This continuity is
merely the name for the aggregate of a variety of properties of events
in connexion with the relation of extension.

In the first place, this relation is transitive; secondly, every event
contains other events as parts of itself; thirdly every event is a part
of other events; fourthly given any two finite events there are events
each of which contains both of them as parts; and fifthly there is a
special relation between events which I term 'junction.'

Two events have junction when there is a third event of which both
events are parts, and which is such that no part of it is separated from
both of the two given events. Thus two events with junction make up
exactly one event which is in a sense their sum.

Only certain pairs of events have this property. In general any event
containing two events also contains parts which are separated from both
events.

There is an alternative definition of the junction of two events which I
have adopted in my recent book[7]. Two events have junction when there
is a third event such that (i) it overlaps both events and (ii) it has
no part which is separated from both the given events. If either of
these alternative definitions is adopted as the definition of junction,
the other definition appears as an axiom respecting the character of
junction as we know it in nature. But we are not thinking of logical
definition so much as the formulation of the results of direct
observation. There is a certain continuity inherent in the observed
unity of an event, and these two definitions of junction are really
axioms based on observation respecting the character of this continuity.

[7] Cf. _Enquiry_.

The relations of whole and part and of overlapping are particular cases
of the junction of events. But it is possible for events to have
junction when they are separate from each other; for example, the upper
and the lower part of the Great Pyramid are divided by some imaginary
horizontal plane.

The continuity which nature derives from events has been obscured by the
illustrations which I have been obliged to give. For example I have
taken the existence of the Great Pyramid as a fairly well-known fact to
which I could safely appeal as an illustration. This is a type of event
which exhibits itself to us as the situation of a recognisable object;
and in the example chosen the object is so widely recognised that it has
received a name. An object is an entity of a different