them an extended neutral zone; and simultaneity of events at different places has no absolute meaning. For our selected observer all events along are simultaneous with one another; for another observer the line of events simultaneous with would lie in a different direction. The denial of absolute simultaneity is a natural complement to the denial of absolute motion. The latter asserts that we cannot find out what is the same place at two different times; the former that we cannot find out what is the same time at two different places. It is curious that the philosophical denial of absolute motion is readily accepted, whilst the denial of absolute simultaneity appears to many people revolutionary.
The division into past and future (a feature of time-order which has no analogy in space-order) is closely associated with our ideas of causation and free-will. In a perfectly determinate scheme the past and future may be regarded as lying mapped out—as much available to present exploration as the distant parts of space. Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them. "The formality of taking place" is merely the indication that the observer has on his voyage of exploration passed into the absolute future of the event in question; and it has no important significance. We can be aware of an eclipse in the year 1999, very much as we are aware of an unseen companion to Algol. Our knowledge of things where we are not, and of things when we are not, is essentially the same—an inference (sometimes a mistaken inference) from brain impressions, including memory, here and now.
So, if events are determinate, there is nothing to prevent a person from being aware of an event before it happens; and an event may cause other events previous to it. Thus the eclipse of the Sun in May 1919 caused observers to embark in March. It may be said that it was not the eclipse, but the calculations of the eclipse, which caused the embarkation; but I do not think any such distinction is possible, having regard to the indirect character of our acquaintance with all events except those at the precise point of space where we stand. A detached observer contemplating our world would see some events apparently causing events in their future, others apparently causing events in their past— the truth being that all are linked
