CONSTITUENTS OF MATTER 129 



that there is not really only one man moving, but a suc- 

 cession of films, each with a different momentary man. 

 The illusion of persistence arises only through the ap- 

 proach to continuity in the series of momentary men. 

 Now what I wish to suggest is that in this respect the 

 cinema is a better metaphysician than common sense, 

 physics, or philosophy. The real man too, I believe, 

 however the police may swear to his identity, is really a 

 series of momentary men, each different one from the 

 other, and bound together, not by a numerical identity, 

 but by continuity and certain intrinsic causal laws. And 

 what applies to men applies equally to tables and chairs, 

 the sun, moon and stars. Each of these is to be regarded, 

 not as one single persistent entity, but as a series of 

 entities succeeding each other in time, each lasting for a 

 very brief period, though probably not for a mere mathe- 

 matical instant. In saying this I am only urging the 

 same kind of division in time as we are accustomed to 

 acknowledge in the case of space. A body which fills a 

 cubic foot will be admitted to consist of many smaller 

 bodies, each occupying only a very tiny volume ; similarly 

 a thing which persists for an hour is to be regarded as 

 composed of many things of less duration. A true theory 

 of matter requires a division of things into time-corpuscles 

 as well as into space-corpuscles. 



The world may be conceived as consisting of a multi- 

 tude of entities arranged in a certain pattern. The 

 entities which are arranged I shall call " particulars." 

 The arrangement or pattern results from relations among 

 particulars. Classes or series of particulars, collected to- 

 gether on account of some property which makes it con- 

 venient to be able to speak of them as wholes, are what 

 I call logical constructions or symbolic fictions. The par- 

 ticulars are to be conceived, not on the analogy of bricks 



