ir6 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



(3) The question of time, so long as we confine our- 

 selves to one private world, is rather less complicated 

 than that of space, and we can see pretty clearly how it 

 might be dealt with by such methods as we have been 

 considering. Events of which we are conscious do not 

 last merely for a mathematical instant, but always for 

 some finite time, however short. Even if there be a 

 physical world such as the mathematical theory of motion 

 supposes, impressions on our sense-organs produce sensa- 

 tions which are not merely and strictly instantaneous, and 

 therefore the objects of sense of which we are immediately 

 conscious are not strictly instantaneous. Instants, there- 

 fore, are not among the data of experience, and, if 

 legitimate, must be either inferred or constructed. It is 

 difficult to see how they can be validly inferred ; thus we 

 are left with the alternative that they must be constructed. 

 How is this to be done ? 



Immediate experience provides us with two time- 

 relations among events : they may be simultaneous, or 

 one may be earlier and the other later. These two are 

 both part of the crude data ; it is not the case that only 

 the events are given, and their time-order is added by 

 our subjective activity. The time-order, within certain 

 limits, is as much given as the events. In any story of 

 adventure you will find such passages as the following : 

 " With a cynical smile he pointed the revolver at the 

 breast of the dauntless youth. l At the word three I 

 shall fire,' he said. The words one and two had already 

 been spoken with a cool and deliberate distinctness. The 

 word three was forming on his lips. At this moment a 

 blinding flash of lightning rent the air." Here we have 

 simultaneity not due, as Kant would have us believe, to 

 the subjective mental apparatus of the dauntless youth, 

 but given as objectively as the revolver and the lightning. 



