Change, it is evident, must be change of something, and it is obvious, further, that it contains diversity. Hence it asserts two of one, and so falls at once under the condemnation of our previous chapters. But it tries to defend itself by this distinction: "Yes, both are asserted, but not both in one; there is a relation, and so the unity and plurality are combined." But our criticism of relations has destroyed this subterfuge beforehand. We have seen that, when a whole has been thus broken up into relations and terms, it has become utterly self-discrepant. You can truly predicate neither one part of the other part, nor any, nor all, of the whole. And, in its attempt to contain these elements, the whole commits suicide, and destroys them in its death. It would serve no purpose to repeat these inexorable laws. Let us see merely how change condemns itself by entering their sphere.
Something, A, changes, and therefore it cannot be permanent. On the other hand, if A is not permanent, what is it that changes? It will no longer be A, but something else. In other words, let A be free from change in time, and it does not change. But let it contain change, and at once it becomes AT, A*> A3. Then what becomes of A, and of its change, for we are left with something else? Again, we may put the problem thus. The diverse states of A must exist within one time; and yet they cannot, because they are successive.
Let us first take A as timeless, in the sense oi out of time. Here the succession of the change must belong to it, or not. In the former case, what is the relation between the succession and A? If there is none, A does not change. If there is any, it forces unintelligibly a diversity onto A, which is foreign to its nature and incomprehensible. And then this diversity, by itself, will be merely the unsolved problem. If we are not to remove change altogether, then we have, standing in unintelligible relation with the timeless A, a temporal change which offers us all our old difficulties unreduced.
A must be taken as falling within the time-series; and, if so, the question will be whether it has or has not got duration. Either alternative is fatal. If the one time, necessary for change, means a single duration, that is self- contradictory, for no duration is single. The would-be unit falls asunder into endless plurality, in which it disappears. The pieces of duration, each containing a before and an after, are divided against themselves, and become mere relations of the illusory. And the attempt to locate the lapse within relations of the discrete leads to hopeless absurdities. Nor, in any case, could we unite intelligibly the plurality of these relations so as to make one duration. In short, therefore, if the one time required for change means one duration, that is not one, and there is no change.
On the other hand, if the change actually took place merely in one time, then it could be no change at all. A is to have a plurality in succession, and yet simultaneously. This is surely a flat contradiction. If there is no duration, and the time is simple, it is not time at all. And to speak of diversity, and of a succession of before and after, in this abstract point, is not possible when we think. Indeed, the best excuse for such a statement would be the plea that it is meaningless. But, if so, change, upon any hypothesis, is impossible. It can be no more than And we may perceive its main character. It contains both the necessity and the impossibility of uniting diverse aspects. These differences have broken out in the whole which at first was immediate. But, if they entirely break out of it, they are dissipated and destroyed; and yet, by their presence within the whole, that already is broken, and they scattered into nothings. The relational form in general, and here in particular this form of time, is a natural way of compromise. It is no solution of the discrepancies, and we might call it rather a method of holding them in suspension. It is an artifice by which we become blind on either side, to suit the occasion; and the whole secret consists in ignoring that aspect which we are unable to use. Thus it is required that A should change; and, for this, two characters, not compatible, must be present at once. There must be a successive diversity, and yet the time must be one. The succession, in other words, is not really successive unless it is present And our compromise consists in regarding the process mainly from whichever of its aspects answers to our need, and in ignoring — that is, in failing or in refusing to perceive — the hostility of the other side. If you want to take a piece of duration as present and as one, you shut your eyes, or in some way are blind to the discretion, and, attending merely to the content, take that as a unity. And, on the other hand, it is as easy to forget every aspect but that of discreteness. But change, as a whole, consists in the union of these two aspects. It is the holding both at once, while laying stress upon the one which for the time is prominent, and while the difficulties are kept out of sight by rapid shuffling. Thus, in asserting that A alters, we mean that the one thing is different at different times. We bring this diversity into relation with A's qualitative identity, and all seems harmonious. Of course, as we know, even so far, there is a mass of inconsistency, but that is not the main point here. The main point is that, so far, we have not reached a change of A. The identity of a content A, in some sort 0/" relation with diverse moments and with varying states — if it means anything at all — is still not what we understand by change. That the mere oneness of a quality can be the unity of a duration will hardly be contended. For change to exist at all, this oneness must be in temporal relation with the diversity.
