272 The Origin of a 'Thing' and its Nature 



about the behaviour of other things, nor can we make a 

 new class of realities or things to put it in. All analysis is 

 but the finding out of the different centres of behaviour 

 which a whole given outburst includes. And the whole, if 

 unanalyzable to any degree, is itself a thing, rather than a 

 collection of things. 



But the second aspect of a thing's reality is just as 

 important. Behaviour means in some way change. Our 

 lump would remain a lump, and never become a thing if, 

 to adhere to our phenomenal way of speaking, it did not 

 pass through a series of changes. A thing must have a 

 career; and the length of its career is of immediate inter- 

 est. We get to know the thing not only by the amount 

 of its behaviour, secured by examining a cross-section, so 

 to speak, but also by the increase in the number of these 

 sections which we are able to secure. The successive 

 stages of behaviour are necessary in order really to see 

 what the behaviour is. This fact underlies the whole 

 series of determinations which ordinarily characterize 

 things, such as cause, change, growth, development, etc., 

 as comes out further below. 



The strict adherence to the definition of a thing in 

 terms of behaviour, therefore, would seem to require that 

 we waited for the changes in any case to go through a 

 part at least of their progress ; for the career to be un- 

 rolled, that is, at least in part. Immediate description 

 gives, as far as it is truly immediate, no science, no real 

 thing with any richness of content ; it gives merely the 

 snap-object of the child. And if this is true of science, of 

 everyday knowledge which we live by, how much more 

 of the complete knowledge of things desiderated by phi- 

 losophy ? It would be an interesting task to show that 



