The directions and distances are vague,
confused and mixed. Cosmic space and cosmic time, so far from being
the intuitions that Kant said they were, are constructions as
patently artificial as any that science can show. The great majority
of the human race never use these notions, but live in plural times
and spaces, interpenetrant and DURCHEINANDER.
Permanent 'things' again; the 'same' thing and its various
'appearances' and 'alterations'; the different 'kinds' of thing;
with the 'kind' used finally as a 'predicate,' of which the thing
remains the 'subject'--what a straightening of the tangle of our
experience's immediate flux and sensible variety does this list of
terms suggest! And it is only the smallest part of his experience's
flux that anyone actually does straighten out by applying to it
these conceptual instruments. Out of them all our lowest ancestors
probably used only, and then most vaguely and inaccurately, the
notion of 'the same again.' But even then if you had asked them
whether the same were a 'thing' that had endured throughout the
unseen interval, they would probably have been at a loss, and would
have said that they had never asked that question, or considered
matters in that light.
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