[CHAPTER VII.]
FUNDAMENTAL EXPLANATION OF SUCCESSION.
38. The reasons that destroy the absolute nature of time, inasmuch as it is subject to measure, do not seem fully to obviate another difficulty, arising from the consideration of time in itself. If indeed time be succession, what is this succession? It is evident that things succeed each other; but if there be no before or after, that is, time existing before succession, since succession consists in some things coming after others, what is the meaning of succeeding each other? Thus, time is explained by succession, and succession by time. What is afterwards but a part of time that is in relation with a heretofore?
39. What we said in the fourth chapter does not seem completely to solve the difficulty; for being and not-being do not form succession, save only inasmuch as one comes after the other, that is, inasmuch as it presupposes the time to be explained already to exist. There may be a simultaneous being and not-being of distinct things; and there is in one and the same thing no repugnance between being and not-being, if not referred to the same time. In such a case, therefore, this is always presupposed so to be; since in one and the same thing, being and not-being are inconceivable unless at different instants of time. Hence it follows that being and not-being do not sufficiently explain time.
40. This difficulty is indeed grave; and we must, in order to solve it, elaborate a fundamental explanation of succession. This we shall endeavor to do, and without in any sense supposing the idea of time.
41. There are things which exclude, and things which do not exclude each other. When we have existence of things which exclude each other, we have succession. If in a line a————b————c, a body be at a, it cannot pass to b, without ceasing to be at a. The situation at b excludes that at a; and so also that at c excludes that at b. When we see things exist notwithstanding this reciprocal exclusion, we find succession.
42. Succession is, in reality, the existence of things mentally exclusive of each other. What each involves is the being of that which excludes, and the not-being of that which is excluded.
43. This exclusion prevails in all variations; and therefore, we find succession in every variation. Variation is the mutation of states; the loss of one, and the acquisition of another; therefore, there is exclusion, for being excludes not-being, and not-being, being.