Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/269

No. 3.] a permanent basis as a ground of the ceaseless flux of experience, whether it be logically necessary or not.

If we analyze the meaning of a process of change from a conceptual point of view, it would seem to be somewhat as follows: At a given time certain true propositions may be asserted of a given individual. At another given time, certain other true propositions, wholly or partly incompatible with the former set, may be asserted of the same individual. If we consider the propositions as particular values of certain prepositional functions, the particular value considered of the argument of these functions remains the same throughout. This is the symbolic counterpart of the fact that the individual considered maintains his identity.

Evidently, from this point of view, it would be difficult, and perhaps impossible, to formulate in words the reconciliation of the principles of permanence and change. The reason for this difficulty is that, conceptually, we necessarily consider experience as a time-series. Let us attempt to estimate the true bearing of this. In the first place an analogy may be of use. We do not consider the identity of an individual at any given time to depend upon his position in space. At a given time, I should not be a different person if I were in London and not in Edinburgh. That is, identity is not conditioned by the spatial series. Why, then, should it be conditioned by the time-series? It would probably be answered that the nature of the individual is different at different instants of the time-series. He develops (or the reverse) in time; and it certainly seems, at any rate prima facie, that time is more closely bound up with existence than space. But what is the time-series referred to? Not the conceptual or universal time-series, for that is a mental construction. The private time- series of the individual concerned, then? But his time-knowledge is based on change and the existence of the memory-perspective, which implies maintenance of identity. Hence this line of thought bids fair to end in a vicious circle.

The truth is that we can never entirely resolve the difficulty conceptually for reasons we have considered in another