In other words, if the process itself \s not one state, the moments are not parts of it; and, if so, they cannot be related in time to one another. On the one hand, A remains A through a period of any length, and is not changed so far as A. Considered thus, we may say that its duration is mere presence and contains no lapse. But the same duration, if regarded as the succession ofy^'s altered states, consists of many pieces. On the other hand, thirdly, this whole succession, regarded as one sequence or period, becomes a unity, and is again present. " Through the present period," we should boldly say, " A's processes have been regular. His rate of growth is normal, and his condition is for the present identical But, during the lapse of this one period, there have been present countless successive differences in the state of B; and the coincidence in time, of B*s unchanging excitement with the healthy succession of A's changes, shows that in the same interval we may have present either motion or rest." There is hardly exaggeration here; but the statement exhibits a palpable oscillation. We have the dwelling, with emphasis and without principle, upon separate aspects, and the whole idea consists essentially in this oscillation. There is total failure to unite the differences by any consistent principle, and the one discoverable system is the systematic avoidance of consistency. The single fact is viewed alternately from either side, but the sides are not combined into an intelligible whole. And I trust the reader may agree that their consistent union is impossible. The problem of change defies solution, so long as change is not degraded to the rank of mere appearance.
I will end this chapter by some remarks on the perception of succession, or, rather, one of its main features. And I will touch upon this merely in the interest of metaphysics, reserving what psychological opinions I may have formed for another occasion. The best psychologists, so far as I know, are becoming agreed that for this perception some kind of unity is wanted. They see that without an identity, to which all its members are related, a series is not one, and is therefore not a series. In fact, the person who denies this unity is able to do so merely because he covertly supplies it from his own unreflecting mind. And 1 shall venture to regard this general doctrine as established, and shall pass to the point where I think metaphysics is further interested.
It being assumed that succession, or rather, here, perceived succession, is relative to a unity, a question arises as to the nature of this unity, generally and in each case. The question is both difficult and interesting psychologically; but I must confine myself to the brief remarks which seem called for in this place. It is not uncommon to meet the view that the unity is timeless, or that it has at any rate no duration. On the other hand, presumably, it has a date, if not a place, in the general series of phenomena, and is, in this sense, an event. The succession I understand to be apprehended somehow in an indivisible moment, — that is, without any lapse of time, — and to be so far literally simultaneous. Any such doctrine seems to me open to fatal objections, some of which I will state.
i. The first objection holds good only against certain persons. If the timeless act contains a relation, and if the latter must be relative to a real unity, the problem of succession appears again to break out without limit inside this timeless unit.
2. But those who would deny, the premises of this first objection, may be invited to explain themselves on other points. The act has no duration, and yet it is a psychical event. It has, that is, an assignable place in history. If it does not possess the latter, how is it related to my perception? But, if it is an event with a before and an after in time, how can it have no duration? It occurs in time, and yet it occupies no time; or it does not occur in time, though it happens at a given date. This does not look like the account of anything real, but it is a manufactured abstraction, like length without breadth. And if it is a mere way of stating the problem in hand — viz., that from one point of view succession has no duration — it seems a bad way of stating it. But if it means more, its meaning seems quite unintelligible.
