Page:Philosophical Review Volume 24.djvu/36

20 as having at least a certain degree of reality. For if time is utterly unreal, it cannot matter whether the so-called 'earlier' or 'later' stages of a human life contain more of happiness; and it must be equally indifferent which stages reveal the greater moral, intellectual, and æsthetic attainment. If our time-consciousness is altogether illusory, the distinction of earlier and later is void of real significance. All that we can admit is a whole whose parts exhibit various degrees of good and bad. The order in which these degrees appear to us to be arranged and the direction of this order—the irreversibility of the time-process—have no significance. And thus it must be a matter of indifference whether the more complete realization of value is in what we call the earlier or in what we call the later part.

The acceptance of our belief then would involve the assertion that the order and the irreversibility of the time-process are real. But this is not all: it would involve also, I maintain, the reality of change, of the time-flow, of the passage of earlier into later. For unless change is real, the value of the later stages cannot cancel that of the earlier. Our defence of this thesis will occupy the greater part of this paper. As a first step we must inquire in what sense we are to conceive change as real. As soon as one assents the reality of change or of the time-process, a question arises as to the nature of the past. To some it seems that a consistent believer in the reality of change must ruthlessly banish past events from the domain of the real. But if we do this, have we a conception of the time-process that will justify our belief in the supreme importance of the later stages of life? At first glance it might seem that we have. As life goes on, one stage after another passes into non-existence.