SPACE AND TIME
SPACE AND TIME. Space and Time being the most general conditions, forms, or attributes of all existing things, their discussion is linked with the highest problems of philosophy. Space is co-extensive with, and inseparable from, the sensible, external, or Object World; time is a property both of the Object World and of the Subject Mind.
Of the so-called Innate Ideas maintained by one school of philosophy, Space and Time are the foremost examples. (Other examples are Number, Infinity, Being, Substance, Power, Personal Identity, &c.) Accordingly, it is held, on the one side, that these notions are underived, or intuitive to the mind; and, on the other side, that they arise in the course of our education or experience, like our ideas of heat, sound, color, gravity. &c.
To begin with Space. The supporters of the innate or intuitive origin of the idea, allow that it does not arise in the mind until actual objects, or extended things, are presented to the senses— until we see the visible, and touch the tangible things around us; but they declare that this contact with the sensible world is only the occasion of our becoming conscious of what was already in the mind. Thus, Mr. Mansel says : ‘ Space is not properly an innate Idea, for no idea is wholly innate; but it is the innate element of the ideas of sense which experience calls into consciousness.’ It is, in short, the superadding of some independent activity of the mind to the passive sensation.
The reasons usually given for assuming an intuitive element in the idea of Space are, in the main, the reasons given for innate ideas generally; they chiefly resolve themselves into affirming the attributes of universality and necessity in such ideas, and the inadequacy of mere sensible experience to reveal these high attributes of things. Whatever is got by experience can be thought away; Space and Time cannot. Thus, it is impossible for us to receive any sensible impression of an outward object—the sun, for example—without conceiving that thing as existing in space. To use the language of Kant, Space is a form of our sensibility, or sensible perception; and as the perception itself cannot, he thinks, give this universal and inseparable form—it must be contributed by the mind. Sir W. Hamilton supposes that we may have an ‘empirical’ notion of Space—i.e., a notion from experience; but that Space as a ‘form ‘ is not obtained from experience, but from intuition. He does not, however, explain clearly wherein consists the difference between these two notions. According to the opposite view, Space is an abstraction from our experience of extended things, exactly as gravity is an abstraction from gravitating bodies, and justice from just actions. We first obtain from experience a variety of impressions, in the concrete, of things possessing extension; and, next, from all these, by the usual process of abstraction, we gain a notion of extension in the abstract, or Space. A few remarks may be made on these two distinct operations, as both involve matters of controversy.
1. Before the Muscular Feelings were distinctly recognized as something superadded to the proper sensations of the senses—or the feelings of mere light, sound, &c., it was not easy to show that, by sensible experience alone, we could perceive objects as extended, or as occupying space. The pure optical sensibility of the eye is for color solely; the pure tactile sensibility is for softness and smartness, roughness and smoothness, &c. When, however, we make full allowance for the whole range of feeling connected with the exercise of muscular energy, there is no difficulty in accounting for the origin of such notions as Resistance (Force or Power) and Extended Magnitude. The element supposed, by the a priori philosophers, to be contributed by the mind itself, is, according to the other school, Muscularity, or the feeling of the putting forth of inward energy. The two senses related to our ‘Cognizance of Space—Sight and Touch, are compound senses; they involve an active energy, with its peculiar consciousness, as well as a passive sensibility; and all that is characteristic of Extension, or Space, arises through these muscular accompaniments.
2. Having perceived a great number of things as extended, with the intervals of unoccupied extension that separate these, we form an idea of extension in the abstract. The distinguishing peculiarity of this abstraction is related to unoccupied extension, or empty space, where we seem to have extension without anything extended; rendering the idea of Space unlike other abstract ideas, as Gravity, or Justice, which are conceivable only as embodied in gravitating things, or just actions. Still, empty space is a reality to us, inasmuch as it expresses cessation of resistance, and free scope for movement. To the senses alone, without the muscular accompaniments, Space would be a nonentity, an inconceivability; but the feeling of the sweep of the arm, or of the locomotion of the body, in passing from one point of resistance to {mother, is a genuine mental experience—the filling up of the interval between two tactile encounters, or between two optical pictures, with conscious activity.
The idea of TIME, continuance, or endurance, applies both to our feelings of energy put forth, and also to our sensations, emotions, and the flow of our ideas; in other words, it attaches both to the extended or Object World, and to the unextended or ‘Subject Mind. In our muscular feelings, which represent the universe of matter and space, we discriminate a dead strain, or effort of resistance, lasting a short time, from the same strain lasting a longer time; and also a more persisting movement from a less. So in the sensations; a sound enduring a second is different to us from a sound enduring two seconds : a transitory odor is not confounded with one of greater continuance.
We distinguish two bursts of wonder, terror, love, or anger, if they have been unequal in their duration. Abstracting from all these experiences of continuance in the concrete, we obtain the idea of Time; which idea, however, like other abstractions, must be conceived by us under some individual continuing thing. If we were to imagine the whole outward universe annihilated, we should still have, in our own consciousness, an instance of the continuing, and upon that we could sustain the conception of Time. See GENERALIZATION.
Time is measured by Space, and Space by Time. The one is often expressed by the other, but with a certain limitation; we say ‘ a space of time,’ but not a ‘ time of space.’ Movement is common to both. Of passive sensations, the best for indicating time are those of Hearing.