with its object as a part of the physical world. Nevertheless, both these authors, and especially Mach, deserve mention as having made serious contributions to the consideration of our problem.
When a point or an instant is defined as a class of sensible qualities, the first impression produced is likely to be one of wild and wilful paradox. Certain considerations apply here, however, which will again be relevant when we come to the definition of numbers. There is a whole type of problems which can be solved by such definitions, and almost always there will be at first an effect of paradox. Given a set of objects any two of which have a relation of the sort called “symmetrical and transitive,” it is almost certain that we shall come to regard them as all having some common quality, or as all having the same relation to some one object outside the set. This kind of case is important, and I shall therefore try to make it clear even at the cost of some repetition of previous definitions.
A relation is said to be “symmetrical” when, if one term has this relation to another, then the other also has it to the one. Thus “brother or sister” is a “symmetrical” relation: if one person is a brother or a sister of another, then the other is a brother or sister of the one. Simultaneity, again, is a symmetrical relation; so is equality in size. A relation is said to be “transitive” when, if one term has this relation to another, and the other to a third, then the one has it to the third. The symmetrical relations mentioned just now are also transitive—provided, in the case of “brother or sister,” we allow a person to be counted as his or her own brother or sister, and provided, in the case of simultaneity, we mean complete simultaneity, i.e. beginning and ending together.
