# Mind (journal)/Volume 4 (New Series)/Time and the Succession of Events

IV. — TIME AND THE SUCCESSION OF EVENTS. By J. L. McIntyre.
Time, it may be taken for granted, is no longer regarded by any school of philosophy as an ultimate reality subsisting for itself, but is looked upon as a relation, or series of relations, holding between events. As far as modern problems are concerned, the question is rather as to the validity of the time-relations in their application to the ultimately real, — whether, that is, the relations, and with them the events between which they hold, are merely appearances to human sense and thought of that which is in itself timeless and changeless, or whether, on the contrary, relations and events alike are in any sense predicable of the real. The former view is that of very ditferent schools. Mystics of every type and empirical believers in an Unknowable or Transcendent Reality of which we may predicate nothing that we find in the actual universe of experience; while the latter view also finds defenders in otherwise opposite camps. The meaning of the problem will be clear if we lay before ourselves the results which logically follow from acceptance of one or other of the two views. If the time-succession is unreal, or only a form of appearance of the ultimately real, — from the knowledge of which we are in either case excluded, — then change is equally so, activity also, final causes or ends, development, morality, everything in fact which we regard as valuable in our universe. With the non-reality of time all these must fall, and what is there that remains? In our experience a system of thought-contents alone answers to the reality required: it alone is, as such, out of time and unchanging; but no one would be prepared to identify the real with such a system, which in itself is a pure abstraction, without real existence, depending rather on the subject which thinks it. We are therefore referred outside of experience to an incomprehensible, whether it be the Unknowable of Herbert Spencer, or the harmonious Experience of Mr Bradley. According to the latter ​every part of our phenomenal world has its place in the real, only all contradictions are there removed, harmonised and united in one timeless experience, — so that at any rate that which we know is not the real. But “harmony” is the most formal of terms, expressing merely the unity which is the pre-supposition of all metaphysics, even of all science: while an experience which is neither feeling nor thought nor any other form of human experience, and which in addition is timeless, is the most unknowable of unknowables.
Adherence to the former of the two views accordingly leads us to an incomprehensible reality, which no study of the phenomenal will help us to understand, since the one is radically different from the other, however closely they may be connected together. If on the other hand we accept the second view, that time-relations are predicable of the ultimate reality, then it seems to follow that there is an endless process, — that “spurious infinite” upon which, since Hegel, metaphysicians have looked askance, — as, among other defects, inconsistent with the sup- posed perfection of the Absolute. A fortiori is this the case if the process be interpreted as a progress, while if we deny this of the Absolute, reducing succession in him to “pulses of feeling” as it were, then the progress of the finite individual becomes itself of doubtful worth; for nothing less than the whole of reality seems to satisfy the individual as a sphere for his activity, and if his progress is not a real one in reference to that, then it is worthless to him also.
Without hoping to clear these difficulties away, which would demand an entire metaphysical system, we shall try to prove that it is possible to form a rational conception of the relation of time-succession to the Absolute, which, in spite of its difficulties, at least does not involve us in the admission that the latter is an absolutely unknowable reality. A criterion can of course be found only in experience, in the widest sense, and inference from it ; merely logical criteria are on the other hand formal, they neither prove nor disprove anything. Such a one is “self-contradiction,” on which Mr Bradley bases his metaphysical theory, and his criticism of reality. Every one would be ready to admit that the proposition “A is not not-A” is true, for example, “a unity is not a non-unity,” but the crux lies in the discovery of what is a non-unity, and for this we have to go to experience. We cannot say at once that any diversity is a non-unity, on the contrary we find that it is not so. If, however, predication itself, as Mr Bradley holds, involves self-contradiction, then for us nothing but a bare identity, if there could be such, would be valid. Any plurality, any diversity, considered as in some way a unity, would necessarily turn out to be self​contradictory for thought, and this because thought is essentially analytical, seeking to break up any given unity into a diversity which is then predicated of the unity. It is thus impossible in our experience that we should ever attain to or be able to conceive a unity without diversity, and the result of Mr Bradley’s theory only furnishes a proof of this. For when he seems to make any positive statements about the real, they are inevitably open to the same charge which he brings against all other