Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/82



16. Apprehension of Events. 16.1 It is the purpose of this chapter to summarise the leading characteristics of our knowledge of nature as diversified into a complex of events.

Perception is an awareness of events, or happenings, forming a partially discerned complex within the background of a simultaneous whole of nature. This awareness is definitely related to one event, or group of events, within the discerned complex. This event is called the percipient event. The simultaneity of the whole of nature comprising the discerned events is the special relation of that background of nature to the percipient event. This background is that complete event which is the whole of nature simultaneous with the percipient event, which is itself part of that whole. Such a complete whole of nature is called a ‘duration.’ A duration (in the sense in which henceforth the word will be used) is not an abstract stretch of time, and to that extent the term ‘duration’ is misleading. In perception the associated duration is apprehended as an essential element in the awareness, but it is not discriminated into all its parts and qualities. It is the complete subject matter for a discrimination which is only very partially performed.

Thus the whole continuum of nature ‘now-present’ means one whole event (a duration), rendered definite by the limitation ‘now-present’ and extending over all events now-present. Namely, the various finite events now-present for an awareness are all parts of one asso-