Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/378

362 a personality, a demand which makes a certain amount of egoism necessary. It is, however, no absolute egoism, but one that feels itself one with a wider circle, whose welfare it furthers as its own.

When Leibniz said that time is the order of successions, he stated a terrible problem without solving it, for he did not tell us what successions are. For one who regards time as a reality independent of the things which pass, the question appears simple. But if time itself vanishes too, what do we mean by saying that one phenomenon has preceded or followed another? L. reduces the idea of time to that of occasional cause. In a group of facts, those which are the condition of the others are said to precede them, and vice versâ. The principle of mechanical determinism may be reduced to the statement that the states of a system of material points are determined, the one by the other, and that the determining states are called by definition anterior to the determined states, it being possible for each to be at the same time determined and determining, according as one considers its relation to the one or to the other of the different states. But it may be said that even here we employ the notion of simultaneity, which implies time. We must deepen the notion of simultaneity. A motionless world would be out of time, or rather time would not exist; yet we should speak of the simultaneity of the different relations existing between the parts of this world. As soon as one considers variable states, he is led to imagine dynamic states which enter into time; but one needs, as point of departure, only static states, and consequently does not fall into a vicious circle, as if he had really assumed at the start the temporal notion of simultaneity. This latter notion is clearly implied in phenomena like the mutual attraction of two bodies, for these stand to each other in the double relation of cause and effect. If there existed several series of phenomena absolutely independent of each other, these series would belong to different times, so that there would be neither simultaneity nor succession between two phenomena belonging respectively to these distinct series. Here one might ask if the existence of an omniscient intelligence would result in resolving into a unity these independent times. It cannot be denied that this doctrine comes into conflict with common sense, but such has been the fate of most thorough-going metaphysical theories. If time reduces itself in reality to the relation of occasional cause to effect, strictly speaking, it can admit of no measure. All that one can do in the case of a series of phenomena united by this unique relation is to count these phenomena. But the most complete