in the Hesiodic cosmogony, there is no more notion of time than of space.
The conception of being is more general than either, and might therefore
with greater plausibility be affirmed to be a condition or quality of the
mind. The a priori intuitions of Kant would have been as unintelligible to
Plato as his a priori synthetical propositions to Aristotle. The
philosopher of Konigsberg supposed himself to be analyzing a necessary mode
of thought: he was not aware that he was dealing with a mere abstraction.
But now that we are able to trace the gradual developement of ideas through
religion, through language, through abstractions, why should we interpose
the fiction of time between ourselves and realities? Why should we single
out one of these abstractions to be the a priori condition of all the
others? It comes last and not first in the order of our thoughts, and is
not the condition precedent of them, but the last generalization of them.
Nor can any principle be imagined more suicidal to philosophy than to
assume that all the truth which we are capable of attaining is seen only
through an unreal medium. If all that exists in time is illusion, we may
well ask with Plato, 'What becomes of the mind?'

Leaving the a priori conditions of sensation we may proceed to consider
acts of sense. These admit of various degrees of duration or intensity;
they admit also of a greater or less extension from one object, which is
perceived directly, to many which are perceived indirectly or in a less
degree, and to the various associations of the object which are latent in
the mind. In general the greater the intension the less the extension of
them. The simplest sensation implies some relation of objects to one
another, some position in space, some relation to a previous or subsequent
sensation. The acts of seeing and hearing may be almost unconscious and
may pass away unnoted; they may also leave an impression behind them or
power of recalling them. If, after seeing an object we shut our eyes, the
object remains dimly seen in the same or about the same place, but with