It follows, of course, that in conceptual space and time there is no principle by which to distinguish different directions. In perception they can be distinguished as right and left, up and down, and so forth. But since what is right to one percipient is left to another, in conceptual space, where complete abstraction is made from the presence of an individual percipient, there is neither right nor left, up nor down, nor any other qualitative difference between one direction and another, all such differences being relative to the individual percipient. When we wish to introduce into conceptual space distinctions between directions, we always have to begin by arbitrarily assigning some standard direction as our point of departure. Thus we take, e.g., an arbitrarily selected line ———
A B as such a standard for a given plane, and proceed to distinguish all other directions by the angle they make with A B and the sense in which they are estimated (whether as from B to A or from A to B). But both the line A B and the difference of sense between A B and B A can only be defined by similar reference to some other standard direction, and so on through the endless regress.
Similarly with conceptual time. Here, as there is only one dimension, the difficulty is less obvious, but it is no less real. In conceptual time there is absolutely no means of distinguishing before from after, past from future. For the past means the direction of our memories, the direction qualified by the feeling of “no longer”; the future is the direction of anticipation and purposive adaptation, the direction of “not yet.” And, apart from the reference given by immediate feeling to the purposive life of an individual subject, these directions cannot be discriminated. In short, conceptual time and space are essentially relative, because they are systems of relations which have no meaning apart from qualitative differences in the terms which they relate; while yet again, for the purpose of the conceptual construction which yields them, the terms have to be taken as having no character but that which they possess in right of the relations.[[148]]
One other feature of the space and time construction is sufficiently important to call for special mention. Space and time are commonly thought of as unities of some kind. All spatial positions, it is usually assumed, fall within one system of space-relations; all dates have their place in one all-inclusive time. This character of unity completes the current conception of the spatial and temporal order. Each of those orders is a unity, including all possible spatial or temporal positions; each is an endless, infinite, continuous series of positions, which all are purely relative. There are other peculiarities, especially of the current concepts of space, with which it is not necessary to deal here, as they are of an accidental kind, not arising out of the essential nature of the process by which the conception is constructed. Thus it is probably a current assumption that the number of dimensions in space is three and no more, and again that the Euclidean postulate about parallels is verified by its constitution. As far as perceptual space is concerned, those assumptions depend, I presume, upon empirical verification; there seems to be no reason why they should be made for the conceptual space-order, since it is quite certain that a coherent science of spatial relations can be constructed without recourse to them.[[149]]
§ 5. The question now is, whether the whole of this spatial and temporal construction is more than imperfect, and therefore contradictory, appearance. I will first state in a general form the arguments for regarding it as appearance, and then proceed to reinforce this conclusion by dealing with some special difficulties. Finally, I propose to ask whether we can form some positive conception of the higher order of Reality of which the spatial and temporal series are phenomenal.
That the space and time order is phenomenal and not ultimate, can, I think, be conclusively shown by a general argument which I will first enunciate in principle and then develop somewhat more in detail. An all-comprehensive experience cannot apprehend the detail of existence under the forms of space and time for the following reason. Such an experience could be neither of space and time as we perceive them, nor of space and time as we conceptually reconstruct them. It would not be of perceptual space and time, because the whole character of our perceptual space and time depends upon the very imperfections and limitations which make our experience fragmentary and imperfect. Perceptual space and time are for me what they are, because I see them, so to say, in perspective from the special standpoint of my own particular here and now. If that standpoint were altered, so that what are actually for me there and then became my here and now, my whole outlook on the space and time order would suffer change. But the Absolute cannot look at the space and time order from the standpoint of my here and now. For it is the finitude of my interests and purposes which confine me in my outlook to this here and now. If my interests were not bound up in the special way in which they are with just this special part or aspect of the life of a wider whole, if they were co-extensive with the life of that whole, every place and every time would be my here and now. As it is, here is where my body is, now is this particular stage in the development of European social life, because these are the things in which I am primarily interested. And so with all the other finite experiences in which the detail of the absolute experience finds expression. Hence the absolute experience, being free from the limitations of interest which condition the finite experiences, cannot see the order of existence from the special standpoint of any of them, and therefore cannot apprehend it under the guise of the perceptual space and time system.
Again, it cannot apprehend existence under the forms of space and time as we conceptually reconstruct them. For Reality, for the absolute experience, must be a complete individual whole, with the ground of all its differentiations within itself. But conceptual space and time are constructed by deliberate abstraction from the relation to immediate experience implied in all individuality, and consequently, as we have just seen, they contain no real principle of internal distinction, their constituent terms being all exactly alike and indistinguishable. In short, if the perceptual time and space systems of our concrete experience represent individual but imperfect and finite points of view, the conceptual space and time of our scientific construction represents the mere abstract possibility of a finite point of view; neither gives a point of view both individual and infinite, and neither, therefore, can be the point of view of an absolute experience. An absolute experience must be out of time and out of space, in the sense that its contents are not apprehended in the form of the spatial and temporal series, but in some other way. Space and time, then, must be the phenomenal appearance of a higher reality which is spaceless and timeless.
