Elements of metaphysics

by A. E. Taylor

Take the case of our dreams. The events of my dreams stand in spatial and temporal relations within the dream itself, but there would be no sense in asking what are the spatial relations between the places seen in my dreams and the places marked on the map of England; or what are again the temporal relations between the events of last night’s dream and those of this morning, or those of the dreams of last week. Precisely because there is usually no systematic identity of purpose connecting the dream with the waking life or with other dreams, the time and space of the dream have no position with respect to the time and space system of waking life, nor those of one dream with relation to those of another.[^[151]] Of course, it may be said that the dream-space and dream-time are “imaginary,” but the problem cannot be got rid of by the use of an epithet. To call them imaginary is merely to say that they are not systematically connected with the time and space of waking life, not to disprove their genuineness as actual space and time constructions.

Similarly, if there are intelligent purposes of which our human purposive life is debarred from taking account as such, as we urged that there must be behind the phenomenal physical order, the time and space within which those purposes are conceived and executed would have no place in our spatial and temporal system. The phenomenal events of the physical order would fall within our system, but not the life of inner purpose of which that order is the manifestation to our senses. Ultimately, in fact, all spaces and all times could only form one spatial and temporal system on condition that the infinite absolute experience views all its contents in spatial and temporal form; then the various space and time systems corresponding to the purposes of the various groups of finite individuals would finally, for the infinite individual, form one great system of time and space relations. But we have already seen that the infinite experience cannot comprehend its contents in spatial or temporal forms.

We infer, then, that there may be—indeed, if our interpretation of the physical order is valid, there must be—a plurality of spaces and times within the Real. Within any one such space or time all its members are spatially and temporally interrelated, but the various spaces are not themselves related in space, nor the various times before or after one another in time. Their relation is the purely logical one of being varying modes of the expression in a finite detail of the underlying nature of the ultimate Reality.[^[152]] For the absolute experience they must be all at once and together, not in the sense of being in “one space and time,” but in the sense of forming together the systematic embodiment of one coherent ground or principle.

§ 8. Similar consequences, as to the phenomenal character of space and time, follow from the consideration of the familiar Kantian antinomies founded upon the concept of spatial and temporal infinity. Space and time must be externally boundless and internally indefinitely divisible, and yet again cannot be either. Freed from unessential accessories, the argument for either side of the antinomy may be stated thus. Space and time must be boundless because all spatial and temporal existence means spatial and temporal relation to a second term, itself similarly related to a third term. For precisely the same reason both must be indefinitely divisible. Yet again, they can be neither, since only the individual exists, and within such an interminable network of relations between terms which are nothing but the supporters of these relations there is no principle of individual structure.[^[153]] Thus the Kantian antinomies are a simple consequence of the old difficulty about quality and relation. Space and time must be mere relations, and the terms of those relations therefore qualitatively indistinguishable; again, since they are relations they cannot be relations between nothings or, what is the same thing, between terms with no individual character. As in all cases where the problem of relation and quality arises, it then conducts us to the indefinite regress.

So long as we continue to look upon space and time as real, we have therefore to choose between two equally illogical alternatives. We must either arbitrarily refuse to continue the indefinite regress beyond the point at which its difficulties become apparent, as is done by the assertion that space and time have finite bounds or indivisible parts, or we must hold that the absolute experience actually achieves the summation of an unending series. With the recognition that space and time are phenomenal, the result of a process of construction forced on us by our practical needs, but not adequately corresponding to the real nature of individual existence, the difficulty disappears. Both sides of the antinomy become relatively true, in the sense that for our practical purposes we must be content to adopt now the one and again the other; both become ultimately untrue in the sense that space and time, being constructions of our own, are really neither finite nor infinite series, but are the one or the other according to the purposes for which we use our construction.

§ 9. If spatial and temporal position and direction must thus in the end be appearance, phenomenal of some more individual reality, we have finally to ask, Of what are they the appearance? It is not enough to say “of ultimate Reality,” or “of the Absolute.” Ultimately this is, no doubt, true of space and time, as it is of everything else, but we desire further to know if they are not proximately the appearance of some special features of the inner physical life of the lesser individuals which compose the Absolute. We naturally look for some third term, in the nature of finite individuality, to mediate between the structureless abstract generality of space and time relation, and the perfect individual structure of the spaceless and timeless Absolute Individual. We want, in fact, to connect the spatial and temporal form which our experience wears, with some fundamental aspect of our nature, as beings at once individual and finite.

