CHAPTER XXIII
Fallacies of reflection are fallacies of time and cause, and they may be classed as misreflections and myths. The misreflections are a fourth group of illusions and the myths a fourth group of delusions.
Fallacies concerning time are analogous to those concerning space. Time is persistence and change. It is not blank time, it is a time of something that exists, not the time of something that does not exist. It is the time in which all existence persists and in which it changes. The seed is developed on the apple-tree. Its time is the period of its existence as a germ, but the germ itself was developed by the incorporation of molecules. The molecules existing as particles in the air were transformed into the seed, but the molecules persisted before the seed was formed. The persistence is eternal in the atom so far as we know, but it is changeable from its state in the air or the water into its state in the seed, so its persistence is partly taken up while in the seed state. The seed is planted and becomes a tree by addition of other particles from the air and the water, and the eternal persistence of all the particles is occupied for a period in the state of the tree. Now, the existence of the molecules in the air and the water, and their existence in the seed, and their existence in the tree, and finally their existence as water and air, when the tree is reduced to another state by decay, is a permanent existence, while the temporary existence is in the seed and the tree.
Before man knew that the seed was a continued existence of particles, and that the tree was a continued existence of particles, it was supposed that the time of these existences was limited, and that there was a blank time. Out of this nothing, something was created, and these creations were in continual change, which were called fluxes or becomings. The real nature of persistence not being understood there was assumed to be a persistence which was blank, and the blank was called time. But persistence, not being known, though called time, was held to be the thing-in-itself, which indeed it was in part, and it was called noumenon. When the noumenon was discovered, the idea of blank time was still retained and it was still noumenon, while the real persistence was called a phenomenon. Now it is apparent that this blank time is a fallacy. It was thus, as in this case, that all unknown things, when they came to be known, were transferred to the things which were called phenomena; and the blank things were still called noumena. Thus noumenon was a word originally valid, an x in logical computation, whose value was to be determined; but ultimately it came to mean a something which could not be determined—not only an unknown but an unknowable thing, and a knowable thing was held to be only appearance and was called phenomenon.
My horse is stolen, by whom I know not, and I say there is a thief, but as I do not know this thief I call him a noumenon. But the detectives capture him and he is sent to prison; now the thief becomes a phenomenon, for he is apparent—he may be seen in the jail. Now, suppose that I had talked about this noumenon, when he was unknown, in a conglomeration of attributes—as an uncanny man, as a vicious man seeking- another that he may devour him, as a man of seven heads and ten horns; but now I find him only a poor misguided man with the vice of cleptomania or the greed for possession which made him a criminal, but without multiple heads or multiple horns. Having discovered my fallacy in this case I still retain the notion of existence of such a thing as I had imagined, and I continue to believe in it and still call it a noumenon. In the same manner every noumenon of metaphysics can be traced back to the original fallacy- entertained by mankind and still supposed to exist as a reality in the universe. When all of these illusions are considered we have the world of occult noumena—the theater of idealism.
Kant explained his occult space, not as a property of physical nature, but as a form of the mind, whatever that may be. In the same manner his occult time was not an existence in physical nature, but also was a form of the mind. He had not the insight to discover that such forms are fallacies, like the dome of the sky in the mind of an ignorant man; still, he had the logical integrity to see that such space and time are incongruous with a space of extension and position and a time of persistence and change, and he boldly followed his logic in formulating a set of antinomies, or contradictions, both of which he seems to have believed as valid.