views, — that they involve the contradiction of the one in many, which we can neither avoid nor accept. ‘Harmony’ and ‘Experience’ are his favourite terms for designating the Absolute; but within a harmony variety is necessary, otherwise it would not be a harmony. It is true the unity is the higher element and the true aspect of a harmony, but for it to be felt and exist the variety must be felt and exist. Similarly, ‘experience’ is either a meaningless term, or involves distinction, relation, and all the other ‘appearances’ within itself Even granting the possibility of an experience representing a unity above all our finite forms of experience, just as feeling in some shape represents a unity below them, still the Absolute can evidently not be this experience; An experience, as we know it, does not exist independently, hanging in the air, but is usually thought to belong to a subject. We regard our experience as distinguishing us, for better or worse, from all other individuals, — as forming an absolute gulf of separation between us. Similarly one would think that the Absolute Experience must at least belong to a subject, in which case we should have the distinction of the Absolute and its Experience, the same as that of Substance and Quality, which is the basis of the criticism of appearance. The fact that this experience is to be timeless is apt to veil the difficulty, and seems to give us a unity absolutely without difference, analogous to those cases of intense feeling in our own lives, when we seem to be wholly absorbed in the feeling, our individuality passing from us to it. But this after all is only seeming ; we are never even wholly absorbed, and as the state passes away we see that it was only an element in our lives, — one of our feelings. A timeless experience is for us a contradiction in terms, we can apply no meaning to the phrase; even if we supposed the life of the Absolute to consist in a higher experience we should be compelled to the notion of pulsations within this experience. In any case however the Absolute and its Experience stand over against one another as substance and quality; we cannot identify them, and the contradiction remains unsolved, because it is one necessary to our thought of the real.
The difficulty is still more obvious if we take Mr Bradley’s ​theory of Appearance and Reality as a whole. By simply labelling things, — individuals, time, space, and so on — as appearances, we have not got rid of them. The term ‘appearance’ seems a false one to apply in this case, for in its very meaning it presupposes at least a duality of the appearing (A) and that to which it appears (B), and again the duality of the real A and the appearing A. A cannot appear to itself, therefore B cannot fall within the appearance of A, unless we divide A into B and C, so that B appears to C and perhaps C to B. But if so, the division within A must be a real, not an apparent one (for to what could the division appear?), and then we have a flagrant case of unity and diversity in the real. Mr Bradley merely avoids the difficulty by making B, the finite individual to which the Absolute (A) appears, itself a part of the appearance of the Absolute, and by insisting that of course the appearance is not absolutely nothing. But this does not disprove the above argument: the appearance, he says, exists, but only as an appearance, that is, according to what seems the only way of interpreting the word, as an act of the Real upon some finite mind producing in it a representation of the Real, which is subject to the limitations of the finite mind; and he contrasts this existence with that of the Real. But it must be again emphasised that the mind to which the real is presented as appearance cannot itself be a part of that appearance, i.e. of its own presentation. It may of course be presented to itself, but this presentation would be merely an appearance of it, would not exhaust its reality Again, we cannot say that each of all finite individuals is an appearance to the others, so that they in some strange way exhaust one another’s reality, and free the Absolute from the taint of their inherence in it. For this would merely bring us back to the difficulty referred to above, of an appearance suspended in the air, with nothing to which it appears, and no rational ground for existence. So that, if the theory is really meant for one of ‘appearance,’ we must admit to finite individuals a reality which is not that of appearance, but as valid as that of the Absolute itself. However, even if we do not lay stress on the meaning of appearance, and suppose that something else is meant, — which we may perhaps be allowed to call ‘modification,’ — then we may come nearer the truth, but the difficulties of the one and many are not settled. They are indeed, emphasized. Above all we have the ground-distinction, beyond which we cannot go, of the Absolute and its Modes. We can give no reason whatever, and it is hopeless to seek one, for the fact that the modifications of the Absolute, and just such modifications, exist; nor can we form any theory of the Absolute as distinct from its modifications. For, in any case, they exist; they ​are therefore part of the whole of reality; if the Absolute exists apart, then it is not the whole of reality; if it exists in them, then it is merely one aspect of the whole, separate existences and acts being a distinct but equally necessary aspect.
