Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/22

 and that it is this observed continuity of existence which guarantees the persistence of material. Exactly so; but this gives away the whole traditional concept. For a ‘continuity of existence’ must mean an unbroken duration of existence. Accordingly it is admitted that the ultimate fact for observational knowledge is perception through a duration; namely, that the content of a specious present, and not that of a durationless instant, is an ultimate datum for science.

2.5 It is evident that the conception of the instant of time as an ultimate entity is the source of all our difficulties of explanation. If there are such ultimate entities, instantaneous nature is an ultimate fact.

Our perception of time is as a duration, and these instants have only been introduced by reason of a supposed necessity of thought. In fact absolute time is just as much a metaphysical monstrosity as absolute space. The way out of the perplexities, as to the ultimate data of science in terms of which physical explanation is ultimately to be expressed, is to express the essential scientific concepts of time, space and material as issuing from fundamental relations between events and from recognitions of the characters of events. These relations of events are those immediate deliverances of observation which are referred to when we say that events are spread through time and space.

3. Perception. 3.1 The conception of one universal nature embracing the fragmentary perceptions of events by one percipient and the many perceptions by diverse percipients is surrounded with difficulties. In the first place there is what we will call the ‘Berkeleyan Dilemma’ which crudely and shortly may be stated thus: Perceptions are in the mind and universal nature is out