Page:Scepticism and Animal Faith.djvu/42

 physical time to vacancy or to the intuition of changelessness; and this lapse of the intuition in physical time is an actual change. Evidently, however, it is not a given change, since neither vacancy nor the intuition of changelessness can reveal it. It is revealed, if revealed at all, by a further intuition of specious change taken as a report. Actual change, if it is to be known at all, must be known by belief and not by intuition. Doubt is accordingly always possible regarding the existence of actual change. Having renounced my faith in nature, I must not weakly retain faith in experience. This intuition of change might be false; it might be the only fact in the universe, and perfectly changeless. I should then be that intuition, but it would not bring me any true knowledge of anything actual. On the contrary, it would be an illusion, presenting a false object, since it would present nothing but change, when the only actual reality, namely its own, was unchanging. On the other hand, if this intuition of change was no illusion, but a change was actually occurring and the universe had passed into its present state out of a previous state which was different (if, for instance, this very intuition of change had grown more articulate or more complex), I should then be right in hazarding a very bold assertion, namely, that it is known to me that what now is was not always, that there are things not given, that there is genesis in nature, and that time is real.