Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/87

GREEN'S REFUTATION OF EMPIRICISM. 73 least of it, entirely beside the mark. For, since the parts of the judgment-as-such, being admittedly in no way external to one another, do not require any ' holding together ' ; it follows that the only function the ' ego ' has to fulfil is that of ensuring the continuity of consciousness. And conscious- ness, regarded as continuous, is consciousness sub specie temporis. In other words, Green bases the metaphysical necessity of an eternal ' agent ' on the fact that thought has a growth in time ; and then boldly invests thought itself with the non-temporal character of that ' agent '. The judgment which is not an extended portion of the stream of consciousness, but the crest of an onward-moving wave through all modifications of its content cognitively retains, in a measure, those past phases of consciousness which, as past, are existentially external to it in point of time. The principle of the ' ego,' or ' the synthetic unity of apper- ception,' is not so much an explanation as a recognition of this fundamental characteristic of our consciousness. And it is further implied in this principle, that the actual content of the judgment though embracing a reference to the future is relative to the stage of conscious experience so far attained. We can only learn, in fact, from past experience ; and consequently have to wait on future experience for the means of improving our knowledge alike of the future and of the past. Thus, whatever way we look at it, the signifi- cance of the synthetic unity of apperception is absolutely bound up with the temporal aspect of thought : which aspect, however, in virtue of this principle, can no longer be viewed as exclusive of the ' moment ' of thought as knowledge. What possible meaning, indeed, is there in the distinction between past (or future) events, on the one hand, and present events on the other, except in so far as thought, distinguish- ing itself from the former, identifies itself, in respect of its place in time, with the latter ? If only as a striking example of the irony of the Idea, it will be instructive to retrospectively consider the havoc wrought by this substitution of eternity of thought for the mutually implicated indivisibility of the judgment and con- tinuity of consciousness. The said substitution finds ex- pression, in the first instance, in an absolute distinction between succession of consciousness and consciousness of succession ; which since the latter is identified with the of time but for its determination by a subject which holds past and present together, which is no more now than it was then or will be to- morrow, and this is not in time ".