it is not owned and appropriated. It lingers, we may say, precariously and provisionally.
But at this point we may seem to have encountered an obstacle. For in the given fact there is always a co-existence of elements; and with this co-existence we may seem to ascribe positive content to the “this.” Property, we asserted, was lacking to it, and that assertion now seems questionable. For co-existence supplies us with actual knowledge, and none the less it seems given in the content of the “this.” The objection, however, would rest on misunderstanding. It is positive knowledge when I judge that in a certain space or time certain features co-exist. But such knowledge, on the other hand, is never the content of the mere “this.” It is already a synthesis, imperfect no doubt, but still plainly ideal. And, at the cost of repetition, I will point this out briefly.
(a) The place or time, first, may be characterised by inclusion within a series. We may mean that, in some sense, the place or time is “this one,” and not another. But, if so, we have forthwith transcended the given. We are using a character which implies inclusion of an element within a whole, with a reference beyond itself to other like elements. And this of course goes far beyond immediate experience. To suppose that position in a series can belong to the mere “this,” is a misunderstanding.[1]
(b) And more probably the objection had something else in view. It was not conjunction in one moment, as distinct from another moment, which it urged was positive and yet belonged to the “this.” It meant mere coincidence within some “here” or some “now,” a co-presentation immediately given without regard to any “there” or “then.” Such a bare conjunction seems to be something possessed by the “this,” and yet offering on the other side a
- ↑ See above, and compare also Chapter xxi.