Accordingly we must decide that contradiction, so far as it relates to the unity of many in one, and the impossibility of our grasping this unity and diversity in thought, is no criterion by which we may rule anything out of court as unreal, for there is nothing known to us, nor anything knowable by us, which is not at once a unity and a diversity, and so far therefore involves a contradiction in itself This a priori method must be given up and experience itself questioned; for the true method by which metaphysical truth may be acquired seems to be the searching out of the pre-suppositions which are necessary in order to explain what is given as real in experience. In other words, we must put the problem of metaphysics in this way: — of what nature must the ultimate reality be, in order that through it we may account for our experience? We seek to think reality as a whole, as some kind of unity, not in the disjointed way in which it comes to us in our ordinary experience, but as uniting all the separate parts in one whole. Starting out from the separate things and events, individuals and acts, of the empirical world, we try in what way such a world is to be thought as a whole, on what pre-suppositions it could exist as it appears to us. A metaphysical theory, accordingly, can never be more than a hypothesis, and that one is to be accepted which seems best to account for all the facts given to us. By such a method as this we shall here attempt to solve the metaphysical problem with which we started, — that as to the reality or non-reality of the time-process.
In our developed experience “time” appears as a continuous whole, forming a background on which events are arranged, extending in one direction from the past to the future. It is both continuous and discrete, for while the events are regarded as taking place in moments of time, these moments are themselves parts of a continuous unity, and it is accordingly impossible to determine any ultimate shortest moment, since, owing to the continuity, any part of the whole, however small, seems infinitely divisible. “The flow of time” seems thus a natural metaphor. On these results the ordinary Scientific view of time was based, — that of Newton, to whom “time, absolute, true, and mathematical, flows continuously and equably in itself without relation to any external thing.” The flow of time is unaffected by the events which take place in it, — that is, the two series, moments of time and events, seem to run parallel to, but independent of, one another. It was for this reason that ​Leibnitz denied an absolute reality to time, as he could not conceive of a reality which was out of relation to others, that is without force or energy. Time, accordingly, is with him merely ideal, phenomenal, with however a foundation in reality, namely, the order of succession of events. He transfers the real existence from time as a whole to the separate events which take place, change and activity being necessary and inseparable determinations of any real existence.
After Leibnitz attention is more and more directed towards our knowledge of time, how it is possible and what it involves, this phase reaching its theoretical completion in Kant. While Leibnitz held that time in us is only possible if there be a real succession, Kant insists on the other hand that the knowledge of succession presupposes that of time; — I could not regard two events as successive had I not already the notion of time as a whole, in which the events are arranged by me. Again, while I cannot think of phenomena as out of time, I can think of time as empty of events. Hence Kant decides that time is an a priori form in us, and is therefore no determination of reality as independent of us; while from the singleness of time, and the fact that every time is regarded as a part of this one time, he shows that it is a form of perception, not a concept. The latter argument is unimportant for our purpose; all knowledge is derived from perception, and concepts are abstracted from it. It is not even necessary that there should be two or more objects given, in order that a concept may be formed. Time itself, when thought of, that is, when its existence is abstracted from, is also a concept. Time as a whole, in fact, is never perceived, but is only an inference from the given parts. The gist of Kant’s argument lies in the fact of there being only one time, which is homogeneous throughout its parts, while the parts are not thought of as examples of a general type, but as parts of one whole. A second argument, which seeks to show that the time-form is given independently of experience, inasmuch as there exist absolutely necessary propositions concerning it, and these cannot be given through experience, need not delay us. Should time have a reality independent of our consciousness, Kant holds, then it would be impossible for us to form such a necessarily valid proposition as “Time has only one dimension.” This may be granted, but, as a matter of fact, no proposition that we can form is absolutely and necessarily valid, but is valid only under the condition that our knowledge is complete, and of this we can never be certain. Thus in a spherical space two straight lines may cut one another in two distinct points: in this way we have enlarged our notions of space, geometry no longer giving absolutely necessary ​propositions. In the same way it may be possible in the future to enlarge our notions of time. As far as our present knowledge goes, however, the propositions we make regarding time are justified, and there is no present likelihood of its becoming necessary for us to change our ideas. In meta-mathematics there is a possibility of some solid result, but the same cannot be said of the theory of different time-series, in different directions.
