But we have not as yet shown that we cannot vindicate it equally well if we deny the reality of change altogether. And we can imagine some reader protesting, at this juncture, in the following fashion. If the later stage is more important because it is more nearly the whole life, is it not clear that our interest is not in change, but in wholeness? And if so, does it not seem that the way in which men evaluate life can be defended equally well upon the assumption that change is a guise that reality wears for us, but is not characteristic of its inner nature? What we call a difference in temporal position is ultimately only a difference in degree of completeness; and the so-called later stage is simply a larger part of the non-temporal whole.
To this objection I reply as follows. It is indeed true that our chief interest is not in the time-process merely as time-process; one of our main contentions has been that the later stages are more important simply because the life that fills them is more nearly complete.[1] But this does not require us to admit that change is illusory. Moreover, I think it can be shown that if one admits that change is illusory one cannot justify the belief in the compensatory function of the later stages, no matter how strenuously one may insist that wholeness, rather than change, is the thing of chief significance. We shall now try to show this.
Let us designate by a one of the so-called earlier stages of an individual life, by b, c, etc., somewhat later stages, and by n the final stage, assuming for the sake of the argument that there is one. Now according to the view that we are criticizing, which regards the temporal process as illusory, n, which we call the final stage, is, properly speaking, simply our view of the whole life, N; A, the reality corresponding to our a, is a small part of N; B is a larger part, which includes A within itself; C is a still larger part, which includes B; and so on. The series A, B, ... N, which is the real order corresponding to our time-series a ... n, might thus be symbolized by a number of concentric circles, of
- ↑ In other words, our chief interest is not in change as such, but in change as the form of human life.
