DYNAMIC QUALITY OF THE WORLD 93 



(not its experimental verification) we cannot mean 

 "later" as judged by consciousness; its obviousness is 

 not bound up with any speculations as to the behaviour 

 of consciousness. Do we then mean "later" as judged 

 by the physical criterion of time's arrow, i.e. corre- 

 sponding to a greater proportion of the random element? 

 But that would be tautological — the cards are more 

 disarranged when there is more of the random element. 

 We did not mean a tautology; we unwittingly accepted 

 as a basis for our thought about the question an unam- 

 biguous trend from past to future in the space-time where 

 the operation of shuffling is performed. 



The crux of the matter is that, although a change 

 described as sorting is the exact opposite to a change 

 described as shuffling we cannot imagine a cause of 

 sorting to be the exact opposite of a cause of shuffling. 

 Thus a reversal of the time-direction which turns 

 shuffling into sorting does not make the appropriate 

 transformation of their causes. Shuffling can have in- 

 organic causes, but sorting is the prerogative of mind or 

 instinct. We cannot believe that it is merely an orienta- 

 tion with respect to the time-direction which differentiates 

 us from inorganic nature. Shuffling is related to sorting 

 (so far as the change of configuration is concerned) as 

 plus is to minus; but to say that the cause of shuffling 

 is related to the cause of sorting in the same way would 

 seem equivalent to saying that the activities of matter 

 and mind are related like plus and minus — which 

 surely is nonsense. Hence if we view the world from 

 future to past so that shuffling and sorting are inter- 

 changed, their causes do not follow suit, and the rational 

 connection is broken. To restore coherency we must 

 postulate that by this change of direction something 

 else has been reversed, viz. the trend in world-texture 



