We can imagine a paradise or a pandemonium; but only
as made up of our own knowledge of things good and evil. The limits of
this constructive power are soon reached. We are baffled to enter into
the feelings of our own kindred, when they are far removed in character
and circumstances from ourselves. The youth at twenty cannot approximate
to the feelings of men of middle age. The healthy are unable to
comprehend the life of the invalid.
[TIME AND SPACE RELATIVE TO OUR FACULTIES.]
To come to the practical applications. The great leading notions called
Time and Space are known to us only under the conditions of our own
sensibility. Time is made known by all our actions, all our senses, all
our feelings, and by the succession of our thoughts; it is experienced
as a continuance and a repetition of movement, sight, sound, fear, or
any other state of feeling, or of thinking. One motion or sensation is
continued longer than another; or it is more frequently repeated after
intermission, giving the _numerical_ estimate of time, as in the beats
of the pendulum. In these ways we form estimates of seconds, minutes,
hours, days. And our constructive faculty can be brought into play to
conceive the larger tracts of duration--a century, or a hundred
centuries.
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