Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/75

 relations are treated as fundamental and the natural elements are introduced as in their capacity of relata. But of course this is merely another mode of expression, since relations and relata imply each other.

14. Events. 14.1 Events are the relata of the fundamental homogeneous relation of ‘extension.’ Every ‘event extends over other events which are parts of itself, and every event is extended over by other events of which it is part. The externality of nature is the outcome of this relation of extension. Two events are mutually external, or are ‘separate,’ if there is no event which is part of both. ‘Time and space both spring from the relation of extension. Their derivation will be considered in detail in subsequent parts of this enquiry. It follows that time and space express relations between events. Other natural elements which are not events are only in time and space derivatively, namely, by reason of their relations to events. Great confusion has been caused to the philosophy of science by this neglect of the derivative nature of the spatial and temporal relations of objects of various types.

14.2 The relation of extension exhibits events as actual — as matters of fact — by means of its properties which issue in spatial relations; and it exhibits events as involving the becomingness of nature — its passage or creative advance — by means of its properties which issue in temporal relations. Thus events are essentially elements of actuality and elements of becomingness. An actual event is thus divested of all possibility. It is what does become in nature. It can never happen again; for essentially it is just itself, there and then. An event is Just what it is, and is just how it is related and it is nothing else. Any event, however similar, with different