Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/50

Rh to that extent my thoughts are in space. But it seems nonsense to ask how much volume of the room they occupied, whether it was a cubic foot or a cubic inch; whereas the same thoughts occupy a determinate duration of time, say, from eleven to twelve on a certain date.

Thus whereas the relations of a relative theory of time are required to relate thoughts, it does not seem so obvious that the relations of a relative theory of space are required to relate them. The connexion of thought with space seems to have a certain character of indirectness which appears to be lacking in the connexion of thought with time.

Again the irrevocableness of time does not seem to have any parallel for space. Space, on the relative theory, is the outcome of certain relations between objects commonly said to be in space ; and whenever there are the objects, so related, there is the space. No difficulty seems to arise like that of the inconvenient instants of time which might conceivably turn up again when we thought that we had done with them.

The absolute theory of space is not now generally popular. The knowledge of bare space, as a system of entities known to us in itself and for itself independently of our knowledge of the events in nature, does not seem to correspond to anything in our experience. Space, like time, would appear to be an abstraction from events. According to my own theory it only differentiates itself from time at a somewhat developed stage of the abstractive process. The more usual way of expressing the relational theory of space would be to consider space as an abstraction from the relations between material objects.

Suppose now we assume absolute time and absolute