CHAPTER IV. Space and Time

SPACE AND TIME

§ 1. Are time and space ultimately real or only phenomenal? § 2. The space and time of perception are limited, sensibly continuous, and consist of a quantitative element together with a qualitative character dependent on relation to the here and now of immediate individual feeling. § 3. Conceptual space and time are created from the perceptual data by a combined process of synthesis, analysis, and abstraction. § 4. They are unlimited, infinitely divisible, and there is valid positive ground for regarding them as mathematically continuous. Thus they form infinite continuous series of positions. They involve abstraction from all reference to the here and now of immediate feeling, and are thus homogeneous, i.e. the positions in them are indistinguishable. They are also commonly taken to be unities. § 5. Perceptual space and time cannot be ultimately real, because they involve reference to the here and now of a finite experience; conceptual space and time cannot be ultimately real, because they contain no principle of internal distinction, and are thus not individual. § 6. The attempt to take space and time as real leads to the difficulty about qualities and relations, and so to the indefinite regress. § 7. Space and time contain no principle of unity; there may be many space and time orders in the Absolute which have no spatial or temporal connection with each other. § 8. The antinomies of the infinite divisibility and extent of space and time arise from the indefinite regress involved in the scheme of qualities and relations, and are insoluble so long as the space and time construction is taken for Reality. § 9. The space and time order is an imperfect phenomenal manifestation of the logical relation between the inner purposive lives of finite individuals. Time is an inevitable aspect of finite experience. How space and time are transcended in the Absolute experience we cannot say 241