the same character. Certainly if per impossibile you possibly could have a self-contained intelligible process, that would be the cause of its own continuance, though why it would be so is quite another matter. But then such a process is, so far as I can see, in principle impossible, and at all events I would ask where it is found or how it could exist. To adduce as an instance the motion of a single body in a straight line is to offer that as self-contained, and in itself intelligible, which I should have ventured to produce as perhaps the ne plus ultra of external determination and internal irrationality. And I must on this point refer to the remarks made in the Note to p. 53.
Temporal processes certainly, as they advance from this extreme of mere motion in space and become more concrete, become also more self-contained and more rational in an increasing degree. But to say of any temporal process whatever that it is in the end self-intelligible is, so far as I can perceive, a clear mistake. And if the succession which up to a certain point it contains, is not intelligible, how could that, if by some miracle it propagated itself, be used as a way of making intelligible its own continuance?
It may perhaps prove instructive if we carry this discussion somewhat further. There is, we have seen, no such thing as a continuance without change or as a self-contained and self-intelligible temporal process. But, it may be said, anyhow the existence of something at a certain moment, or up to a certain moment, is a rational ground for concluding to its continued existence at the next moment. Now this I take to be quite erroneous. I maintain on the contrary that no ground could either be more irrational in itself or more wanting in support from our ordinary practice. And first, by way of introduction, let me dispose of any doubt based on the idea of Possibility. The nature of our world is such that we see every day the existence of finite things terminated. The possible termination of any finite temporal existence is therefore suggested by the known character of things. It is an abstract general possibility based on and motived by the known positive character of the world, and it cannot therefore as a possibility be rejected as meaningless. On the contrary, so far as it goes, it gives some ground for the conclusion, ‘This existence will at this point be terminated.’ And I will now dismiss the general question as to mere possibility. But for the actual continuance of a thing, so far as I see, no rational argument can be drawn from its mere presence or its mere continued duration in existence. To say, Because a thing is now at one time it therefore must be at another time, or Because it has been through one duration it therefore must be through another duration, and to offer this argument, not as merely for
