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complex of factors which compose the fact which is the terminus of
sense-awareness places before us nothing corresponding to the trinity of
this natural materialism. This trinity is composed (i) of the temporal
series of extensionless instants, (ii) of the aggregate of material
entities, and (iii) of space which is the outcome of relations of
matter.

There is a wide gap between these presuppositions of the intellectual
theory of materialism and the immediate deliverances of sense-awareness.
I do not question that this materialistic trinity embodies important
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 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 sense-awareness are very indeterminate and dependent on the
individual percipient. Accordingly there is no unique factor in nature
which for every percipient is pre-eminently and necessarily the present.
The passage of nature leaves nothing between the past and the future.
What we perceive as present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with
anticipation. This vividness lights up the discriminate