We put the question thus: is consciousness really compelled—of course, through some sort of a connection, since it can never be absolutely compelled—to place any of its results within time, as it certainly was compelled to place the objects of its external perception in space; or, is it indeed compelled by a peculiar synthesis to think any of its results as inseparable of a determined part of universal time and as tilling up this determined part?
To explain: it might very well be possible to say, that consciousness develops itself in time, and cannot develop itself otherwise; i.e. for a supposed observer outside of consciousness, who thinks its unity and watches the changes of its conditions, and yet be also possible that the thus observed consciousness for itself were altogether merged with its whole essence into every point of its condition—which condition would appear to the observer as a time moment. In which case the then observed consciousness would for itself be altogether disjointed and new in every moment of its existence; and each of these its moments would appear to it as a peculiar, in-itself-complete world, utterly unconnected with any other moment. Such a consciousness would have neither time nor time-moments. Now if this is not to be thus, consciousness or the Ego must immediately in every such condition grasp it as the necessary part of a whole; must be compelled to connect immediately with the consciousness of the part the consciousness of the whole; must find it impossible to remain in the part, and impelled to proceed from it to the whole. But this whole, which embraces everything, is knowledge. Hence the Ego must be compelled to grasp or comprehend those other parts of the whole as also knowledge, though a different knowledge; that is, as the different knowledges of the one knowledge, which always remains the same; whereby, indeed, the Ego lapses into the contemplation of time, which we have described above.
But how is the Ego to arrive at such a necessity to proceed beyond the part? Evidently thus: it must be impossible for the Ego to comprehend the part as existing—the thinking of the part as existing must be impossible and involve a contradiction—unless it connects this existence of the part to that of another part, which, however, cannot coexist with the first part at the same time; in short, unless the given- part is necessarily conditioned through another part. The conception of conditionedness has already been explained, and will be explained with still greater precision as we advance.
Remark, now, that this conception of conditionedness, which is here added, gives a new and more determined character to the whole previously described series of time-moments. For, whereas at first the different results of the principle merely excluded each other, so that if the one was to enter, the other one had to be annihilated—their place in the series being, however, utterly indifferent, and it being quite as well possible that bshould precede aas that ashould precede b—they now not merely exclude, but moreover conditioneach other; thus assigning to each moment its separate place or position in the series. It is no longer, as at first, a general before and after, but a determined before and after. The conditioning must precede the conditioned. Hence if the mind dwells upon this conditionedness of the parts of the time, it is driven to think the condition as the necessarily preceding, and from the thinking of this condition perhaps again to the thinking of its condition as the necessarily preceding, &c. &c.; that is, it may rise from a given cto a preceding b, and from that to a preceding a. Thus there arises the consciousness of an Ego, as that which remains one and the self-same in all the changes of its conditions, and with it the necessary requirement of an actual time in order to unite the contradiction in actuality.
Now, if these changing conditions were merely external perceptions for the individual who experiences them, then that consciousness of an Ego would be simply the consciousness of an Ego as an intelligence, or as a knowingEgo, but not of an Ego as a principle; and in this intelligence, or knowing Ego—since in its existence it is dependent upon the givenness of outer objects—having no guarantees of infinity and self-sufficiency, the time arising for it would not be infinite, but simply indefinite. But if these observed changes of conditions consist of free imagining and thinking, then that one Ego which arises in consciousness is expressly considered as a principle, and its time is an actual, and in truth infinite time.