3. And it is the more plainly so since its content is certainly successive, as possessing the distinction of after and before. Wilis' distinction is a fact; and, if so, the psychical lapse is a fact; and, if so, this fact is left in flat contradiction with the timeless unity. And to urge that the succession, as used, is ideal — is merely content, and is not psychical fact — would be a futile attempt to misapply a great principle. It is not wholly true that "ideas are not what they mean." for if their meaning is not psychical fact, I should like to know how and where it exists. And the question is whether succession can, in any sense, come before the mind without some actual succession entering into the very apprehension. If you do not vicau a lapse, then you have given up your contention. But, if you do mean it, then how, except in the form of some actual mental transition, is it to come ideally before your mind? I know of no intelligible answer; and I conclude that, in this perception, what is perceived is an actual succession; and hence the perception itself must have some duration.
4. And, if it has no duration, then I do not see how it is related to the before and after of the time perceived; and the succession of this, with all its unsolved problems, seems to me to fall outside it 5. And, lastly, if we may have one of these occurrences without duration, apparently we may also have many in succession, all again without duration. And I do not know how the absurd consequences which follow can be avoided or met.
In short, this creation is a monster. It is not a working fiction, entertained for the sake of its work. For, like most other monsters, it really is impotent. It is both idle and injurious, since it has diverted attention from the answer to its problem.
And that, to the reader who has followed our metaphysical discussion, will, I think, be apparent. We found that succession required both diversity and unity. These could not intelligibly be combined, and their union was a mere junction, with oscillation of emphasis from one aspect to the other. And so, psychically also, the timeless unity is a piece of duration, not experienced as successive. Assuredly everything psychical is an event, and it really contains a lapse; but so far as you do not use, or notice, that lapse, it is not there for you and for the purpose in hand. In other words, there is a permanent in the perception of change, which goes right through the succession and holds it together. The permanent can do this, on the one hand, because it occupies duration and is, in its essence, divisible indefinitely. On the other hand, it is one and unchanging, so far as it is regarded or felt, and is used, from that aspect. And the special concrete identities, which thus change, and again do not change, are the key to the particular successions that are perceived. Presence is not absolute timelessness; it is any piece of duration, so far as that is considered from or felt in an identical aspect. And this mere relative absence of lapse has been perverted into the absolute timeless monstrosity which we have ventured to condemn.
But it is one thing to see how a certain feature of our time-perception is possible. It is quite another thing to admit that this feature, as it stands, gives the truth about reality. And that, as we have learnt, is impossible. We are forced to assert that A is both continuous and discrete, both successive and present. And our practice of taking it, now as one in a certain respect, and now again as many in another respect, shows only how we practise. The problem calls upon us to answer how these aspects and respects are consistently united in the one thing, either outside of our minds or inside — that makes no difference. And if we fail, as we shall, to bring these features together, we have left the problem unsolved. And, if it is unsolved, then change and motion are incompatible internally, and are set down to be appearance. And if, as a last resource, we use the phrases " potential " and " actual," and attempt by their aid to reach harmony, we shall have left the case as it stands. We shall mean by these phrases that the thing is, and yet that it is not, and that we choose for our own purpose to treat these irreconcilables as united. But that is only another, though perhaps a more polite, way 0/ saying that the problem is insoluble.
In the chapter which comes next, we must follow the same difficulties a little further into other applications.
CHAPTER VI.
The object of this chapter is merely to point out, first, the main discrepancy in causation, and, in the second place, to exhibit an obstacle coming from time's continuity. Some other aspects of the general question will be considered in later chapters.1 We may regard cause as an attempt to account rationally for change. A becomes Bt and this alteration is felt to be not compatible with A. Mere A would still be mere A, and, if it turns to something different, then something else is concerned. There must, in other words, be a reason for the change. But the endeavour to find a satisfactory reason is fruitless.
We have seen that A is not B, nor, again, a relation to B. " Followed by B," u changing into A B,'} are not the same as A; and we were able to discover no way of combining these with A which could be more than mere appearance. In causation we must now consider a fresh effort at combination, and its essence is very simple. If "A becomes B" is a self-contradiction, then add something to A which will divide the burden. In " A + C becomes B" we may perhaps find relief. But this relief, considered theoretically, is a mass of contradictions.
