There can, however, be no relations between independent realities. Lotze has shown that the interaction of two objects must ultimately be explained by the act of a universal subject present in both. Further, where events are related to each other as successive, they must be referred ultimately to one subject, so that the succession of events is reducible to the succession of acts of the Absolute. Do the distinctions of 'past,' 'present,' and 'future' exist then for the Absolute as for us? The answer lies in the distinction between the existence of 'thing' or 'subject,' and that of 'events' or 'acts.' Only the latter are in time, are successive. We have two inseparable aspects under which the universe is to be regarded—on the one hand, the Absolute, above all time-process, eternal and unchangeable, the unity and harmony of things, absolutely unknowable as 'in himself'; on the other hand, the world of changing finite things where also no fixed knowledge seems possible. Only by uniting the two aspects is knowledge possible—by regarding the succession of events as the succession of acts of the Absolute. By this means the empty unity receives filling, the Absolute becomes a living being, the Unknowable becomes knowable through his acts. If we apply this view to the question of the reality of past and future as compared with the present, it is obvious that the Absolute in himself is throughout all time equally real. Our 'present' is regulated by and dependent on the acts of the Absolute. The present act is the true reality. Time as a whole, therefore, has no existence except as an abstraction from the relations of events in the mind of the subject; the past has no existence except in memory or as a moment in the present, the future none except in foresight or inference, or, again, as a moment involved in the present. The Absolute is the permanently existing real Subject, the present act the momentarily existing real event. The Absolute, as in itself, gives the continuity, as in its acts, the discreteness of Time.
Knowledge consists in thoughts which agree with reality; it is the reproduction in the mind of the object. How is such knowledge to be attained ? Do the data of sense constitute it; or is it furnished by the so-called categories of science; or, if both these fail, has consciousness other resources? (1) The data of sense are not properly cognitions, for they do not resemble things, and their object must be created by thought. (2) The concepts, categories, or laws
