The Concept of Nature — the Tarner Lectures, 1920

The conclusion of this discussion is that so far as sense-awareness is concerned there is a passage of mind which is distinguishable from the passage of nature though closely allied with it. We may speculate, if we like, that this alliance of the passage of mind with the passage of nature arises from their both sharing in some ultimate character of passage which dominates all being. But this is a speculation in which we have no concern. The immediate deduction which is sufficient for us is that — so far as sense-awareness is concerned — mind is not in time or in space in the same sense in which the events of nature are in time, butp. 70 that it is derivatively in time and in space by reason of the peculiar alliance of its passage vi^ith the passage of nature. Thus mind is in time and in space in a sense peculiar to itself. This has been a long discussion to arrive at a very simple and obvious conclusion. We all feel that in some sense our minds are here in this room and at this time. But it is not quite in the same sense as that in which the events of nature which are the existences of our brains have their spatial and temporal positions. The fundamental distinction to remember is that immediacy for sense-awareness is not the same as instantaneousness for nature. This last conclusion bears on the next discussion with which I will terminate this lecture. This question can be formulated thus, Can alternative temporal series be found in nature ?

A few years ago such a suggestion would have been put aside as being fantastically impossible . It would have had no bearing on the science then current, and was akin to no ideas which had ever entered into the dreams of philosophy. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries accepted as their natural philosophy a certain circle of concepts which were as rigid and definite as those of the philosophy of the middle ages, and were accepted with as little critical research. I will call this natural philosophy ' materialism.' Not only were men of science materialists, but also adherents of all schools of philosophy. The idealists only differed from the philosophic materialists on question of the alignment of nature in reference to mind. But no one had any doubt that the philosophy of nature considered in itself was of the type which I have called materialism. It is the philosophy which I have already examined in my two lectures of this course preceding the present one. It

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can be summarised as the belief that nature is an aggre gate of material and that this material exists in som sense at each successive member of a one-dimensiona series of extensionless instants of time. Furthermor the mutual relations of the material entities at eacl instant formed these entities into a spatial configuratioi in an unbounded space. It would seem that space — oi this theory — ^would be as instantaneous as the instants and that some explanation is required of the relation between the successive instantaneous spaces. Thi materialistic theory is however silent on this point and the succession of instantaneous spaces is tacitb combined into one persistent space. This theory is ; purely intellectual rendering of experience which ha had the luck to get itself formulated at the dawn o scientific thought. It has dominated the language an< the imagination of science since science flourished ii Alexandria, with the result that it is now hardly possibli to speak without appearing to assume its immediate obviousness.

But when it is distinctly formulated in the abstrac terms in which I have just stated it, the theory is ver^ far from obvious. The passing complex of factors whicl compose the fact which is the terminus of sense-aware ness places before us nothing corresponding to thi trinity of this natural materialism. This trinity is com posed (i) of the temporal series of extensionless instants (ii) of the aggregate of material entities, and (iii) o: space which is the outcome of relations of matter.

There is a wide gap between these presupposition! of the intellectual theory of materialism and the im mediate deliverances of sense-awareness. I do no question that this materialistic trinity embodies im

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portant characters of nature. But it is necessary to express these characters in terms of the facts of experience. This is exactly what in this lecture I have been endeavouring to do so far as time is concerned; and we have now come up against the question, Is there only one temporal series ? The uniqueness of the temporal series is presupposed in the materialist philosophy of nature. But that philosophy is merely a theory, like the Aristotelian scientific theories so firmly believed in the middle ages. If in this lecture I have in any way succeeded in getting behind the theory to the immediate facts, the answer is not nearly so certain. The question can be transformed into this alternative form, Is there only one family of durations? In this question the meaning of a 'family of durations' has been defined earlier in this lecture. The answer is now not at all obvious. On the materialistic theory the instantaneous present is the only field for the creative activity of nature. The past is gone and the future is not yet. Thus (on this theory) the immediacy of perception is of an instantaneous present, and this unique present is the outcome of the past and the promise of the future. But we deny this immediately given instantaneous present. There is no such thing to be found I in nature. As an ultimate fact it is a nonentity. What is immediate for sense-awareness is a duration. Now a duration has within itself a past and a future ; and the temporal breadths of the immediate durations of senseawareness are very indeterminate and dependent on the individual percipient. Accordingly there is no unique factor in nature which for every percipient is preeminently and necessarily the present. The passage of nature leaves nothing between the past and the future.

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What we perceive as present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation. This vividness lights up the discriminated field within a duration. But no assurance can thereby be given that the happenings of nature cannot be assorted into other durations of alternative families. We cannot even know that the series of immediate durations posited by the sense-awareness of one individual mind all necessarily belong to the same family of durations. There is not the slightest reason to believe that this is so. Indeed if my theory of nature be correct, it will not be the case.