Yet ' unites' and 'number' are correlative; and the sup tion unac 1 objects it collects together; nor can such an unity any more exist alone than number can, as being in reality a true number. But the unity which can exist alone, and whose existence is necessary to that of all number, is of another kind and must be perfectly indivisible and incapable of being resolved into any lesser unity.' What then is the 'unity which can exist alone'? The answer, according to Hume, must be that it is an impression separately felt and not resoluble into any other impressions. But then the question arises, how a succession of such impressions can form a number or sum; and if they cannot, how the socalled real unity or separate impression can in any sense be a unite, since a unite is only so as one of a sum. To put the posed fic- question otherwise, Is it not the case that a unite has no more countable. meaning without number than number without unites, and that every number is not only just such a 'fictitious denomination,' as Hume pronounces a 'unite consisting of a number of fractions' to be, but a fiction impossible for our consciousness according to Hume's account of it? It will not do to say that such a question touches only the fiction of 'abstract number,' but not the existence of numbered objects; that (to take Hume's instance) twenty men exist with the existence of each individual man, each real unit, of the lot. It is precisely the numerability of objects-not indeed their existence, if that only means their successive appearance, but their existence as a sum—that is in question. If such numerability is possible for such a consciousness as Hume makes ours to be; in other words, if he can explain the fact that we count; abstract number' may no doubt be left to take care of itself. Is it then possible? Separate impressions mean impressions felt at different times, which accordingly can no more co-exist than, to use Hume's expression," the year 1737 can concur with the year 1738;' whereas the constituents of a sum must, as such, co-exist. Thus when we are told that twenty may be said to exist because one, two, three, &c., are existent,' the alleged reason, understood as Hume was bound to understand it, is incompatible with the supposed consequence. The existence of an object would, to him, mean no more than the occurrence of an impression; but that one impression should occur, and theu 1 P. 338. , another and then another, is the exact opposite of their coexistence as a sum of impressions, and it is such co-existence that is implied when the impressions are counted and pronounced so many. Thus when Hume tells us that a single object, by being multiplied in order to be conceived at once s existent in different points of time,' gives us the idea of number, we are forced to ask him what precisely it is which thus, being one, can become manifold. Is it a unite that can exist alone'? That, having no parts, cannot become manifold by resolution. But it may by repetition?' No, for it is a separate impression, and the repetition of an impression cannot co-exist, so as to form one sum, with its former occurrence. 'But it may be thought of as doing so?' No, for that, according to Hume, could only mean that feelings might concur in a fainter stage though they could not in a livelier. Is the single object then a unite which already consists of parts? But that is a fictitious denomination,' and presupposes the very idea of number that has to be ac counted for. more un Hume's 259. The impossibility of getting number, as a many-in- Idea of one, out of the succession of feelings, so long as the self is time even treated as only another name for that succession, is less easy accountto disguise when the supposed units are not merely given in able on succession, but are actually the moments of the succession; principles in other words, when time is the many-in-one to be accounted for. How can a multitude of feelings of which no two are present together, undetermined by relation to anything other than the feelings, be at the same time a consciousness of the relation between the moments in which the feelings are given, or of a sum which these moments form? How can there be a relation between objects' of which one has ceased before the other has begun to exist? For the same reason,' says Hume, that the year 1737 cannot concur with the present year 1738, every moment must be distinct from, and posterior or antecedent to, another.' How then can the present moment form one sum with all past moments, the present year with all past years; the sum which we indicate by the number 1738? The answer of common sense of course will be that, though the feeling of one moment is really past before that of another begins, yet thought retains the former, and combining it with the latter, gets the idea of time both 1 P. 338. His osten sible explanation of it. as a relation and as a sum. Such an answer, however, inplies that the retaining and combining thought is other than the succession of the feelings, and while it takes this succession to be the reality, imports into it that determination by the relations of past and present which it can only derive from the retaining and combining thought opposed to it. It is thus both inconsistent with Hume's doctrine, which allows no such distinction between thought, i.e. the succession of ideas, and the succession of impressions, and inconsistent with itself. Yet Hume by disguising both inconsistencies contrives to avail himself of it. By tacitly assuming that a conception of the manner in which impressions appear to the mind' is given in and with the occurrence of the impressions, he imports the consciousness of time, both as relation and as numerable quantity, into the sequence of impressions. He thus gains the advantage of being able to speak of this sequence indifferently under predicates which properly exclude each other. He can make it now a consciousness in time, now a consciousness of itself as in time; now a series that cannot be summed, now a conception of the sum of the series. The sequence of feelings, then, having been so dealt with as to make it appear in effect that time can be felt, that it should be thought of can involve no further difficulty. The conception, smuggled into sensitive experience as an 'impression,' can be extracted from it again as 'idea,' without ostensible departure from the principle that the idea is only the weaker impression. 