388 ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE 



had no experience of any extended body with nothing 

 beyond it. 



Similarly, " time " is an abstraction from abstractions. 

 Things, in our experience, really endure more or less 

 and succeed one another. But the ideas " endurance " 

 and " succession," are nothing but abstractions in them- 

 selves, though they are real and objective as qualities of 

 enduring and succeeding things. " Time " is altogether 

 ideal ; and when we speak of events as occurring in time, 

 it is a mere mode of speaking which denotes the endurance 

 and succession of succeeding things and the exclusion of 

 one succeeding thing by another, together with the 

 duration of the mutual exclusion of all succeeding things. 

 In the absence then of any succession there could be no 

 time." 



But the things which succeed and which are extended, 

 we can, and do, know more or less perfectly, as they 

 are in themselves, and apart from any distortion of 

 truth due to the action of our own faculties. Thus, as 

 beforesaid, two marbles are two, and would be two 

 (we see and know) were every human mind annihilated, 

 and would still be extended and rounded in shape 

 were there no living creature on the surface of our 

 planet. 



We saw in the last chapter that the Greek philo- 

 sophers, Arcesilaus and Carneades,* taught that we could 

 know nothing but appearances, and that all our know- 

 ledge was merely relative. Unlike Pyrrho, they did not 

 hesitate to affirm the truth of their systems of philosophy. 

 The same system is professed by some amongst us to-day, 

 and may be thus stated : 



i . All our knowledge is merely relative. 

 * S2e ante, p. 330. 



