Chapter IV (part 6)

It is necessary to admit that by one term, time , we designate really two ideas—"a certain space" and "motion upon that space." This motion does not exist in reality, and it seems to us as existing only because we do not see the spatiality of time. That is, the sensation of motion in time (and motion out of time does not exist) arises in us because we are looking at the world as if through a narrow slit, and are seeing the lines of intersection of the time-plane with our three-dimensional space only. Therefore it is necessary to declare how profoundly incorrect is our usual theory that the idea of time is deduced by us from the observation of motion, and is really nothing more than the idea of that succession which is observed by us in motion. It is necessary to recognize quite the reverse: that the idea of motion is deduced by us out of an incomplete sensation of time, or of the time-sense, i.e., out of a sense or sensation of the fourth dimension, but out of an incomplete sensation. This incomplete sensation of time (of the fourth dimension)—the sensation through the slit—gives us the sensation of motion, that is, creates an illusion of motion which does not exist in reality, but instead of which there exists in reality only the extension upon a direction inconceivable to us. ______ One other aspect of the question has very great significance. The fourth dimension is bound up with the ideas of "time" and "motion." But up to this point we shall not be able to understand the fourth dimension unless we shall understand the fifth dimension. Attempting to look at time as at an object, Kant says that it has one dimension: i.e., he imagines time as a line extending from the infinite future into the infinite past. Of one point of this line we are conscious—always only one point. And this point has no dimension because that which in the usual sense we call the present, is the recent past, and sometimes also the near future. p. 47 This would be true in relation to our illusory perception of time. But in reality eternity is not the infinite dimension of time, but the one perpendicular to time ; because, if eternity exists, then every moment is eternal. The line of time extends in that order of succession of phenomena which are in causal interdependence—first the cause, then the effect: before, now, after. The line of eternity extends perpendicularly to that line. It is impossible to understand the idea of time without conceiving in imagination the idea of eternity; it is likewise impossible to understand space if we have no idea of time. From the standpoint of eternity, time does not differ in anything from the other lines and dimensions of space—length, breadth, and height. This means that just as in space exist the things that we do not see, or speaking differently, not alone that which we see, so in time "events" exist before our consciousness has touched them, and they still exist after our consciousness has left them behind. Consequently, extension in time is extension into unknown space, and therefore time is the fourth dimension of space . ______ It is necessary that we should regard time as a spatial conception considered with relation to our two data—the world and consciousness (psychic life). The idea of time arises through the knowledge of the world by means of sensuous receptivity. It has been previously explained that because of the properties of our sensuous receptivity we see the world as through a narrow slit. Out of this the following questions arise: 1. What accounts for the existence in the world of illusionary motion? That is, why do we not see, through this slit, the same thing ? Why, behind the slit, do changes proceed creating the illusion of motion: that is, how and in what manner does the focus of our receptivity run over the world of phenomena?