The ‘apriority’ of time in Kant’s sense must also be given up; for it is not of course a ready-made form which we apply from the first to sensations as they arise in us, but an inference from change in sensation as felt. Kant still believed with the older psychologists that our sensations come to us as isolated units which have then somehow to be united, or subjected to the forms of the mind. It is a belief that has come down as far as Green, to whom relations are still ‘the work of the mind,’ which therefore constitutes experience for us. On the contrary, it is rather the case that our knowledge would be inexplicable if all that we derived from without were a series, — not felt as a series, — of simple unrelated sensations. If this were so, then indeed the theory of idealism would be justified, — that our world of experience is through and through the creation, both in form and in matter, of a consciousness, through which each individual recreates the world for himself With Kant all that we can know is held to be the creation — necessary creation, perhaps — of our minds; for ultimately the very differences of sensations, since they are not felt, must be the work of thought; and Green has only interpreted this consistently. But change of sensation, difference of sensation, must be experienced by us before, on their basis, we can build up our world of experience. It is useless to say that a change, a relation of sensations, is not a sensation; it is certainly not the sensations of which it is a relation or change, but experienced it must be. As James has said, — “If there be such things as feelings at all, then so surely as relations between objects exist in rerum naturâ, so surely and more surely do feelings exist to which these relations are known.” When we have finally got rid of the old psychology, — of ‘simple ideas of sensation’ and the like, we shall no longer be tempted to glorify our own part in the creation of the world of experience, and on the other hand to disparage that world as inadequate to the real world, but shall be content to regard the work of thought as abstraction from the given, and the predication of such abstracts of the real. More than this it is not, — it is representative, not creative.
Time as a form of perception in Kant’s sense gives us accordingly no difficulty; as such it is one of the logical ​constituents into which our knowledge may be analysed, for we find that all events are necessarily arranged by us in a time-series, and when we look at our knowledge as a whole, time appeal's to be not so much an element of what is known, as a form in which certain elements are arranged: and hence, if we make within knowledge a distinction of subjective and objective, it may rather be ascribed to the former aspect than to the latter. But the distinction of subjective and objective within knowledge is a purely abstract one. All is equally subjective, or equally objective, so that from the relation of time as a form to other logical elements of knowledge we can make no inference as to its objective validity.
In another direction, however, Kant carries on the work of Leibnitz. We have seen that he regards time as the ‘conditio cognoscendi’ of succession; in the same way he holds that the course of time, — the succession within it, — requires a permanent background (i.e. not in time) against which it takes place, as we should otherwise fall into an ‘infinite process.’ We can compare two periods of time only over against a permanent, for if we compared them by a standard which was itself in process of change, this change would require another standard of measurement, and so on ‘ad infinitum.’ Thus it is over against a permanent matter in space that our sensations appear to us as fleeting, changing, in time; and on the other hand the presence of a permanent subject to the sensations is equally necessary. The flow of time accordingly seems conditioned by two permanents. Kant however confuses two things, the origin of our knowledge of time or change, and the condition of there being such a change. We learn to know change first through the differences in a material reality given us as permanent, but later found to be only relatively so. But it is self-evident that a matter of this kind could not be the condition of the changes either in us or in itself The reality which is the source of change cannot be material in the ordinary sense; (even the ‘force’ or ‘energy’ of the physicists is immaterial). On the other hand a permanent subject is at once the condition of knowledge of change and of its existence. What Kant proves is that time cannot stand alone, — neither it nor the events which take place in it can have an existence independent of each other, while the events on their part cannot hang in the air, as particular existences, but must be changes of something, which accordingly persists in time, or may from one point of view be said to be out of time, while its changes are “in time.” This is the meaning of Kant’s contention, but it does not justify his theory of the mere subjectivity of time.
