, in the second stage, were actually separate but not recognised as separate. What some would call their compound is rather to be called their result, as Brown long ago pointed out. Nay, the word result is too strong, as Brown himself would admit; we should say-invariable immediate conjoined event. The third state so often termed a compound of two others is a different thing from either alone or both together. No step in Evolution can be accounted for by any preceding step. No antecedent can account for any consequent which is higher than itself. No complex can be accounted for by any simple or series of simples. These truths appear to me to be axiomatic. All I can say is that the Unknowable has built

my worlds, and such and such are the successive stages of the building. Every stage in synthesis is a new manifestation of the Unknowable; it is not caused by the preceding stages, but is caused by a continuation of whatever caused the preceding stages. From this position my consciousness of a Non-Ego, like every other state of consciousness, must be deemed unique and simple; but from the standpoint of psychological description, it must be said to have had its antecedents in my experience, it shows the complexity explained above, and may be analysed and classified in reflection.

How then shall we draw and colour this consciousness of a Non-Ego? Is it a Primary Feeling or a Relational Feeling? And to which of our three worlds does it belong? It needs but a glance to assure us that the feeling must be Relational, and that it forms part of our Ego-world. I maintain that in contemplating this pen I am conscious of a Non-Ego. With my perception of the body as presenting dynamical, statico

dynamical, and statical attributes, coheres the consciousness of a Non-Ego; it is the consciousness of a Will not mine. Some relation to my own Will is involved. One of the term-feelings is a vivid state of Will. There is a feeling of relation between this and some other term-feeling; this other term-feeling is a faint state of Will. The bare consciousness of a Non-Ego, which forms the germ of the consciousness of External Reality, is a Relational Feeling of Unlikeness between a vivid state of Will and a faint state of Will. On the other hand the bare consciousness of the Ego is a Relational Feeling of Unlikeness between a faint state of Will and a vivid state of Will. It may here be objected that although we have a vivid state of Will and a faint state of Will, and what is sometimes described as a shock of transition from one to the other, we are no nearer than before to the consciousness of a Non-Ego. This is quite true; we are farther away; we were never so far away before; we have now reached a position whence we can see this consciousness, whereas previously we could but feel it. It is the feeling of the relation between a vivid state of Will and a faint state of Will that constitutes the bare consciousness of a Non-Ego; the classification of that feeling of relation with feelings of relation in general does not constitute the consciousness of a Non-Ego. We cannot keep our cake and eat it. Nor does either Primary Feeling of itself constitute the consciousness we are analysing. Suppose I have a simple Relational Feeling of Sequence followed by another simple Relational Feeling of Sequence. These relational feelings may be such that my feeling of relation between them is what I call a Relational Feeling of Coexistence. Neither of the relational term-feelings alone is the feeling of Co-existence; nor is the feeling of Co-existence constituted by the mere occurrence of both, though both are necessary for its constitution. Similarly in the case before

us.

Neither a vivid nor a faint state of Will alone is enough to constitute the consciousness of a Non-Ego; the two together avail not a whit better; but the Relational Feeling between the two suffices. It may be well to add, for the purpose of reconciling those who hold that we are conscious of Ego and Non-Ego in the same moment of intuition, that there is established in my consciousness a feeling of relation between the two relational feelings constituting the consciousnesses of Non-Ego and Ego. This might be anticipated from whichever side these consciousnesses are regarded. Not only might we expect that if they perpetually alternate in the normal waking life, there must eventually be established

346 R. HODGSON: THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EXTERNAL REALITY.

a consciousness of the co-existence of Ego and Non-Ego; but the original Relational Feeling of Unlikeness is in one of its aspects a Relational Feeling of Sequence, and the continual recurrence of the similar and opposite simple relational feelings of sequence which in their other aspect constitute the consciousnesses of Non-Ego and Ego must itself lead to the establishment of the Relational Feeling of the Co-existence of Ego and Non-Ego.

No exact account of the origin of this Relational Feeling we have been tracing can be given. From our present point of view it may be said that following a first vivid feeling of Will comes a first feeling of sensation, which is followed by a faint feeling of Will, whereupon arises a relational feeling between the two Wills, and that here is the birth of our consciousness of a Non-Ego. But the actual beginning of experience is too vague for us to realise now in our highly differentiated conscious life, and any statements we might make concerning it can be looked upon as but the merest adumbrations of the process through which we have passed; Will and feeling of sensation in the earliest stages of experience cannot have had that separateness which they now display in the domain of introspective contemplation.

II. THE SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTION OF THE

MEASUREMENT OF TIME.1

By E. HAWKSLEY RHODES.

THAT Time is possessed of quantity or magnitude, and therefore is in some sense measurable, may be said to form part of the common conception of it. Exact science assumes that time can be measured as accurately as space can; predicating equality of certain intervals and inequality of others. It holds, for instance, that the oscillation of the pendulum of a good clock divides time into equal intervals, and that the movement of a weathercock, as it veers to and fro in the open air, does not. But when asked for the grounds of this predication of equality or inequality, the statements of even the best authorities on the subject are most inconclusive, confused and unsatisfactory. It is not that such authorities have the slightest difficulty in pointing out classes of events which do, and others which do not, mark time off into equal intervals. But they seem unable to bring into the clear consciousness of abstract knowledge the difference that distinguishes these two species of events. Their case is like that of a man ignorant of geometry who should have put before him a number of plane quadrilateral figures of all kinds. Aware of a certain undefinable similarity existing between some of the figures and not between others, he might succeed in picking out from the whole mass all that were parallelograms, and yet be quite unable to form for himself a clear abstract conception of the difference which distinguishes the species parallelogram from the rest of the genus quadrilateral. A prevalent error regarding our knowledge of the measurement of time is the supposition that it is derived from a prior knowledge of the presence or absence of forces, or of the uniform action of more general causes; whereas, as I shall have further occasion to remark in the course of this paper, the possibility of measuring time is a condition prior to our knowledge of the presence or absence of forces or of the uniform action of causes.

It may perhaps be objected to the subject I have chosen for consideration that the question is a purely scientific one, and

1 Read before the Aristotelian Society on June 1.