ORDINARY MEETING, MAY 16, 1887.

D. HOWARD, ESQ., VICE-PRES., CHEM. SOC., IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the ollowing Elections were announced :—

ASSOCIATE :-Mrs. Woodrow, Middlesex.

HON. CORRESPONDING MEMBER :- Professor E. Hull, M.A., LL.D F.R.S., Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland.

Also the presentation of the following works for the Library:

"Abraham, Joseph, Moses." By Professor A. H. Kellogg, D.D. "Witnesses from the Drift." By D. C. Fradenburg.

The following Paper was then read :

ON TIME AND SPACE: TWO WITNESSES FOR A CREATOR. By the Rev. WILLIAM ARTHUR.

WE

E speak of both Time and Space now in a narrower, now in a broader sense. When contrasting Time with eternity as we habitually do, we plainly mean by the former a terminable duration contained within an interminable one. But when contrasting Time with Space, we as plainly mean all duration whatsoever, irrespective of any limits. Again, when we contrast Space with Infinity, we clearly mean by the former a measurable extension contained within one which is immeasurable in length, breadth, or height; but when we contrast Space with Time, we mean by Space, all extension whatsoever, without any respect to bounds.

So

When it is in the narrower sense that we speak of Space, we may have in mind either the whole extension of our planet, or that of the solar system, or even that of all the worlds hitherto brought to view by the telescope. In any of these cases our conception of Space is that of a measurable extension, surrounded on all sides by an absolutely immeasurable one. also when it is in the narrower sense that we speak of Time, we may have in mind either the duration of an individual life, or that of the human race; but in either case the conception of Time is that of a limited duration, included within an unlimited one which went before it and will run on after its termination.

It must not be supposed that I use the term duration as a definition of Time or the term Extension as a definition of Space. In such matters I am wary of the definitions even of the masters, and should be timorous of any of my own. The

term Extension is a wider one than Space, and so is Duration a wider than Time, as I apprehend the terms. Now the process of defining a term by a wider one is one which it would be easy to cover by the most distinguished patronage, but, in spite of that fact, to me defining by generalising is in philosophy like what condensing by vaporising would be in physics.

I shall not refer to writers whom I have had occasion to combat, and with whom defining by generalising is exalted into an art. But to take one for whom my intellectual respect is profound, Sir William Hamilton defines Time as "the image or the concept of a certain correlation of existences"; a formula to which also his definition of Space is conformed. Now this has not even the merit of being a mere generalisation. It begins to define an object by setting it under a class to which it does not belong, which class is that of mental images to which indeed does belong our idea of Time, but not Time itself. The human idea of Time never arose in the whole course of Time, until after countless worlds had for uncounted ages run through days and nights, through summers and winters, of different lengths. Now it is not of man and his thoughts that Sir William speaks, but of that Time itself, which long pre-existed man and all his ideas. Time an image! a concept! Time a child of Adam's brain, and not Adam a birth of Time!

Professor Calderwood so far improved upon this definition as to say that Time is "not an image or a concept " of a correlation, but is а "correlation of existences. This makes the immense difference of taking a thing out of a class to which it does not belong and setting it in one to which it does belong. If we accept the abstract term correlation as the name of the concrete thing which relates other things to one another, then Time is a correlation, i.e., a correlator of existences. But correlators of existences are a large class. A chessboard correlates the existences of the chessmen, the House of Commons correlates the existences of the members; the sea correlates the existences of the fishes, the air those of the birds, and so on. Defining an object like Time, which under its own name is something perfectly distinctive, by referring it to so wide a class as that of correlations is defining by blotting out the boundaries.

I have assumed that Duration is a wider term than Time, and Extension a wider one than Space. The ground on

1

which I do so is this, that "Time" never expresses the mere idea of unregulated and unmarked duration, without order of succession or note of periodicity. On the contrary, as Locke says; "Duration as set out by certain periods, and marked by certain measures or epochs, is that, I think, which we most properly call Time.” *

We do not think of the regular succession in Time of the swings of a pendulum as a mere matter of unregulated duration. No more do we think of the conformity of the arc described by each beat to that described by the foregoing and following ones as a mere matter of unregulated extension. We look upon both as proceeding by rule, which rule is set by a centre of action above the metals of the instrument.

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Some would have us make believe that we do regard it only as a mere series" of beats; but we cannot make believe anything so puerile. It is a series of beats with an overruling cause and fixed order. We do not think of the rise of day and the fall of night, of the regular coming and passing away of summer and winter as "a mere series," without prescribed order and sufficing cause. When men have to fit the facts of nature to a doctrine, they may get so far towards presenting processes like these as mere series," that their fancy takes form in type, but a footing they cannot gain for it on the firm ground of enduring thought. Regulated or, as we say, "timed" succession, that is periodicity, is a structural fact in creation, and as such self-evident, and borne in upon the perceptions both. in external and internal observation, so that our idea of Time, whether it is or is not pervaded à priori by a conception of rule, is so as matured, and that inevitably, by force of what James and John Mill would call inseparable association.