260. The idea of time is not derived from a particular impression mixed up with others and plainly distinguishable from them, but arises altogether from the manner in which impressions appear to the mind, without making one of the number. Five notes played on the flute give us the impression and idea of time, though time be not a sixth impression which presents itself to the hearing or any other of the senses. Nor is it a sixth impression which the mind by reflection finds in itself. These five sounds, making their appearance in this particular manner, excite no emotion or affection in the mind, which being observed by it can give rise to a new idea. For that is necessary to produce a new idea of reflection; nor can the mind, by revolving over a thousand times all its ideas of sensation, ever extract from them any new original idea, unless nature has so framed its faculties that it feels some new original impression arise from such a contemplation. But here it only takes notice of the manner in which the different sounds make their appearance, and that it may afterwards consider without considering these particular sounds, but may conjoin it with any other objects. The ideas of some objects it certainly must have, nor is it possible for it without these ever to arrive at any conception of time; which, since it appears not as any primary distinct impression, can plainly be nothing but dif ferent ideas or impressions or objects disposed in a certain manner, i.e. succeeding each other.' 1 Vocation tions be tween felt things. 261. In this passage the equivocation between 'impression' It turns as feeling, and 'impression' as conception of the manner in upon equiwhich feelings occur, is less successfully disguised than is the between like equivocation in the account of extension-not indeed from feeling and conception any failure in Hume's power of statement, but from the of relanature of the case. In truth the mere reproduction of impressions can as little account for the one conception as for the other. Just as, in order to account for the 'impression' from which the abstract idea of space may be derived, we have to suppose first that the feeling of colour, through being presented by the self-conscious subject to itself, becomes a coloured thing, and next, that this thing is viewed as a whole of parts limiting each other; so, in order to account for the impression' from which the idea of time may be abstracted, we have to suppose the presentation of the succession of feelings to a consciousness not in succession, and the consequent view of such presented succession as a sum of numerable parts. It is a relation only possible for a thinking consciousness-a relation, in Hume's language, not depending on the nature of the impressions related that has in each case to be introduced into experience in order to be extracted from it again by consideration:' but there is this difference, that in one case the relation is not really between feelings at all, but between things or parts of a thing; while in the other it is just that relation between feelings, the introduction of which excludes the possibility that any feeling should be the consciousness of the relation. Thus to speak of a feeling of extension does not involve so direct a contradiction as to speak in the same way of time. The reader gives Hume the benefit of a way of thinking which Hume's 1 P. 343. He fails to assign any impression or com pound of impres of time is copied. own theory excludes. Himself distinguishing between feeling and felt thing, and regarding extension as a relation between parts of a thing, he does not reflect that for Hume there is no such distinction; that a feeling of extension' means that feeling is extended, which again means that it has co-existent parts; and that what is thus said of feeling as extended is incompatible with what is said of it as feeling. But when it comes to a feeling of time—a feeling of the successiveness of all feelings-the incompatibility between what is said of feeling as the object and what is implied of it as the subject is less easy to disguise. In like manner because we cannot really think of extension as being that which yet according to Hume it is, it does not strike us, when he speaks of it as coloured or of colour as extended, that he is making one feeling a quality of another. But it would be otherwise if any specific feeling were taken as a quality of what is ostensibly a relation between all feelings. There is thus no sensible quality' with which time can be said to be endowed,' as extension with 'colour and solidity;' none that can be made to do the same duty in regard to it as these do in regard to extension, giving the idea' of it without actually being it. 262. Hence, as the passage last quoted shows, in the case of time the alternative between ascribing it to a sixth sense, and confessing that it is not an impression at all, is very hard to avoid. It would seem that there is an impression of the sions from manner in which impressions appear to the mind,' which yet which idea is no distinct impression.' What, then, is it? It cannot be any one of the impressions of sense, for then it would be a distinct impression. It cannot be a compound impression,' for such composition is incompatible with that successiveness of all feelings to each other which is the object of the supposed impression. It cannot be any 'new original impression' arising from the contemplation of other impressions, for then, according to Hume, it would be an affection or emotion.' But after the exclusion of impressions of sense, compound impressions, and impressions of reflection, Hume's inventory of the possible sources of ideas is exhausted. To have been consistent, he ought to have dealt with the relation of time as he afterwards does with that of cause and effect, and, in default of an impression from which it could be derived, have reduced it to a figure of speech. But since the possibility |