Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/241

 spatio-temporal continuum in every alternative spatial situation and at all alternative times.

Fundamentally, the spatio-temporal continuum is the general system of relatedness of all possibilities, in so far as that system is limited by its relevance to the general fact of actuality. Also it is inherent in the nature of possibility that it should include this relevance to actuality. For possibility is that in which there stands achievability, abstracted from achievement.

It has already been emphasised that an actual occasion is to be conceived as a limitation; and that this process of limitation can be still further characterised as a gradation. This characteristic of an actual occasion (α, say) requires further elucidation: An indeterminateness stands in the essence of any eternal object (A, say). The actual occasion a synthesises in itself every eternal object; and, in so doing, it includes the complete determinate relatedness of A to every other eternal object, or set of eternal objects. This synthesis is a limitation of realisation but not of content. Each relationship preserves its inherent self-identity. But grades of entry into this synthesis are inherent in each actual occasion, such as α. These grades can be expressed only as relevance of value. This relevance of value varies — as comparing different occasions — in grade from the inclusion of the individual essence of A as an element in the aesthetic synthesis (in some grade of inclusion) to the lowest grade which is the exclusion of the individual essence of A as an element in the aesthetic synthesis. In so far as it stands in this lowest grade, every determinate relationship of A is merely ingredient in the occasion in respect to the