And then yes evidently that is possible; from the moment one imagines an
experience, one imagines just thereby the two contrary results it may
give. That is possible, but that is difficult, because we have to
overcome a multitude of associations of ideas, which are the fruit of a
long personal experience and of the still longer experience of the race.
Is it these associations (or at least those of them that we have
inherited from our ancestors), which constitute this _a priori_ form of
which it is said that we have pure intuition? Then I do not see why one
should declare it refractory to analysis and should deny me the right of
investigating its origin.
When it is said that our sensations are 'extended' only one thing can be
meant, that is that they are always associated with the idea of certain
muscular sensations, corresponding to the movements which enable us to
reach the object which causes them, which enable us, in other words, to
defend ourselves against it. And it is just because this association is
useful for the defense of the organism, that it is so old in the history
of the species and that it seems to us indestructible. Nevertheless, it
is only an association and we can conceive that it may be broken; so
that we may not say that sensation can not enter consciousness without
entering in space, but that in fact it does not enter consciousness
without entering in space, which means, without being entangled in this
association.
No more can I understand one's saying that the idea of time is logically
subsequent to space, since we can represent it to ourselves only under
the form of a straight line; as well say that time is logically
subsequent to the cultivation of the prairies, since it is usually
represented armed with a scythe. That one can not represent to himself
simultaneously the different parts of time, goes without saying, since
the essential character of these parts is precisely not to be
simultaneous. That does not mean that we have not the intuition of time.
So far as that goes, no more should we have that of space, because
neither can we represent it, in the proper sense of the word, for the
reasons I have mentioned. What we represent to ourselves under the name
of straight is a crude image which as ill resembles the geometric
straight as it does time itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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