In the necessity of a permanent subject all modern theories ​of the non-reality of time seem to have their origin. It is held that in our consciousness we have given us a timeless reality, and it is felt that the real should be explained by the highest reality which we know, — our consciousness. This is the argument of Green; the possibility, it is said, of my being conscious of two successive events, as successive, — for example, of two ideas succeeding one another, — requires that consciousness, as subject, be present to both, and therefore itself out of time. In the same way, since all relations imply consciousness as a condition of their possibility, and succession is a relation, therefore we must ultimately suppose an eternal or timeless consciousness as present to, and as the condition of, the whole time-series. Whatever truth there may be in this view, it is here based on a false theory of knowledge, and of the relation of thought to reality. In a sense, of course, I must be present to the successive events of which I am conscious, but this does not prove that I am out of time any more than a tree is out of time because it suffers gradual growth and decay. The consciousness of each event, and the consciousness of their succession to each other are changes of myself as the stages of growth are changes of the tree. What misleads is that in the last act, the consciousness of the two events as successive, these events and their succession are held together as a content of knowledge, and as such, timeless; for by the act of thought abstraction is made from the existence of the events, and their occurrence in time, while time itself, in thought, is equally a timeless content. Not that the content is unchangeable for me; in each moment it is different from what it was in the previous one, but we unconsciously suppose an ideal content, that which the real would give if it were attainable by thought, and regard this a» existing even when it is no longer being thought. The fixed, timeless content however exists only for thought, in a thinking subject. Apart from changes within it, in its content, consciousness is the merest form; even a consciousness to which only one content is always present, — as the divine consciousness according to most idealists, — is inconceivable. We cannot in fact dispute the reality of change. This was in vain urged against Kant. “If I could intuite myself,” he says, “or be intuited by another being, without the condition of sensibility, then those very determinations which we now represent to ourselves as changes would present to us a knowledge in which the representation of time, and consequently of change, would not appear.” But surely this is the most baseless hypothesis that could be made, and one which explains nothing; one of its peculiar consequences is to be found in Kant’s theory of morally good and evil actions as the appear​ances in us of a timeless act, which involves the timeless, therefore, in the phenomenal world, eternal existence (pre-, and post-immortality) of every individual, and which completely fails to explain the possibility of moral progress.
What is true is that change would have no meaning without a permanent which, relatively at least, does not change, but whose modes or conditions change. “All that changes is permanent, and only the condition thereof changes”; “Permanence is. in fact, just another expression for time, as the abiding correlate of all existence of phenomena, and of all changes, and of all coexistence. For change does not affect time itself, but only the phenomena in time.” “If we were to attribute succession to time itself, we should be obliged to cogitate another time, in which the succession would be possible.” Kant is speaking of the phenomenal world, but we must transfer it to the world of reality; and by time he means the whole time, as a background against which events take place, so that change is only in the latter. The question is thus raised whether it is the moments of time itself that are successive, or whether only the events in it. It is at this point that Lotze attacks the question, in further developing Kant’s theory of time; until he wrote, the theory remained practically untouched, though the difficulties inherent in the popular view of time were fully dwelt upon by Herbart.
