present and is one time.[1] And, if so, space and time are not alien from quality; and we have seen that their unity and identity is everywhere ideal.
I may be told, doubtless, that this is irrelevant, and I cannot say that it is not so, and I will pass rapidly to another point. I think it likely that the alleged chasm between quality and space and time may rest on the supposed absolute exclusivity of the two latter. If two things are the same or different by belonging to the same or different spaces or times, these samenesses and differences, it will be said, are something quite apart and unique. They are not attributable to a ‘what,’ but merely to ‘existence.’ In meeting this objection I will permit myself to repeat some of the substance of Chapter xix.
Certainly the diversity of space, and again of time, has a character of its own. Certainly this character, though as we have seen it is nothing when bare, on the other hand is not merely the same with other characters and cannot be resolved into them. All this is true, but it hardly shows that the character of space or time is not a character, or that this character is not an instance of the one principle of identity in difference. And hence it is, I presume, the exclusiveness of space and time on which stress is to be laid. Now utterly exclusive the parts of space and time are admitted not to be, for, ex hyp., they admit other characters and serve to differentiate them, and again one space or one time is taken to be the real identity of the other characters which it includes. Nor again can space and time be taken truly as barely external to the other qualities which they further qualify. They may remain so relatively and for our knowledge, just as in a qualitative whole the connection of qualities may remain relatively external. But a merely external qualification, we have seen, is but appearance and in the end is not rational or real (See Notes A and B).
The exclusiveness of a space or a time is to hold then, I presume, only against other times and spaces, and it is only as viewed in this one way that it is taken as absolute. Each part of space or time as against any other part is a repellent unit, and this its unity, and internal identity, is taken to lie merely in its ‘existence.’ But apparently here it is forgotten that the exclusiveness depends on the whole. It is only because it is in ‘this’ series that the ‘this’ is unique, and, if so, the ‘this,’ as we have seen, is not merely exclusive but has a self-transcendent character. So that, if there were really but one series of space or of time, and if in this way uniqueness were absolute, I cannot perceive how that could found an objection against identity. For inside the series, even if unique, there is a unity and identity which is ideal, and
- ↑ I may refer on these points not only to this present work, but also to my Principles of Logic, pp. 50-55.
