Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/240

 spatio-temporal relationship, in terms of which the actual course of events is to be expressed, is nothing else than a selective limitation within the general systematic relationships among eternal objects. By ‘limitation,’ as applied to the spatio-temporal continuum, I mean those matter-of-fact determinations — such as the three dimensions of space, and the four dimensions of the spatio-temporal continuum — which are inherent in the actual course of events, but which present themselves as arbitrary in respect to a more abstract possibility. The consideration of these general limitations at the base of actual things, as distinct from the limitations peculiar to each actual occasion, will be more fully resumed in the chapter on ‘God.’

Further, the status of all possibility in reference to actuality requires a reference to this spatio-temporal continuum. In any particular consideration of a possibility we may conceive this continuum to be transcended. But in so far as there is any definite reference to actuality, the definite how of transcendence of that spatio-temporal continuum is required. Thus primarily the spatio-temporal continuum is a locus of relational possibility, selected from the more general realm of systematic relationship. This limited locus of relational possibility expresses one limitation of possibility inherent in the general system of the process of realisation. Whatever possibility is generally coherent with that system falls within this limitation. Also whatever is abstractedly possible in relation to the general course of events — as distinct from the particular limitations introduced by particular occasions — pervades the