The Concept of Nature — the Tarner Lectures, 1920

test-tube. The storm is a gale situated in mid- Atlantic with a certain latitude and longitude, and the cook is in the kitchen. I will call this special form of ingression the 'relation of situation'; also, by a double use of the word ' situation,' I will call the event in which an object is situated ' the situation of the object.' Thus a situation is an event which is a relatum in the relation of situation. Now our first impression is that at last we have come to the simple plain fact of where the object really is ; and that the vaguer relation which I call ingression should not be muddled up with the relation of situation, as if including it as a particular case. It seems so obvious that any object is in such and such a position, and that it is influencing other events in a totally different sense. Namely, in a sense an object is the character of the event which is its situation, but it only influences the character of other events. Accordingly the relations of situation and influencing are not generally the same sort of relation, and should not be subsumed under the same term ' ingression.' I believe that this notion is a mistake, and that it is impossible to draw a clear distinction between the two relations.

For example. Where was your toothache? You went to a dentist and pointed out the tooth to him. He pronounced it perfectly sound, and cured you by stopping another tooth. Which tooth was the situation of the toothache? Again, a man has an arm amputated, and experiences sensations in the hand which he has lost. The situation of the imaginary hand is in fact merely thin air. You look into a mirror and see a fire. The flames that you see are situated behind the mirror. Again at night you watch the sky ; if some of the stars had vanished from existence hours ago, you would not be any the

10 — 2p. 148 wiser. Even the situations of the planets differ from those which science would assign to them.

Anyhow you are tempted to exclaim, the cook is in the kitchen. If you mean her mind, I will not agree with you on the point ; for I am only talking of nature. Let us think only of her bodily presence. What do you mean by this notion? We confine ourselves to typical manifestations of it. You can see her, touch her, and hear her. But the examples which I have given you show that the notions of the situations of what you see, what you touch, and what you hear are not so sharply separated out as to defy further questioning. You cannot cling to the idea that we have two sets of experiences of nature, one of primary qualities which belong to the objects perceived, and one of secondary qualities which are the products of our mental excitements. All we know of nature is in the same boat, to sink or swim together. The constructions of science are merely expositions of the characters of things perceived. Accordingly to affirm that the cook is a certain dance of molecules and electrons is merely to affirm that the things about her which are perceivable have certain characters. The situations of the perceived manifestations of her bodily presence have only a very general relation to the situations of the molecules, to be determined by discussion of the circumstances of perception.

In discussing the relations of situation in particular and of ingression in general, the first requisite is to note that objects are of radically different types. For each type * situation ' and ' ingression ' have their own special meanings which are different from their meanings for other types, though connexions can be pointed out..

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It is necessary therefore in discussing them to determine what type of objects are under consideration. There are, I think, an indefinite number of types of objects. Happily we need not think of them all. The idea of situation has its peculiar importance in reference to three types of objects which I call sense-objects, perceptual objects and scientific objects. The suitability of these names for the three types is of minor importance, so long as I can succeed in explaining what I mean by them.

These three types form an ascending hierarchy, of which each member presupposes the type below. The base of the hierarchy is formed by the sense-objects. These objects do not presuppose any other type of objects. A sense-object is a factor of nature posited by sense-awareness which (i), in that it is an object, does not share in the passage of nature and (ii) is not a relation between other factors of nature. It will of course be a relatum in relations which also implicate other factors of nature. But it is always a relatum and never the relation itself. Examples of sense-objects are a particular sort of colour, say Cambridge blue, or a particular sort of sound, or a particular sort of smell, or a particular sort of feeling. I am not talking of a particular patch of blue as seen during a particular second of time at a definite date. Such a patch is an event where Cambridge blue is situated. Similarly I am noftalking of any particular concert-room as filled with the note. I mean the note itself and not the patch of volume filled by the sound for a tenth of a second. It is natural for us to think of the note in itself, but in the case of colour we are apt to think of it merely as a property of the patch. No one thinks of the note as ap. 150 property of the concert-room. We see the blue and we hear the note. Both the blue and the note are immediately posited by the discrimination of sense-awareness which relates the mind to nature. The blue is posited as in nature related to other factors in nature. In particular it is posited as in the relation of being situated in the event which is its situation.

The difficulties which cluster around the relation of situation arise from the obstinate refusal of philosophers to take seriously the ultimate fact of multiple relations. By a multiple relation I mean a relation which in any concrete instance of its occurrence necessarily involves more than two relata. For example, when John likes Thomas there are only two relata, John and Thomas. But when John gives that book to Thomas there are three relata, John, that book, and Thomas.

Some schools of philosophy, under the influence of the Aristotelian logic and the Aristotelian philosophy, endeavour to get on without admitting any relations at all except that of substance and attribute. Namely all apparent relations are to be resolvable into the concurrent existence of substances with contrasted attributes. It is fairly obvious that the Leibnizian monadology is the necessary outcome of any such philosophy. If you dislike pluralism, there will be only one monad.