It would be a thankless task to work these out into detail, for the root of the matter may be stated at once. If the sequence of the effect is different 1 I have touched on the Law of Causation in Chapter xxiii.
from the cause, how is the ascription of this difference to be rationally defended? If, on the other hand, it is not different, then causation does not exist, and its assertion is a farce. There is no escape from this fundamental dilemma.
We have in the cause merely a fresh instance of compromise without principle, another case of pure makeshift. And it soon exhibits its nature. The cause was not mere A; that would be found too intolerable. The cause was^4 + C; but this combination seems meaningless. It is offered in the face of our result as to the nature of relations (Chapter iii.); and by that result it has already been undermined and ruined. But let us see how it proposes to go about its business. In " A 4- C followed by B" the addition of C makes a difference to A, or it makes no difference. Let us suppose, first, that it does make a difference to A. But, if so, then A has already been altered; and hence the problem of causation breaks out within the very cause. A and C become A + C, and the old puzzle begins about the way in which A and C become other than they are. We are concerned here with A, but, of course, with C there is the same difficulty. We are, therefore, driven to correct ourselves, and to say that, not A and C merely, but A and C+D become A + C, and so B. But here we perceive at once that we have fallen into endless regress within the cause. If the cause is to be the cause, there is some reason for its being thus, and so on indefinitely.
Or let us accept the other alternative. Let us assert boldly that in A + C, which is the cause of Bt their relation makes no difference either to A or to C, and yet accounts for the effect. Although the conjunction makes no difference, it justifies apparently our attribution to the cause of the difference expressed by the effect But (to deal first with the cause) such a conjunction of elements has been shown (Chapter iii.) to be quite unintelligible. And to the defence that it is only our own way of going on, the answer is twofold. If it is only our way, then, either it does not concern the thing at all, or else is admitted to be a mere practical makeshift If, on the other hand, it is a way of ours with the thing which we are prepared to justify, let the justification be produced. But it cannot be produced in any form but in the proof that our thinking is consistent. On the other hand, the only reason for our hesitation above to attribute our view to reality seemed to lie in the fact that our view was not consistent. But, if so, it surely should not be our view. And, to pass now to the effect, the same reasoning there holds good. The sequence of a difference still remains entirely irrational. And, if we attempt here to take this difference upon ourselves, and to urge that it does not attach to the thing, but only to our view, the same result follows. For what is this but a manner of admitting politely that in reality there is no difference and is no causation, and that, in short, we are all agreed in finding causation to be makeshift and merely appearance? We are so far agreed, but we differ in our further conclusions. For I can discover no merit in an attitude which combines every vice of theory. It is forced to admit that the real world is left naked and empty; while it cannot pretend itself to support and to own the wealth of existence. Each party is robbed, and both parties are beggared.
The only positive result which has appeared from our effort to justify causation, seems to be the impossibility of isolating the cause or the effect. In endeavouring to make a defensible assertion, we have had to go beyond the connection as first we stated it. The cause A not only recedes backwards in time, but it attempts laterally to take in more and more of existence. And we are tending to the doctrine that, to find a real cause, we must take the complete state of the world at one moment as this passes into another state also complete. The several threads of causation seem, that is, always to imply the action of a background. And this background may, if we are judicious, be irrelevant practically. It may be practically irrelevant, not because it is ever idle, but because often it is identical, and so makes no special difference. The separate causes are, therefore, legitimate abstractions, and they contain enough truth to be practically admissible. But it will be added that, if we require truth in any strict sense, we must confine ourselves to one entire state of the world. This will be the cause, and the next entire state will be the effect.
