Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/422

Rh whether human or physical, is furthermore based upon our views as to the nature of these past events. For the present world consists for us of observed or assumed facts, defined and interpreted in the light of presupposed happenings. Any given present object, for instance, is seen to be this or this object, because we recognize it as identical in character with a fact supposed to have been known in the past. In the main, present Being is thus for us, so to speak, past Being warmed over. There is nothing that we regard as now real unless by virtue of the express or implied judgment that, since in the past this or that has existed, this or that present existence may in consequence be assumed or accepted as a continuation or as an outcome of the realm of past Being. Leave out the realm of the past from our conception of the real world, and our empirical universe at this instant would shrivel, for us, into a mere collection of almost uninterpreted sensations. The world as it is just now has for us Being as a supplement to the world that has been. We shall still further see, in a moment, how manifold are the illustrations of this truth.

In the next place, however, we ascribe, although with a decidedly different emphasis, a form of Being to the future, and to all that is therein to happen. The future, we indeed say, is not yet. But present assertions about the future are, even now, and despite a well-known remark of Aristotle’s, either true or false, and that quite apart from any theory as to fate, or chance, or freedom. A coming eclipse in any given year is regarded by an astronomer as reality, when he adjusts himself to its Being by preparing an expedition to observe that eclipse. Again, it is now