554 REPOET — 1891. 



totality of tilings, by ■which ereryone must admit that actions are S'liided, mav not 

 include the future as well as the past, and that to attempt to deduce those actions from 

 the past only -will prove impossible.' In some way matter can be moved, guided, 

 disturbed, by the agency of living beings ; in some way there is a control, a 

 directing-agency active, and events are caused at its choice and will that would 

 not otherwise happen. 



A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of regarding 

 things ; we progress through phenomena at a certain definite pace, and this sub- 

 jective advance we interpret in an objective manner, as if events necessarily happened 

 in this order and at this precise rate. But that may be only our mode of regarding 

 them. The events may be in some sense existent always, both past and future, 

 and it may be we who are arriving at them, not they which are happening. The 

 analogy of a traveller in a railway train is useful. If he could never leave the 

 train nor alter its pace, he would probably consider the landscapes as necessarily 

 successive, and be unable to conceive their co-existence. 



The analogy of a solid cut into sections is closer. We recognise the universe 

 in sections, and each section we call the present. It is like the string of slices cut 

 by a microtome ; it is our way of studying the whole. But we may err in sup- 

 posing that the body only exists in the slices which pass before our microscope in 

 regular order and succession. 



We perceive, therefore, a possible fourth-dimensional aspect about time, the 

 inexorableness of whose flow may be a natural part of our present limitations. And 

 if once we grasp the idea that past and future may be actuallj' existing, we can 

 recognise that they may have a controlling influence on all present action, and the 

 two together may constitute ' the higher plane,' or the totality of things, after which, 

 as it seems to me, we are impelled to seek, in connection with the directing of force 

 or determinism, and the action of living beings consciously directed to a definite and 

 preconceived end. 



Inanimate matter is controlled by the vis a tergo ; it is operated on solely by the 

 past.'- Given certain conditions, and the eil'ect in due time follows. Attempts have 

 been made to apply the same principle to living and conscious beings, but without 

 much success. These seem to work for an object, even if it be the mere seeking 

 for food ; they are controlled by the idea of something not yet palpable. Given 

 certain conditions, and their action cannot certainly be predicted ; they have a sense 

 of option and free will. Either their actions are really arbitrary and indeterminate 

 — which is highly improbable — or they are controlled by the future as well as bv 

 the past. Imagine beings thus controlled : automata you may still call them, but 

 they will be living automata, and will exhibit all the characteristics of live creatures. 

 Moreover, if they have a merely experiential Imowledge, necessarily limited by 

 memory and bounded by the past, they will be unable to predict each other's actions 

 with any certainty, because the whole of the data are not before them. May not a 

 clearer apprehension of the meaning of life and will and determinism be gradually 

 reached in some such direction as this F 



By what means is force exerted, and what, definitely, is force or stress ? I can 

 hardly put the question here and now so as to be intelligible, except to those who 

 have approached and thought over the same difficulties ; but I venture to say that 

 there is here something not provided for in the orthodox scheme of physics ; that 

 modern physics is not complete, and that a line of possible advance lies in this 

 direction. 



I might go further. Given that force can be exerted by an act of will, do we 

 understand the mechanism by which this is done ? And if there is a gap in our 

 knowledge between the conscious idea of a motion and the liberation of muscular 

 energy needed to accomplish it, how do we know that a body may not be moved 



' The expression ' controlled by the future ' I first heard in a conversation with 

 G. F. Fitzgerald, who seemed to consider it applicable to all events, without 

 exception. 



^ This is, of course, not assertion, but suggestion. It may be erroneous to draw 

 any such distinction between animate and inanimate. 



