Being the very original of what we
mean by continuity, it makes a continuum
wherever it appears. I know full well that such
brief words as these will leave the hardened
transcendentalist unshaken. Conjunctive experiences
_separate_ their terms, he will still say: they
are third things interposed, that have themselves
to be conjoined by new links, and to invoke
them makes our trouble infinitely worse.
To 'feel' our motion forward is impossible.
Motion implies terminus; and how can terminus
be felt before we have arrived? The barest
start and sally forwards, the barest tendency
to leave the instant, involves the chasm and
the leap. Conjunctive transitions are the most
superficial of appearances, illusions of our sensibility
which philosophical reflection pulverizes
at a touch. Conception is our only trustworthy
instrument, conception and the Absolute
working hand in hand. Conception disintegrates
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experience utterly, but its disjunctions
are easily overcome again when the Absolute
takes up the task.
Such transcendentalists I must leave, provisionally
at least, in full possession of their
creed. I have no space for polemics in this
article, so I shall simply formulate the empiricist
doctrine as my hypothesis, leaving it to
work or not work as it may.
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