§ 6. In principle, the foregoing argument appears to me to be complete, but, for the sake of readers who care to have its leading thought more fully developed, it may be re-stated thus. Perceptual space and time cannot be ultimately real as they stand. They are condemned already by the old difficulty which we found in the notion of reality as made up of qualities in relation. Perceptual space and time are aggregates of lesser parts, which are themselves spaces and times; thus they are relations between terms, each of which contains the same relation once more in itself, and so imply the now familiar indefinite regress.[[150]] Again, when we try in our conceptual space and time construction to remedy this defect by reducing space and time altogether to mere systems of relations, the difficulty turns out to have been merely evaded by such a process of abstraction. For, so long as we keep rigidly to our conceptual construction, the terms of our relations are indistinguishable. In purely conceptual space and time, as we have seen, there is no possibility of distinguishing any one direction from any other, since all are qualitatively identical.
Indeed, it is obvious from first principles that when the sets of terms between which a number of relations of the same type holds are indistinguishable, the relations cannot be discriminated. To distinguish directions at all, we must, in the end, take at least our starting-point and one or more standard directions reckoned from it—according to the number of dimensions with which we are dealing—as independently given, that is, as having recognisable qualitative differences from other possible starting-points and standard directions. (Thus, to distinguish before and after in conceptual time, you must at least assume some moment of time, qualitatively recognisable from others, as the epoch from which you reckon, and must also have some recognisable qualitative distinction between the direction “past” and the direction “future.”) And with this reference to qualitative differences we are at once thrown back, as in the case of perceptual time and space, on the insoluble old problem of Quality and Relation. The assumed starting-point and standard directions must have qualitative individuality, or they could not be independently recognised and made the basis for discrimination between the remaining directions and positions: yet, because of the necessary homogeneity of the space and time of conceptual construction, they cannot have any such qualitative individuality, but must be arbitrarily assumed. They will therefore themselves be capable of determination only by reference to some other equally arbitrary standard, and thus we are once more committed to the indefinite regress. The practical usefulness of these constructions thus depends on the very fact that we are not consistent in our use of them. In all practical applications we use them to map out the spatial and temporal order of events as seen in perspective from a standpoint which is, as regards the conceptual time and space order itself, arbitrary and indistinguishable from others.
§ 7. Instead of further elaborating this general argument, a task which would be superfluous if its principle is grasped, and unconvincing if it is missed, I will proceed to point out one or two special ways in which the essential arbitrariness of the spatial and temporal construction is strikingly exemplified. To begin with, a word may be said about the alleged unity of space and time. It is constantly taken for granted, by philosophers as well as by practical men, that there can be only one spatial and one temporal order, so that all spatial relations, and again all temporal relations, belong to the same system. Thus, if A has a spatial relation to B and C to D, it is assumed that there must be spatial relations between A and C, A and D, and B and C, B and D. Similarly if A is temporally related with B, and C with D. This view is manifestly presupposed in the current conception of Nature, the “physical universe,” the “physical order,” as the aggregate of all processes in space and time. But there seems to be no real logical warrant for it. In principle the alleged unity of all spatial and temporal relations might be dismissed, on the strength of the one consideration that space and time are not individual wholes, and therefore can contain no principle of internal structural unity. This is manifest from the method by which the space and time of our conceptual scheme have been constructed. They arose, as we saw, from the indefinite repetition of a single type of relation between terms in which we were unable to find any ultimately intelligible principle of internal structure. But unity of structure cannot be brought into that which does not already possess it by such mere endless repetition. The result of such a process will be as internally incoherent and devoid of structure as the original data. Hence space and time, being mere repetitions of the scheme of qualities in relation, cannot be true unities.
This becomes clearer if we reflect on the grounds which actually warrant us in assigning position in the same space and the same time to a number of events. For me A and B are ultimately in the same space when there is a way of travelling from A to B; they are in the same time when they belong to different stages in the accomplishment of the same systematic purposes. Thus in both cases it is ultimately from relation to an identical system of purposes and interests that different sets of positions or events belong to one space or one time. The unity of such a space or time is a pale reflection in abstract form of the unity of a life of systematic purpose, which is one because it has unique individual structure. It is in this way, from the individual unity of the purpose and interests of my ordinary waking life, that I derive the right to refer its experiences to a single space and time system. Similarly, it is in virtue of the inclusion of my own and my fellow-men’s purposes in a wider whole of social systematic purpose that I can bring the space and time relations of their experience into one system with my own. And again, the sensible occurrences of the physical order belong to one space and time with the space and time relations of human experience, because of the varying ways in which they condition the development of our own inner purposive life. But there are cases, even within our own conscious life, where this condition appears to be absent, and in these cases we do not seem to be able to make intelligible use of the conception of a single time or a single space.