Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/68

 refusing to perceive—the hostility of the other side. If you want to take a piece of duration as present and as one, you shut your eyes, or in some way are blind to the discretion, and, attending merely to the content, take that as a unity. And, on the other hand, it is as easy to forget every aspect but that of discreteness. But change, as a whole, consists in the union of these two aspects. It is the holding both at once, while laying stress upon the one which for the time is prominent, and while the difficulties are kept out of sight by rapid shuffling. Thus, in asserting that $$A$$ alters, we mean that the one thing is different at different times. We bring this diversity into relation with $$A$$’s qualitative identity, and all seems harmonious. Of course, as we know, even so far, there is a mass of inconsistency, but that is not the main point here. The main point is that, so far, we have not reached a change of $$A$$. The identity of a content $$A$$, in some sort of relation with diverse moments and with varying states—if it means anything at all—is still not what we understand by change. That the mere oneness of a quality can be the unity of a duration will hardly be contended. For change to exist at all, this oneness must be in temporal relation with the diversity. In other words, if the process itself is not one state, the moments are not parts of it; and, if so, they cannot be related in time to one another. On the one hand, $$A$$ remains $$A$$ through a period of any length, and is not changed so far as A. Considered thus, we may say that its duration is mere presence and contains no lapse. But the same duration, if regarded as the succession of $$A$$’s altered states, consists of many pieces. On the other hand, thirdly, this whole succession, regarded as one sequence or period, becomes a unity, and is again present. “Through the present period,” we should boldly say, “$$A$$’s processes have been regular. His rate of growth is normal, and his condition is for the