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Remarks
our notion of time means an unlimited duration ; but nothing we have heard lasted for ever ; nothing we have seen occupied all the space we can conceive . The wide spread heavens are the vastest object we can contemplate ; but our minds oblige us to think there must be space beyond them . Time must roll on , all may change , or all may cease to change ; but we can never conceive time to be ended , whilst our minds are constituted as they are at present .
Since , then , we have never found any external agent , either of unlimited extent or eternal duration , we conclude that these notions are essential parts or constituents of our minds . We take then the two first elements , not derived from the external world , to be time and space /'' The mind being furnished with intuitions , we proceed , still directed
by that unerring guitle , our consciousness of what is going on in our minds , to observe what processes she performs on those intuitions . — First , we notice a faculty of remembering them , a process , the existence of which a metaphysician of five years of age may be brought to assent to ; but to remember is not to -reproduce . When I see a river it is present to me , occupying time and space ; but when I recollect the river , although I cannot conceive it otherwise than occupying the same
reservoirs , and though the image may be very like the reality , it will always have this difference , I know that it is absent . So then , this recollected intuition , being different from one which is present , requires a different denomination , we call it a conception : t the strict definition of the two
being—intuition , an object present in time and space ; conception , an object absent , but in time and space . The most simple power of the understanding is the combination of the conceptions derived from previous intuitions , with each other , or of the conceptions with the present intuition . This combination occupies almost entirely our childhood , and three-fourths of the time of our maturer age ; and without its constant and long-continued exercise the higher powers of the mind would never come into full operation . When
we reflect a little on this process , we are astonished to find how little we derive directly from the senses , that almost all that renders our cognizance of an external object clear and distinct , arises from that operation of the mind which combines with the intuition before us the various recollections to which it gives rise . Thus , to take the simplest example , we behold a table at the farther end of the room , and we agree that it is a substantial , round loo-table ; but we do not see its substance , our
opinion is a mere inference derived from our having usually found solidity combined with such a shape ; it is not even round to us , for owing to its distant position , not a circle but a sharp ellipse is painted on our retina ;; nevertheless , we have so invariably observed that round objects present at such a distance , and when placed in such a direction , the elliptical form , that we can have no hesitation in assuming the same thing to have occurred in the present instance . But this is not the work of the faculty of seeing ( although we speak as if it were ) , but of the combination of old conceptions with the object viewed . All men would
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Remarks
our notion of time means an unlimited duration ; but nothing we have heard lasted for ever ; nothing we have seen occupied all the space we can conceive . The wide spread heavens are the vastest object we can contemplate ; but our minds oblige us to think there must be space beyond them . Time must roll on , all may change , or all may cease to change ; but we can never conceive time to be ended , whilst our minds are constituted as they are at present .
Since , then , we have never found any external agent , either of unlimited extent or eternal duration , we conclude that these notions are essential parts or constituents of our minds . We take then the two first elements , not derived from the external world , to be time and space /'' The mind being furnished with intuitions , we proceed , still directed
by that unerring guitle , our consciousness of what is going on in our minds , to observe what processes she performs on those intuitions . — First , we notice a faculty of remembering them , a process , the existence of which a metaphysician of five years of age may be brought to assent to ; but to remember is not to -reproduce . When I see a river it is present to me , occupying time and space ; but when I recollect the river , although I cannot conceive it otherwise than occupying the same
reservoirs , and though the image may be very like the reality , it will always have this difference , I know that it is absent . So then , this recollected intuition , being different from one which is present , requires a different denomination , we call it a conception : t the strict definition of the two
being—intuition , an object present in time and space ; conception , an object absent , but in time and space . The most simple power of the understanding is the combination of the conceptions derived from previous intuitions , with each other , or of the conceptions with the present intuition . This combination occupies almost entirely our childhood , and three-fourths of the time of our maturer age ; and without its constant and long-continued exercise the higher powers of the mind would never come into full operation . When
we reflect a little on this process , we are astonished to find how little we derive directly from the senses , that almost all that renders our cognizance of an external object clear and distinct , arises from that operation of the mind which combines with the intuition before us the various recollections to which it gives rise . Thus , to take the simplest example , we behold a table at the farther end of the room , and we agree that it is a substantial , round loo-table ; but we do not see its substance , our
opinion is a mere inference derived from our having usually found solidity combined with such a shape ; it is not even round to us , for owing to its distant position , not a circle but a sharp ellipse is painted on our retina ;; nevertheless , we have so invariably observed that round objects present at such a distance , and when placed in such a direction , the elliptical form , that we can have no hesitation in assuming the same thing to have occurred in the present instance . But this is not the work of the faculty of seeing ( although we speak as if it were ) , but of the combination of old conceptions with the object viewed . All men would