Our ordinary notions of time, Lotze points out, are largely derived from space-images; we speak of it as a line, extending infinitely in two directions, or again as a stream flowing from the past to the future, or from the future to the past. These notions are defective, for every point of a line has the same reality, whereas in time only one point has properly reality, the reality of the past being different alike from that of the present and from that of the future; even the reality of the one point, the “present,” is in a state of change. Again, the notion of a stream involves that of a source, of an end, of a bed within which the stream flows, so that we seem to think of time as something that has had a beginning, and may have an end, and which requires a background in contrast with which it is thought of as flowing. But when we are speaking of empty time, this is inconsistent. In the same way we cannot call it a series (in which all the members have equal reality, as where we may with the same legitimacy proceed from n to n-1 as to n+1), nor a process, for there is nothing that develops or that is in process. We are referred therefore to the content of time, for an explanation of the reality which we are to attribute to it. But here time seems wholly useless, for by no possibility can we think of the passage of time as having an influence upon ​the course of events, as a last condition added to others in producing any particular change. If all the material conditions are given, it seems that the change must be given also, and simultaneously; if not, the event can never happen. And if, all the conditions being given, the event is not simultaneously present, there seems no reason why it should appear a moment later, rather than a century later. Nor can we see why a particular place in the course of time should lend a particular value to a special reality, so that it thereby conditions changes over which it would otherwise have had no power. We are therefore compelled to give up the notion of empty time as a whole reality, containing and conditioning events. We do this the more readily, owing to the peculiar position which we wish to attribute to a particular moment of time, — the present. The primary difficulty of determining this present has been dwelt upon by Mr Bradley; no moment of time seems to be an irreducible unit, but always to contain smaller moments within itself, and a transition from past to present, from present to future. Time in fact seems to be wholly continuous, so that any divisions we may make are arbitrary and unreal. Perhaps a way may be found of avoiding this difficulty, but for the moment let it be taken for granted with Lotze that there is a present. Now if time were an existing whole, — an independent reality, — every part would necessarily have the same reality as every other, and therefore the content of each part, whereas we actually regard only one part as real, in the full sense, the past being no longer real and the future not yet. Still, the past seems to have gone ‘somewhere,’ to retain therefore some shadow of its reality, and the future to come from some ‘womb of time.’ Hence “the efforts, which are ever being renewed, to include the real process of becoming within the compass of an abiding reality.” The readiest way of solving this dilemma seems to be that of regarding the present as relative to our knowledge only, so that, while the real is timeless, we are compelled, owing to our position within the whole of reality, and the finitude of our knowledge, to regard what directly affects ourselves as more real, or rather as having a brighter reality, than what affects us more indirectly, as the condition of our actual feelings, or as conditioned by them. If the real is timeless, that is, a whole of conditioning and conditioned (supposing that we can apply any meaning to these terms in a timeless reality), then by this method we might explain the fact that it appears to us under the form of time. Even granting however that our own successive acts and feelings are themselves appearances to us of a timeless reality, as Kant held, there remains the insuperable objection that, in order that ‘the past’ ​may be known to me at all, there must be recollection, and therefore an experience other than that which I now have, — therefore change, — and when change is admitted, all is admitted. Without this, had I a fixed place in the sum of conditions and conditioned within the real, then it would be impossible for me to know either a past or a future, or to make any distinction between these and my present. All that I knew would be for me equally real, just as the parts of a syllogism have equal reality for me when I think them. I do not place the premisses in the past, and the conclusion in the future, but regard all as a timeless whole. So it would be were I an element in such a non-temporal reality, and confined for my knowledge to my place within it.
On such grounds Lotze decides that while empty time can have no reality outside of our apprehension, and is a notion formed psychologically by the abstraction from events of the time-element in their occurrence, which we learn by temporal signs analogous to the local signs, and which by the help of spatial images we form into a whole and endow with independent existence, still there must be some reality to which the signs correspond, and this he finds in the succession of events. Time accordingly does not condition the course of events, but the latter alone is real, and creates in us the form known as time. Succession then is real, and it is only at isolated moments that Lotze contemplates a reality which should be wholly timeless, as when he speaks of “the truly existing as exalted above all Time-process, and yet so to be thought that in its being and essence a time-process takes place.” At times he seems to accept the possibility of that which he had previously denied, — the real as a sum of conditions and conditioned, timelessly existing.
