VI 



THE METAPHYSICS OF THE TIME-PROCESS 1 



ARGUMENT 



Significance of Dr. McTaggart s admission that the Hegelian Dialectic cannot 

 explain the reality of succession in Time. The reason of its failure, 

 viz. that Time, Change, and Individuality are features of Reality we 

 abstract from in our formation of Concepts. Hence abstract metaphysics 

 always fail to account for Reality. Must we then either accept sceptic 

 ism or reject a procedure on which all science rests ? No ; for to admit 

 the defects of our thought-symbols for reality need merely stimulate us to 

 improve them. As for science, it uses abstractions in a radically differ 

 ent way, to test and to predict experience. Thus law is a methodo 

 logical device for practical purposes. Science practical both in its origin 

 and in its criterion, and ethics as the science of ends conditions meta 

 physics. Such an ethical metaphysic accepts and implies the reality of 

 the Time-process. And therefore it has a right to look forward to the 

 realisation of its ends in time, and forms the true Evolutionism. 



I DO not know whether Dr. McTaggart s interesting 

 investigation of the relations of the Hegelian Dialectic 

 to Time (or rather to the Time-process 2 ) has obtained 

 the attention it merits, but the problem he has so ably 

 handled is of such vital importance, and the attitude of 



1 Published in Mind, N.S. 13 (January 1895), as a reply to Dr. McTaggart s 

 articles in N.S. , Nos. 8 and 10, which were subsequently included in his Studies 

 in the Hegelian Dialectic, chap. v. , to which Dr. McTaggart has appended a 

 note (pp. 197-202) replying to me (as far as his standpoint permitted). His 

 chief contention is that the timeless concept is not, as I maintained, a methodo 

 logical device but a necessity of thought. To which the reply is that all 

 necessities of thought are primarily methodological devices. See Axioms as 

 Postulates. I have reprinted the article as it stood. 



2 I prefer to use the latter phrase in order to indicate that I do not regard 

 Time as anything but an abstraction formed to express an ultimate character 

 istic of our experience, and in order to check, if possible, the tendency of 

 metaphysicians to substitute verbal criticism of that abstraction for a consideration 

 of the facts which we mean when we say, e.g. that the world is in Time. Of 

 that tendency, I fear, even Dr. McTaggart cannot always be acquitted (e.g. 

 Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, pp. 161-163), and it seems to me to be at 

 the root of most of the metaphysical puzzles on the subject. 



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