Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/250

234 SHADWORTH H. HODGSON: What I own I do not see is, that any objection or difficulty arises from the fact that scientific truths are universal, or, in Mr.. Bosanquet's phrase, " transcend the distinctions of tense". What is meant by their being universal is, that they apply to any and all parts and states of the real vorld-process ; or, as Mr. Bosanquet himself puts it, "if true at all they are always true". Always; exactly so ; true for all time. That two and two make four is a universal mathematical truth, true for all times and places, and whatever may be the objects counted. How you can count at all without time, I cannot imagine, or think without it either. What then, in result, is the solution of the difficulty propounded by Lotze and Mr. Bradley ? ' You have faced the difficulty,' it will be said to me, ' but you have not solved it. After all you have to confess, that no states of reality exist but passing and present states, and only while they are present ; past and future states being strictly non-existent. This is no solution of the difficulty, it is an admission that it is insoluble.' To this I answer as follows : What is a present state of reality ? We know a present state of reality as present, only by identifying it with a present empirical moment of our own experience. This I pointed out at the beginning of my paper. The present moment of the existence of the real world-process and the empirical present moment of my experience are one and the same present moment, since only one time-duration common to all things is conceivable. But as Mr. Bosanquet has well pointed out, the empirical present moment of my experience has no fixed limits. To which I add, that it has no fixed limits either in its character as an existent state of consciousness, or in its character as a knowing, that is, as regards the extent and richness of the content immediately known or experienced by it. The keener my sensibilities and the more powerful my cognitive energies of every kind, the greater will be the expanse, duration, richness and complexity of the contents experienced in any one of the successive empirical moments which make up the history of my consciousness as an existent. Suppose now that, in place of me and my capacities, or those of any finite human being, there was introduced a conscious being of indefinitely keener sensibilities and indefinitely more powerful cognitive energies of every kind, the whole content experienced by him in any one of his successively existing empirical present moments of consciousness would also be indefinitely increased, in point of expanse, duration, richness and complexity. And there is no contradiction in supposing that the sensibilities and cognitive energies of such a being should be heightened to as great a degree, though indefinitely conceived, as that to which we can conceive the whole real world-process expanded, lengthened in duration, and increased in richness and complexity of content. In that case, and on that supposition, the whole real world-process, in what is to our apprehension past and future as well as present time,