IMPORTANT COROLLARIES.
107. Is the idea of time derived from experience? This question is answered by what we said of the idea of being. It is not a type existing previous to all sensation and to all intellectual act; it is a perception of being and not-beingwhich accompanies all our acts, but is not presented to us separately until reflection eliminates from it all that does not belong to it. This perception is the exercise of an innate activity, which is subjected to the conditions of experience in all that concerns the beginning and the continuation of its acts, but not with respect to its laws which are characteristic of it, and correspond to the pure intellectual order. This activity is unfolded in the presence of causes or occasions which excite it, and its exercise ceases when these conditions are wanting; but while the activity acts, it exercises its functions in accordance with fixed laws which are independent of the objects exciting it.
108. It is therefore clear that the idea of time is not strictly derived from experience, except inasmuch as the mind is excited to develop its activity by experience. Neither is it entirely independent of experience; for without experience we should have no knowledge of change, and consequently the intellect would not perceive the order of being and not-being, in which the essence of time consists.
109. Hence the idea of time is not a form of the sensibility, but of the pure intellectual order; and although it descends to the field of sensible experience, it does so after the manner of other general conceptions.
110. The idea of time is one of the most universal and indeterminate ideas which our mind possesses; for it is the combination of the two most general and most indeterminate ideas, being and not-being. Here is the reason why the idea of time is common to all men, and is presented to us as a form of all our conceptions and of all the objects known.
The ideas of being and not-being, entering as primitive elements into all our perceptions, generate the idea of time. We therefore find this idea in the inmost recesses of our soul as a condition from which we cannot withdraw ourselves, and from which we exempt the Infinite Being himself only by an effort of reflection.
111. The transition from the purely intellectual order to the field of experience takes place in the idea of time, in the same manner as in the other intellectual conceptions. I have, therefore, nothing to add to what I have already said on this point when explaining it elsewhere.[31]
PURE IDEAL TIME AND EMPYRICAL TIME.
112. Time is not only conceived as a general order of change, or as a relation of being and not-being; but also as something fixed, which can be measured with exactness. Thus, before the creation of the world, we conceive not only an abstract order, or time, but a time composed of years, of centuries, or some other terms. But this, if we closely examine it, is only an idea in which we conceive the phenomena of experience under a general view, taking them out of actuality and contemplating them in the sphere of possibility. Neither the years nor the centuries existed when there was nothing by which they could be measured. If we imagine a sort of vague line of duration prolonged to infinity, abstracting it from the measure and the object measured, we become the sport of our imagination, and are entangled in contradictions from which it is difficult to extricate ourselves.
113. The pure and abstract idea of time admits no measure; it is a mere relation of being and not-being. Themeasure is possible only when the idea of time is combined with the phenomena of experience.
Subject as we are to change, and situated amid beings as changeable as ourselves, we should certainly fall into the greatest confusion of our ideas, if in this ebb and flow of external as well as internal existences which appear to us, we had not the greatest facility in referring them to fixed measures, which are the thread that guides us in this labyrinth of continual variations.
114. Two things are required for this measure: first, a suitable phenomenon, and secondly, the idea of number. The common idea of time which serves for the ordinary purposes of life of these three elements: the pure idea of time, or the relation of being and not-being; secondly, a suitable phenomenon to which we apply this pure idea; and thirdly, the numeration of the changes of this phenomenon. Apply this observation to all the measures of time, and you will find these three elements always sufficient, but always indispensable also.
115. From this we deduce the necessity of time, even considered empirically; for it involves two ideas, the one metaphysical, and the other mathematical, applied to a fact. The metaphysical idea is the relation of being and not-being; the mathematical idea is number; and the fact is the sensible phenomenon, as, for example, the solar, or human motion. Metaphysics and arithmetic take charge of the absolute certainty; the fact observed answers for the experimental certainty; and as, on the other hand, this phenomenon is supposed to be certain, because, in case it were necessary we could abstract it from the reality, and attend only to the possibility; it follows that time, even considered empirically, may become the object of the exact sciences.
116. This theory does not make time a purely subjectivecondition, nor grant it a nature independent of things; it reconciles the pure intellectual order with the order of experience; and places man in communication with the real world, without creating a contradiction in his ideas.