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VI

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE TIME-PROCESS^[1]

ARGUMENT

Significance of Dr. McTaggart's admission that the Hegelian Dialectic cannot explain the reality of succession in Time.' The reason of its failure, viz. that Time, Change, and Individuality are features of Reality we abstract from in our formation of Concepts. Hence abstract metaphysics always fail to account for Reality. Must we then either accept scepticism or reject a procedure on which all science rests? No; for to admit the defects of our thought-symbols for reality need merely stimulate us to improve them. As for science, it uses abstractions in a radically different way, to test and to predict experience. Thus 'law' is a methodological device for practical purposes. Science practical both in its origin and in its criterion, and ethics as the science of ends conditions meta-physics. Such an ethical metaphysic accepts and implies the reality of the Time-process. And therefore it has a right to look forward to the realisation of its ends in time, and forms the true Evolutionism.

I Do not know whether Dr. McTaggart's interesting investigation of the relations of the Hegelian Dialectic. to Time (or rather to the Time-process^[2]) has obtained the attention it merits, but the problem he has so ably handled is of such vital importance, and the attitude of

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↑ Published in Mind, N.S. 13 (January 1895), as a reply to Dr. McTaggart's articles in N.S., Nos. 8 and 10, which were subsequently included in his Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, chap. v, to which Dr. McTaggart has appended a note (pp. 197-202) replying to me (as far as bis standpoint permitted}. His chief contention is that the timeless' concept is not, as I maintained, a methodological device but a necessity of thought. To which the reply is that all 'necessities of thought' are primarily methodological devices. See Axioms as Postulates. I have reprinted the article as it stood.
↑ I prefer to use the latter phrase in order to indicate that I do not regard 'Time' as anything but an abstraction formed to express an ultimate characteristic of our experience, and in order to check, if possible, the tendency of metaphysicians to substitute verbal criticism of that abstraction for a consideration of the facts which we mean when we say, e.g. that the world is in Time.' Of that tendency, I fear, even Dr. McTaggart cannot always be acquitted (e.g. Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, pp. 161-163), and it seems to me to be at the root of most of the metaphysical puzzles on the subject.

[1] Published in Mind, N.S. 13 (January 1895), as a reply to Dr. McTaggart's articles in N.S., Nos. 8 and 10, which were subsequently included in his Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, chap. v, to which Dr. McTaggart has appended a note (pp. 197-202) replying to me (as far as bis standpoint permitted}. His chief contention is that the timeless' concept is not, as I maintained, a methodological device but a necessity of thought. To which the reply is that all 'necessities of thought' are primarily methodological devices. See Axioms as Postulates. I have reprinted the article as it stood.

[2] I prefer to use the latter phrase in order to indicate that I do not regard 'Time' as anything but an abstraction formed to express an ultimate characteristic of our experience, and in order to check, if possible, the tendency of metaphysicians to substitute verbal criticism of that abstraction for a consideration of the facts which we mean when we say, e.g. that the world is in Time.' Of that tendency, I fear, even Dr. McTaggart cannot always be acquitted (e.g. Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, pp. 161-163), and it seems to me to be at the root of most of the metaphysical puzzles on the subject.

[1]

[2]