[6] Cf. Enquiry
Such an ordered series of moments is what we mean by time defined as a series. Each element of the series exhibits an instantaneous state of nature. Evidently this serial time is the result of an intellectual process of abstraction. What I have done is to give precise definitions of the procedure by which the abstraction is effected. This procedure is merely a particular case of the general method which in my book I name the ‘method of extensive abstraction.’ This serial time is evidently not the very passage of nature itself. It exhibits some of the natural properties which flow from it. The state of nature ‘at a moment’ has evidently lost this ultimate quality of passage. Also the temporal series of moments only retains it as an extrinsic relation of entities and not as the outcome of the essential being of the terms of the series.
Nothing has yet been said as to the measurement of time. Such measurement does not follow from the mere serial property of time; it requires a theory of congruence which will be considered in a later lecture.
In estimating the adequacy of this definition of the temporal series as a formulation of experience it is necessary to discriminate between the crude deliverance of sense-awareness and our intellectual theories. The lapse of time is a measurable serial quantity. The whole of scientific theory depends on this assumption and any theory of time which fails to provide such a measurable series stands self-condemned as unable to account for the most salient fact in experience. Our difficulties only begin when we ask what it is that is measured. It is evidently something so fundamental in experience that we can hardly stand back from it and hold it apart so as to view it in its own proportions.
We have first to make up our minds whether time is to be found in nature or nature is to be found in time. The difficulty of the latter alternative—namely of making time prior to nature—is that time then becomes a metaphysical enigma. What sort of entities are its instants or its periods? The dissociation of time from events discloses to our immediate inspection that the attempt to set up time as an independent terminus for knowledge is like the effort to find substance in a shadow. There is time because there are happenings, and apart from happenings there is nothing.
It is necessary however to make a distinction. In some sense time extends beyond nature. It is not true that a timeless sense-awareness and a timeless thought combine to contemplate a timeful nature. Sense-awareness and thought are themselves processes as well as their termini in nature. In other words there is a passage of sense-awareness and a passage of thought. Thus the reign of the quality of passage extends beyond nature. But now the distinction arises between passage which is fundamental and the temporal series which is a logical abstraction representing some of the properties of nature. A temporal series, as we have defined it, represents merely certain properties of a family of durations—properties indeed which durations only possess because of their partaking of the character of passage, but on the other hand properties which only durations do possess. Accordingly time in the sense of a measurable temporal series is a character of nature only, and does not extend to the processes of thought and of sense-awareness except by a correlation of these processes with the temporal series implicated in their procedures.
So far the passage of nature has been considered in connexion with the passage of durations; and in this connexion it is peculiarly associated with temporal series. We must remember however that the character of passage is peculiarly associated with the extension of events, and that from this extension spatial transition arises just as much as temporal transition. The discussion of this point is reserved for a later lecture but it is necessary to remember it now that we are proceeding to discuss the application of the concept of passage beyond nature, otherwise we shall have too narrow an idea of the essence of passage.
It is necessary to dwell on the subject of sense-awareness in this connexion as an example of the way in which time concerns mind, although measurable time is a mere abstract from nature and nature is closed to mind.
Consider sense-awareness—not its terminus which is nature, but sense-awareness in itself as a procedure of mind. Sense-awareness is a relation of mind to nature. Accordingly we are now considering mind as a relatum in sense-awareness. For mind there is the immediate sense-awareness and there is memory. The distinction between memory and the present immediacy has a double bearing. On the one hand it discloses that mind is not impartially aware of all those natural durations to which it is related by awareness. Its awareness shares in the passage of nature. We can imagine a being whose awareness, conceived as his private possession, suffers no transition, although the terminus of his awareness is our own transient nature. There is no essential reason why memory should not be raised to the vividness of the present fact; and then from the side of mind, What is the difference between the present and the past? Yet with this hypothesis we can also suppose that the vivid remembrance and the present fact are posited in awareness as in their temporal serial order. Accordingly we must admit that though we can imagine that mind in the operation of sense-awareness might be free from any character of passage, yet in point of fact our experience of sense-awareness exhibits our minds as partaking in this character.
On the other hand the mere fact of memory is an escape from transience. In memory the past is present. It is not present as overleaping the temporal succession of nature, but it is present as an immediate fact for the mind. Accordingly memory is a disengagement of the mind from the mere passage of nature; for what has passed for nature has not passed for mind.