The fourth dimension

110 THE FOURTH DIMENSION

personal identity, no memory. It is out of a general experience such as this, which, in respect to anything we call real, is less than a dream, that Kant shows the genesis of an experience such as ours.

Kant takes up the problem of the explanation of space, time, order, and so quite logically does not presuppose them.

But how, when every act of thought is of things in space, and time, and ordered, shall we represent to ourselves that perfectly indefinite somewhat which is Kant’s necessary hypothesis—that which is not in space or time and is not ordered. That is our problem, to represent that which Kant assumes not subject to any of our forms of thought, and then show some function which working on that makes it into a “nature” subject to law and order, in space and time. Such a function Kant calls the “Unity of Apperception” ; 7.e., that which makes our state of consciousness capable of being woven into a system with a self, an outer world, memory, law, cause, and order.

The difficulty that meets us in discussing Kant’s hypothesis is that everything we think of is in space and time—how then shall we represent in space an existence not in space, and in time an existence not in time ? This difficulty is still more evident when we come to construct a poiograph, for a poiograph is essentially a space structure. But because more evident the difficulty is nearer a solution. If we always think in space, 7. using space concepts, the first condition requisite for adapting them to the representation of non-spatial existence, is to be aware of the limitation of our thought, and so be able to take the proper steps to overcome it. The problem before us, then, is to represent in space an existence not in space.

The solution is an easy one. It is provided by the conception of alternativity.