There is much truth in this conclusion, but it remains indefensible. This tendency of the separate cause to pass beyond itself cannot be satisfied, while we retain the relational form essential to causation. And we may easily, I think, convince ourselves of this. For, in the first place, a complete state of existence, as a whole, is at any one moment utterly impossible. Any state is forced by its content to transcend itself backwards in a regress without limit. And the relations and qualities of which it is composed will refer themselves, even if you keep to the moment, for ever away from themselves into endless dissipation. Thus the complete state, which is necessary, cannot be reached. And, in the second place, there is an objection which is equally fatal. Even if we could have one selfcomprised condition of the world preceding another, the relation betwen them would still be irrational. We assert something of something else; we have to predicate B of A, or else its sequence of A, or else the one relation of both. But in these cases, or in any other case, can we defend our assertion? It is the old puzzle, how to justify the attributing to a subject something other than itself, and which the subject is not. If " followed by £" is not the nature of A, then justify your predication. If it is essential to Ay then justify, first, your taking A without it; and in the next place show how, with such an incongruous nature, A can succeed in being more than unreal appearance.
And we may perhaps fancy at this point that a door of exit is opened. How will it be, since the difference is the source of our trouble, if we fall back upon the identity of cause and effect? The same essence of the world, persisting in unchanged self-conservation from moment to moment, and superior to diversity — this is perhaps the solution. Perhaps; but, if so, what has been done with causation? So far as I am able to understand, that consists in the differences and in their sequence in time. Mere identity, however excellent, is emphatically not the relation of cause and effect. Either then once more you must take up the problem of reconciling intelligibly the diversity with the unity, and this problem so far has shown itself intractable. Or you yourself have arrived at the same conclusion with ourselves. You have admitted that cause and effect is irrational appearance, and cannot be reality.
I will add here a difficulty, in itself superfluous, which comes from the continuity of causal change. Its succession, on the one hand, must be absolutely without pause; while, on the other hand, it cannot be so. This dilemma is based upon no new principle, but is a mere application of the insoluble problem of duration. The reader who is not attracted may pass on.
For our perception change is not properly continuous. It cannot be so, since there are durations which do not come to us as such; and however our faculties were improved, there must always be a point at which they would be transcended. On the other hand, to speak of our succession as being properly discrete seems quite as indefensible. It is in fact neither the one nor the other. I presume that what we notice is events with time between them, whatever that may mean. But, on the other hand, when we deal with pieces of duration, as wholes containing parts and even a variable diversity of parts, the other aspect comes up. And, in the end, reflection compels us to perceive that, however else it may appear, all change must really be continuous. This conclusion cannot imply that no state is ever able to endure for a moment. For, without some duration of the identical, we should have meaningless chaos, or, rather, should not have even that. States may endure, we have seen, so long as we abstract. We take some partial state, or aspect of a state, which in itself does not alter. We fix one eye upon this, while we cast, in fear of no principle, our other eye upon the succession that goes with it, and so is called simultaneous. And we solve practically in this way the problem of duration. We have enduring aspects, A, B, C, one after the other. Alongside of these there runs on a current of changes minutely subdivided. This goes on altering, and in a sense it alters A, B, C, while in another sense they are unchanged pieces of duration. They do not alter in themselves, but in relation to other changes they are in constant internal lapse. And, when these other changes have reached a certain point of alteration, then A passes into B} and so later B into C. This is, I presume, the proper way of taking causation as continuous. We may perhaps use the following figure: — ABC ABC A—A—A—B—B—B—C—C—C Here A, B, C, is the causal succession of enduring states. The Greek letters represent a flow of other events which are really a determining element in the succession of A, B, C. And we understand at once how A, B, and C both alter and do not alter. But the Greek letters represent much more, which cannot be depicted. In the first place, at any given moment, there are an indefinite number of them; and, in the second place, they themselves are pieces of duration, placed in the same difficulty as were A, B, C. Coincident with each must be a succession of events, which the reader may try to represent in any character that he prefers. Only let him remember that these events must be divided indefinitely by the help of smaller ones. He must go on until he reaches parts that have no divisibility. And if we may suppose that he could reach them, he would find that causation had vanished with his success.