That there should be a real succession of events is necessary to explain the fact of our experience, and accordingly must be accepted; and time as the sum of the relations (of succession) between these events is valid of the real. But here as in all other cases it is true that there can be no relations between independent realities, whether the latter are things or events. Two such realities would on the contrary be each in a world for itself, unaffected by the other. Related events are doubly dependent. An event as such cannot stand alone bit must be referred to a subject, so that event in the last analysis is equivalent to act. Lotze has sufficiently shown that the interaction of two objects must ultimately be explained by the act of a universal subject present in both. Further, where events are related to each other as successive, they must be referred ultimately to one subject, so that the succession of ​events is reducible to the succession of the acts of the Absolute. The first of these propositions requires no proof; an event cannot hang in the air, but must, as we say, take place between some things or in some subject. As to the second, the possibility has been suggested that events have no connection at all with one another, or merely for me as knowing them, and arranging them as successive, and again the possibility of there being different series of succession, for different individuals, so that the whole becomes somehow simultaneous; while A’s acts and knowledge proceed in the direction and order a b c, those of B may run in the order c b a, so that the orders cancel one another. But my knowledge is not a product of my own nature, it is a product rather of the interaction of spirit and body, which equally with the action of body upon body demands a universal subject to bring it about. My act of knowledge is only one side of this ultimate act. And as all material events are given as closely connected with one another, so must all spiritual events be, if only through the material, in intimate connection. The process of knowledge in one member of the spiritual world is therefore as closely related to that in another, as the movement of one body to that of another in space. Movements and acts alike may be simultaneous, but if so, then they are only different aspects of the one act of the Absolute, — that act in different references, different relations, we may say. So that just as all objects, all existing things, must coexist in one and the same space, “intelligible” or not, so all events must take place in one and the same time. The succession of the acts of the Absolute determines that of phenomenal events, ‘phenomenal’ meaning not the appearance of an unknown, but one aspect of a real, or the real in one of its references. (It is only in this sense that our knowledge is of phenomena, — because of its incompleteness.) It is therefore impossible that there should be different time-series in different directions.
What then are we to say of past, present, and future? Do these distinctions exist for the Absolute as for us, and if so, how are we to define the present? The answer lies in the distinction between the existence of a ‘thing’ or ‘subject,’ and that of ‘events’ or ‘acts.’ Only the latter are in time, are successive. It is obvious that in everything given to us in experience there are these two aspects, — the thing and the event, the individual and the act, the permanent and the changing, the one and the many; most of the disputes in philosophy have turned upon the questiou which of these two aspects is the ' real ' one, which the ‘phenomenal.’ But neither can be given up, the one is as real as the other. A thing which does not change, a change which ​is not the change of something, an individual which does not act, and an act which is not that of an individual, are alike incomprehensible. This applies to every sphere of our knowledge. A thing is one and its special qualities are many, or it is permanent, — one in that sense, — and its changes are many; any event which we take as such is an abstraction from the continuity of all happening; it is one of the discrete points in the continuous change of the universe, yet the discreteness is as essential as the continuity. It is not merely that discrete and continuous are relative terms, the one presupposing the other, and the two, in Hegelian phrase, melting into a higher unity. The discrete and the continuous are just given together, and we must take them so; they are given to us as different aspects of the same reality. Not merely again as our finite way of looking at what is neither continuous nor discrete, but something higher than both; the very attempt to think such an “Identity” repels us, and inevitably leads to failure. Unless we are to distrust perception and thought altogether, to give up thinking about the real at all, then we must accept this doublesidedness of reality as ultimate. So a ‘thing’ seems on the one hand to possess a unity, in virtue of which it is that particular thing and not another, but this unity we cannot describe further, nor identify with any particular quality or relation of the thing or its parts; on the other hand, a thing has many qualities, relations to other things, relations of its qualities to one another, and accordingly many ways of acting and reacting upon other things. All this series we may know, and the knowledge constitutes our knowledge of the thing, but no one of them, nor all put together is the thing, which seems obstinately to conceal itself from our view, to remain a substratum, an obscure ‘something’ behind them all. Yet our knowledge of it only grows through knowledge of its (qualities, relations, ways of acting; we can have no hope of knowing it as something different from and beside all these, nor, paradoxical as it may seem, is it anything other than these. Knowledge of the thing in itself, in this sense, we have none; the unity we speak of, taken by itself, is a mere term: we cannot know anything as a unity unless we have something to unite, that is, unless we know that of which it is the unity. On the other hand, the particulars alone give us no knowledge of the thing, otherwise we could make no distinction of one thing from others, could make no distinctions at all in our knowledge except that of one merest particular from another. Even this we could not do, for it is only in virtue of a unity that we distinguish at all, — between two colours for example by their underlying identity.
