Thus we seem finally to have reached the conclusion that time and space are the imperfect phenomenal manifestation of the logical relations between the purposes of finite individuals standing in social relations to each other; the inner purposive life of each of these individuals being itself in its turn, as we have previously seen, the imperfect expression, from a special logical “point of view,” of the structure and life of the ultimate infinite individual. For the infinite individual itself the whole of the purposes and interests of the finite individuals must form a single harmonious system. This system cannot itself be in the spatial and temporal form; space and time must thus in some way cease to exist, as space and time, for the absolute experience. They must, in that experience, be taken up, rearranged, and transcended, so as to lose their character of an endless chain of relations between other relations.
Precisely how this is effected, we, from our finite standpoint, cannot presume to say. It is natural to draw illustrations from the “specious present” of perception, in which we appear to have a succession that is also simultaneous; or again, from the timeless and purely logical character science seeks to ascribe to its “laws of nature.” But in the “specious present” we seem obliged to attend to one aspect, succession or simultaneity, to the exclusion of the other; probably we never succeed in equally fixing both aspects at once. It thus presents us rather with the problem than with its solution. And again, after our discussion of the meaning of law, we cannot affirm that Nature is, for the absolute experience, a system of general laws. Hence it seems well not to take these illustrations for more than they are actually worth as indications of the merely phenomenal character of time. Metaphysics, like the old scholastic theology, needs sometimes to be reminded that God’s thoughts are not as ours, and His ways, in a very real sense when Philosophy has done its best, still past finding out.[[155]]
Consult further:—F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chaps. 4 (Space and Time), 18 (Temporal and Spatial Appearance); L. Couturat, L’Infini Mathématique, pt. 2, bk. iv. chap. 4 (against the Kantian antinomies); H. Poincaré, La Science et L’Hypothèse, pp. 68-109; H. Lotze, Metaphysic, bk. ii. chaps. 1-3; W. Ostwald, Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie, lects. 5, 8; J. Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, lect. 3; B. Russell, Foundations of Geometry: Is Position in Space and Time Absolute or Relative (Mind, July 1901), Principles of Mathematics, pt. 6, vol. i.; H. Spencer, First Principles, pt. 2, chap. 3.
[141]. The student who desires to think out the problems for himself would probably do well to take the discussions of Locke (Essay, bk. ii. chaps. 13-15) and Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, bk. i. pt. 2) rather than that of Kant as his starting-point, as they are less vitiated by psychological superstitions. In recent metaphysical work the chapters on the subject in Mr. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality will probably be found most useful. Much may be learned from Mr. Russell’s work, Foundations of Geometry, with which should, however, be compared the largely discrepant results of his later article, “Is Position in Space and Time Relative or Absolute?” (Mind, July 1901).
[142]. We are not called upon to enter into such specially psychological questions as, e.g., whether both directions, past and future, can be detected within the “specious present” of direct perception, or whether the specious present only contains the elements “now” and “no longer,” the “not yet” being a subsequent intellectual construction, as is held, e.g., by Mr. Bradley and Mr. Shadworth Hodgson.
[143]. We may indeed go still further, and say that every unique moment or experience has its own unique spatial and temporal system. The method by which I weave the perceived space-time systems of different experiences within my own mental life into a single conceptual system, is in principle the same by which the spaces and times of myself and other men are made into one system for the purpose of practical intercourse.
[144]. For an account of the psychological processes involved in all this, see, e.g., Stout, Manual of Psychology,3 bk. iii. pt. 2, chaps. 3-5; bk. iv. chap. 6.
[145]. Thus Dedekind (Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen? p. xii.) maintains that none of the constructions of Euclid involve the continuity of space.
[146]. Of course, a physical vacuum is not the same thing as empty space. For the purposes of any special science a vacuum means a space not occupied by contents of the special kind in which that special science is interested. Thus, in the ordinary parlance of Physics, a vacuum means simply a space in which there is no mass. Whether it is desirable, for the purposes of physical science, to assume the existence of vacuum, is altogether a question for Physics itself, and to decide it in the affirmative is not to maintain the existence of that unmeaning abstraction, absolutely empty space. In any case, it may be observed that the widespread notion that motion is only possible in a physical vacuum is a mistake, motion being perfectly possible in a fluid plenum.