are known to us merely as the relata in the serial relation which is the
time-ordering relation, and the time-ordering relation is merely known
to us as relating the instants. Namely, the relation and the instants
are jointly known to us in our apprehension of time, each implying the
other.

This is the absolute theory of time. Frankly, I confess that it seems to
me to be very unplausible. I cannot in my own knowledge find anything
corresponding to the bare time of the absolute theory. Time is known to
me as an abstraction from the passage of events. The fundamental fact
which renders this abstraction possible is the passing of nature, its
development, its creative advance, and combined with this fact is
another characteristic of nature, namely the extensive relation between
events. These two facts, namely the passage of events and the extension
of events over each other, are in my opinion the qualities from which
time and space originate as abstractions. But this is anticipating my
own later speculations.

Meanwhile, returning to the absolute theory, we are to suppose that time
is known to us independently of any events in time. What happens in time
occupies time. This relation of events to the time occupied, namely this
relation of occupation, is a fundamental relation of nature to time.
Thus the theory requires that we are aware of two fundamental relations,
the time-ordering relation between instants, and the time-occupation
relation between instants of time and states of nature which happen at
those instants.

There are two considerations which lend powerful support to the reigning
theory of absolute time. In the first place time extends beyond nature.
Our thoughts are in time. Accordingly it seems impossible to derive time
merely from relations between elements of nature. For in that case
temporal relations could not relate thoughts. Thus, to use a metaphor,
time would apparently have deeper roots in reality than has nature. For
we can imagine thoughts related in time without any perception of
nature. For example we can imagine one of Milton's angels with thoughts
succeeding each other in time, who does not happen to have noticed that
the Almighty has created space and set therein a material universe. As a
matter of fact I think that Milton set space on the same absolute level
as time. But that need not disturb the illustration. In the second place
it is difficult to derive the true serial character of time from