Nor is it particularly difficult to make the connection. When we remember that space and time, as they actually condition our perception and movement, are the space and time which radiate out from an unique here and now of immediate feeling, it is fairly evident that the spatial and temporal aspect of our experience is, as already suggested, a consequence of that limitation of our attentive interests which constitutes our finitude. It is the narrowness of my interests, or at least of those which are sufficiently explicit to rise into the “focus” of consciousness, that is reflected in the distinction of my here from all the theres which are around me. Here is where my body is, because of the specially intimate connection of the realisation of my interests and purposes with those events in the phenomenal physical order which I call the state of my body. Were my interests widened so as to embrace the whole scheme of the universe, I should no longer perceive the contents of that universe as dispersed through space, because I should no longer have as my special standpoint a here to which other existence would be there.

My special standpoint in space may thus be said to be phenomenal of my special and peculiar interests in life, the special logical standpoint from which my experience reflects the ultimate structure of the Absolute. And so, generally, though the conclusion can for various reasons not be pressed in respect of every detail of spatial appearance, the spatial grouping of intelligent purposive beings is phenomenal of their inner logical affinity of interest and purpose. Groups of such beings, closely associated together in space, are commonly also associated in their peculiar interests, their special purposes, their characteristic attitude towards the universe. The local contiguity of the members of the group is but an “outward and visible sign” of an “inward and spiritual” community of social aspiration. This is, of course, only approximately the case; the less the extent to which any section of mankind have succeeded in actively controlling the physical order for the realisation of their own purposes, the more nearly is it the truth that spatial remoteness and inner dissimilarity of social purposes coincide. In proportion as man’s conquest over his non-human environment becomes complete, he devises for himself means to retain the inner unity of social aims and interests in spite of spatial separation. But this only shows once more how completely the spatial order is a mere imperfect appearance which only confusedly adumbrates the nature of the higher Reality behind it. Thus we may say that the “abolition of distance” effected by science and civilisation is, as it were, a practical vindication of our metaphysical doctrine of the comparative unreality of space.

Similarly with time, though the temporal series may, in a sense, be said to be less of an unreality than the spatial. For it does not seem possible to show that spatial appearance is an inevitable form of finite experience. We can at least conceive of a finite experience composed entirely of successive arrangements of secondary qualities, such as sounds or smells, and the accompanying feeling-tones, though we have no positive ground for affirming the existence of such a type of experience. But the temporal form seems inseparable from finite intelligence. For the limitation of my existence to a certain portion of time is clearly simply the abstract and external aspect of the fact that my interests and purposes, so far as I can apprehend the meaning of my own life, occupy just this special place in the logical development of the larger whole of social life and purpose of which my own life is a member. So the position of a particular purposive act in the temporal series of acts which I call the history of my own life, is the outward indication of the logical place filled by this particular act in the connected scheme of interests which form my life on its inner side. But it is an inevitable consequence of the want of complete internal harmony we call finitude, that the aims and interests of the finite subject cannot be in the same degree present to its apprehension all at once and together. In being aware of its own internal purpose or meaning, it must, because it is finite and therefore not ultimately a completely harmonious systematic whole, be aware of that purpose as only partially fulfilled. And in this sense of one’s own purposes as only partially fulfilled, we have the foundation of the time-experience, with its contrast between the “now” of fulfilment and the “no longer” and “not yet” of dissatisfied aspiration.

For this reason, dissatisfaction, unfulfilled craving, and the time-experience seem to be bound up together, and time to be merely the abstract expression of the yearning of the finite individual for a systematic realisation of its own purpose which lies for ever beyond its reach as finite. If this is so, only the absolute and infinite individual whose experience is throughout that of perfectly harmonious systematic realisation of meaning, can be outside the time-process; to it, “vanished and present are the same,” because its whole nature is once for all perfectly expressed in the detail of existence. But the finite, just because its very nature as finite is to aspire to a perfection which is out of reach, must have its experience marked with the distinction of now from by and by, of desire from performance. In this temporal character of all finite experience we may perhaps afterwards discern the ultimate ground of morality, as we can already discern in the unresting struggle of the finite to overcome its finitude, practical evidence that time is not a form which adequately expresses the nature of Reality, and must therefore be imperfect appearance.[^[154]]