Now, every relation is precisely the inconstant, the unstable, in itself. The heat that springs up with the friction of two objects may--nay, _must_ be looked upon as a relation-value springing up anew with each new moment. Every moment may be represented as consisting of an infinite number of fractions of a moment; in short, it is the unstable in itself. If now one apprehends the whole play of world-events as relation-values, thereby not only do the phenomena resulting from the play of things upon one another, but also the things themselves, become simple relation-values, and so also examples of the unstable in itself. Into anything by nature an unstable, connection can only enter through me, the beholder, introducing it in my comprehension of the same. Here the binding thread is lacking in things themselves; with the idea “pure relation-values” one has pulled it out oneself, as is proven by modern positivism itself, even if unwittingly, when it seeks to replace the old succession of cause and effect by the timeless function-concept of mathematics--a thing possible only where the actual cohesion is absent.[35] With this, however, one stands in a position of contradiction to oneself, _i.e._ to actuality. For if the whole play of world-events, without any exception, is only a relation-value, then I myself am a relation-value also. But if that were so, “memory” would be impossible. In “memory” I _experience_ the cohesion of myself, and through myself prove to myself that I am not a mere relation-value. As such--as Hering rightly remarks in his lecture _Das Gedächtnis_--our consciousness would consist of just as many splinters as one could count moments; which is simply an analytical mode of expression for the fact that there would be no consciousness at all. This in turn would mean that there could be no world _as such_, as our mental representation. And this in its turn would mean that there could be no world at all. For it is absurd to speak of a world where there is no consciousness in which it is represented as such. Without consciousness, however it might run its course, experience would know nothing of itself. The conception of a world-theory devoid of _substans_ thus also terminates in a contradiction in itself, even as those world-theories which operate with the conception of a _substans_. As a matter of fact, every scientific view of the world demonstrates its inadequacy in respect of this first question in that it answers it in a manner against all common-sense without itself observing that this is so.