d 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.

The materialistic theory has all the completeness of the thought of the
middle ages, which had a complete answer to everything, be it in heaven
or in hell or in nature. There is a trimness about it, with its
instantaneous present, its vanished past, its non-existent future, and
its inert matter. This trimness is very medieval and ill accords with
brute fact.

The theory which I am urging admits a greater ultimate mystery and a
deeper ignorance. The past and the future meet and mingle in the
ill-defined present. The passage of nature which is only another name
for the creative force of existence has no narrow ledge of definite
instantaneous present within which to operate. Its operative presence
which is now urging nature forward must be sought for throughout the
whole, in the remotest past as well as in the narrowest breadth of any
present duration. Perhaps also in the unrealised future. Perhaps also in
the future which might be as well as the actual future which will be. It
is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of the creative
passage of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of
human intelligence.

CHAPTER IV

THE METHOD OF EXTENSIVE ABSTRACTION

To-day's lecture must commence with the consideration of limited events.
We shall then be in a position to enter upon an investigation of the
factors in nature which are represented by our conception of space.

The duration which is the immediate disclosure of our sense-awareness is
discriminated into parts. There is the part which is the life of all
nature within a room, and there is the part which is the life of all
nature within a table in the room. These parts are limited events. They
have the endurance of the present duration, and they are parts of it.
But whereas a duration is an unlimited whole and in a certain limited
sense is all that there is, a limited event possesses a completely
defined limitation of extent which is expressed for us in
spatio-temporal terms.

We ar