Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/72

, and their union was a mere junction, with oscillation of emphasis from one aspect to the other. And so, psychically also, the timeless unity is a piece of duration, not experienced as successive. Assuredly everything psychical is an event, and it really contains a lapse; but so far as you do not use, or notice, that lapse, it is not there for you and for the purpose in hand. In other words, there is a permanent in the perception of change, which goes right through the succession and holds it together. The permanent can do this, on the one hand, because it occupies duration and is, in its essence, divisible indefinitely. On the other hand, it is one and unchanging, so far as it is regarded or felt, and is used, from that aspect. And the special concrete identities, which thus change, and again do not change, are the key to the particular successions that are perceived. Presence is not absolute timelessness; it is any piece of duration, so far as that is considered from or felt in an identical aspect. And this mere relative absence of lapse has been perverted into the absolute timeless monstrosity which we have ventured to condemn.

But it is one thing to see how a certain feature of our time-perception is possible. It is quite another thing to admit that this feature, as it stands, gives the truth about reality. And that, as we have learnt, is impossible. We are forced to assert that $$A$$ is both continuous and discrete, both successive and present. And our practice of taking it, now as one in a certain respect, and now again as many in another respect, shows only how we practise. The problem calls upon us to answer how these aspects and respects are consistently united in the one thing, either outside of our minds or inside—that makes no difference. And if we fail, as we shall, to bring these features together, we have left the problem unsolved. And, if it is unsolved, then change and motion are incompatible internally, and are set down