In itself, the term Time does not imply either the existence of limits to duration or their absence. But it does imply order in successions, and notes of periodicity, such notes as afford data for the measurement of duration. Wherefore, whatever else Time may mean, it does at least mean DURATION

UNDER RULE.

In a manner analogous to what we have seen in the case of Time, the term Space does not express the idea of mere extension unreclaimed, neither traversed nor surveyed,—of blank continuity without correlated areas, notes of distance, or graduated scales, whereby to take dimensions. This would be, in the words of Locke, "the undistinguishable inane of infinite Space." We do not think of the successive orbits of the

* Book įi,, c. xiv. § 17.

planets, or of the alternations of body and interspace in the sky, or of such alternation in a quill, or a shell, or in the animal frame, as a 66 mere series.” Not any more than we so loosely think of the succession of cog and notch in a revolving wheel, or of the fitting of the cog of one wheel into the notch of another. In each of these cases the successive dispositions in Space are not "a mere series," they are a series embodying a pre-arranged order, and therefore answering to a preconception.

Like the term Time, in itself the term Space does not imply either the presence of limits or their absence. But it does imply the idea of measure in extension, of related distances, and of marks whereby distances may be noted. That is, whatever else Space may mean, it does at least mean

EXTENSION WITH ORDER.

The question as to whether our conception, of duration under rule, and of extension with order, was born with us, or is the fruit of our experience, is one which has intensely interested thinkers. Many of them, however, have seemed to take pleasure in confusing this question with a very different one, namely, whether our minds did or did not give origin to Time and Space themselves. Born with us or not, none of us can remember the first time when we acted upon the assumption that if we wanted to lift our hand we could move it out of the spot wherein it was at that moment, and move it into another spot the next moment. In saying this, we say that earlier than the first record of memory, every one of us has acted in Time as well knowing that it was duration under rule, and acted in Space as well knowing that it was extension with order. We acted as knowing this, not in the sense of being able to put it into words, but long before we could put anything into words, as knowing it with that unquestioning knowledge which anticipates action and shapes it.

Let our conceptions of Time and Space originate how they may, the truth remains the same, that these two factors in the Cosmos mingle with all our movements of thought, and give colour to our conceptions both of ourselves and of nature generally. As Locke says, there are few things "Whose modes give more exercise to the minds of men than these do.” From its first anticipation, by a desire, the mind finds itself counting upon a Time not yet come. From its first act of

memory, by a recollection, it finds itself recalling a time already past away. The two blend into one on the shifting ground of the Time actually passing. Time is thus at first declared to be, and ever after is shown to be, the arena of all events, of all antecedents and consequences, of all causes and effects,

of all change of states, of all mental action, of all growth, of all, to use a wide word, becoming; that is, of all progress from what has been to what hitherto has not been.

So also from its first sensation of touch the mind finds itself thinking of a place where a thing is, and a place from which a feeling comes. From its first sensation of sight it finds itself looking at a place where a thing is, surrounded by places where it is not. Then it sees a place where some other thing is, and this surrounded once more by places where it is not. Every touch upon the frame from without, every movement of a limb from within, as well as every sight, confirms and enlarges this experience of different places, some filled up by objects, some void of them. Thus from our earliest hours Space is encountered as the arena of all objects which can affect the senses; which means of all bodies, and of all physical movement. Hearing, taste, and smell still further extend this experience.

Every motion, whether seen, felt, or made, gives an experience of both Time and Space. The fly cannot pass over the cradle without consuming Time and traversing Space. It was yonder, and is not; it was not here, and is. So the nurse cannot grasp the arm without causing us to feel that something which was not at that spot a moment ago is there now. No more can we lift our hand to our head without being taught that where it lately was it has ceased to be, and where lately it was not it has come to be. It is a one-sided view to speak of Space as offering to us co-existences and Time successions. Things co-exist in Time as in Space, and things endure, succeed, and change in Space as in Time. Time is the essential condition of all action, and Space is the essential condition of bodily existence; it implies and presupposes Time in the origin, continuance, and changes of bodies. There are questions of Time, as changes of thought, which are not questions of Space; but there is no question of Space which is not also a question of Time. Mr. Herbert Spencer's mode of contrasting the two as the forms or abstracts respectively of successions and co-existences is more than an exaggeration of Kant's position; for the latter is perfectly clear as marking succession in Time, and in not excluding it from Space, and as saying that nothing can be in two contradictory states, except at two different times. Kant's dictum that Time has only one dimension, length, is a mere metaphor. Time has three tenses, past, present, and future, but no dimension; and Space has three dimensions, but no tense.

Neither of these two great elements in the system of