The same result will be gained if we go higher in the scale, ​and from a thing in the ordinary sense pass to a living individual. It could be proved in the case of a ‘material thing’ that its qualities are simply its ways of acting and reacting. The same is true of the outward qualities of the individual, and to a still more obvious degree of his inward qualities, which are in fact generalisations from his observed particular acts. We may therefore consider the individual merely as acting, and we see at once the two aspects separate and yet united in him. For on the one hand no particular act is the individual, nor any number, nor, supposing we could exhaust them, the sum of all; just as in the case of the thing, the individual himself remains over and above his particular acts, a unity, a something we know not what, — that which acts. Yet the individual is known, and moreover is, only through and in his acts. He is not a being apart, to whom the acts are attached as beads to a string. If we knew every particular act of the individual, from the beginning to the end, then, granted the unity of these acts, we should know the individual absolutely. Thus the individual apart from his acts, the acts apart from the individual, are alike abstractions, — necessary abstractions for the sake of knowledge, but still neither giving the truth, each only an aspect of the truth. Both these aspects are necessary for a knowledge of the whole. It is true they seem to leave nothing but contradiction in our knowledge, but just this contradiction is true of the real, that it is these two things at once, — a unity and a variety.
The application to the whole of reality, to the Absolute in itself and the succession of events, is easily made. Neither with the unity of the All, nor with its discrete parts can we dispense, — and the unity is not a merely formal one, but a living reality, the real subject to which all events in the universe are to be referred as its acts. It is true the notion ‘event,’ as we have seen, may require to be changed, or to be improved, for not everything that we call an event is to be regarded as an act of the Absolute; on the contrary, each act of the Absolute must find expression in an indefinite number of simultaneous ‘events’; this is demanded by the causal connection of things in the universe. Thus we have two inseparable aspects under which the universe is to be regarded, — on the one hand as God, the Absolute, “exalted above all Time-process,” eternal and unchangeable, the unity, the harmony of all things, absolutely unknowable as ‘in himself,’ or only to be determined by negation: — on the other hand the so-called phenomenal universe, the world of finite things, individuals, where all changes, all is in process, where also no fixed knowledge seems possible, for that which we seek to know changes under our hands, where content succeeds content, sometimes in apparent order, sometimes chaotic. It is only by uniting the two aspects that the ​possibility of knowledge, and of an object to be known, are secured to us, — by regarding the succession of events as the succession of the acts of the Absolute. By this means the empty unity receives filling, the harmony is seen to be a real harmony, the Absolute becomes a living Being, the Unknowable becomes knowable through His acts. For just as our sole knowledge of the character of the finite individual is derived from his acts, so it is with the Infinite. He is what he does, and all our knowledge of natural events, of human events, is as such an approximation to a knowledge of the Absolute.
To apply our theory to the question of the relation of time to the Absolute, of the reality of past and future as compared with that of the present, it is obvious that the Absolute in himself is throughout all time equally real, while no act can claim higher reality than another; but it is of the very nature of an act to perish in existing, and as it is, it constitutes what is for us the present. Our present is therefore regulated by and dependent on the acts of the Absolute. The difficulties connected with it, — that for example of fixing in it some point which really is the present, — all depend upon our defective notion of the meaning of ‘event.’ The acts of the Absolute, even if they are no longer acts in the sense of purposive, directed to an end, but mere pulsations of experience, must be thought of as momentary, discrete, successive; there is no other way of comprehending the universe. Each act or pulsation as it exists, is the real present, or rather the content of the present. And however we may conceive the Absolute, this at any rate is clear, even to materialism, that every act, or event, involves in itself all that have preceded it, — the past, — and all that are to follow it, — the future. The existence of the present act is in toto different from that of all that have gone before and from that of all that are to come; as moments in the present the past may persist, and the future be involved, but they have no longer or not yet the independent existence of the actual act. It is this which is the true reality; time as a whole therefore has no existence except as an abstraction from the relations of events in the mind of the subject, the past has no existence except in memory or as a moment in the present, the future none except in foresight or inference, or again as a moment involved in the present. The Absolute is the permanently existing real Subject, the present act the momentarily existing real event. Nor is it to be supposed that time exists between the acts, unfilled by any event, for this is just that empty time which we have seen to be illusory; on the contrary the acts of the Absolute must be thought of, to use a space-metaphor, as touching one another, as do the points of a line. The Absolute as in itself, gives the continuity, as in its acts, the discreteness of Time.
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