The dilemma, I think, can now be made plain. (a) Causation must be continuous. For suppose that it is not so. You would then be able to take a solid section from the flow of events, solid in the sense of containing no change. I do not merely mean that you could draw a line without breadth across the flow, and could find that this abstraction cut no alteration. I mean that you could take a slice off, and that this slice would have no change in it. But any such slice, being divisible, must have duration. If so, however, you would have your cause, enduring unchanged through a certain number of moments, and then suddenly changing. And this is clearly impossible, for what could have altered it? Not any other thing, for you have taken the whole course of events. And, again, not itself, for you have got itself already without any change. In short, if the cause can endure unchanged for any the very smallest piece of duration, then it must endure for ever. It cannot pass into the effect, and it therefore is not a cause at all. On the other hand, (6) Causation cannot be continuous. For this would mean that the cause was entirely without duration. It would never be itself except in the time occupied by a line drawn across the succession. And since this time is not a time, but a mere abstraction, the cause itself will be no better. It is unreal, a nonentity, and the whole succession of the world will consist of these nonentities. But this is much the same as to suppose that solid things are made of points and lines and surfaces. These may be fictions useful for some purposes, but still fictions they remain. The cause must be a real event, and yet there is no fragment of time in which it can be real. Causation is therefore not continuous; and so, unfortunately, it is not causation, but mere The reader will understand at once that we have repeated here the old puzzle about time. Time, as we saw, must be made, and yet cannot be made, of pieces. And he perhaps will not be sorry to have reached an end of these pages through which I have been forced to weary him with continuitv and discreteness. In the next chapter we shall arrive at somewhat different matter.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
In raising the question if activity is real or is only appearance, I may be met by the assertion that it is original, ultimate, and simple. I am satisfied myself that this assertion is incorrect, and is even quite groundless; but I prefer to treat it here as merely irrelevant. If the meaning of activity will not bear examination, and if it fails to exhibit itself intelligibly, then that meaning cannot, as such, be true of reality. There can be no origin, or want of origin, which warrants our predicating nonsense. And if I am told that, being simple, activity can have no meaning, then it seems a quality like one of our sensations or pleasures, and we have dealt with it already. Or I may possibly be answered, No, it is not simple in that sense, nor yet exactly composite. It somehow holds a variety, and is given in that character. Hence its idea may be indefensible, while itself is real. But the business of metaphysics is surely to understand; and if anything is such that, when thought of and not simply felt, it goes to pieces in our hands, we can find but one verdict. Either its nature is nonsensical, or we have got wrong ideas about it. The assertor of the latter alternative should then present us with the right ideas — a thing which, I need not add, he is not forward to perform. But let us leave these poor excuses to take care of themselves, and let us turn to the facts. There, if we examine the way in which the term activity is employed, the result is not doubtful. Force, energy, power, activity, these phrases certainly are used too often without clear understanding. But no rational man employs them except to convey some kind of meaning, which is capable of being discovered and subjected to analysis. And if it will not bear scrutiny, then it clearly does not represent reality.
There is a sense in which words like power, force, or energy, are distinguished from activity. They may be used to stand for something that does not happen at all, but somehow remains in a state of suspended animation, or in a region between nonexistence and existence. I do not think it worth while to discuss this at present, and shall pass at once to the signification in which force means force in exercise — in other words, activity.
The element in its meaning, which comes to light at once, is succession and change. In all activity something clearly becomes something else. Activity implies a happening and a sequence in time. And, when I spoke of this meaning as coming to the light, I might have added that it positively stares us in the face, and it is not to be hidden. To deal frankly, I do not know how to argue this question. I have never seen a use of the term which to my mind retained its sense if time-sequence is removed. We can, of course, talk of a power sustaining or producing effects, which are subordinate and yet not subsequent; but to talk thus is not to think. And unless the sequence of our thought, from the power to its manifestation, is transferred to the fact as a succession there, the meaning is gone. We are left with mere co-existence, and the dependence, either of adjective on substantive, or of two adjectives on one another and on the substance which owns them. And I do not believe that any one, unless influenced by, and in the service of, some theory, would attempt to view the matter otherwise. And I fear that I must so leave it.
6d APPEARANCE.