in common with apparent
nature. Why--on this theory--should the cause which influences the mind
to perception have any characteristics in common with the effluent
apparent nature? In particular, why should it be in space? Why should it
be in time? And more generally, What do we know about mind which would
allow us to infer any particular characteristics of a cause which should
influence mind to particular effects?

The transcendence of time beyond nature gives some slight reason for
presuming that causal nature should occupy time. For if the mind
occupies periods of time, there would seem to be some vague reason for
assuming that influencing causes occupy the same periods of time, or at
least, occupy periods which are strictly related to the mental periods.
But if the mind does not occupy volumes of space, there seems to be no
reason why causal nature should occupy any volumes of space. Thus space
would seem to be merely apparent in the same sense as apparent nature is
merely apparent. Accordingly if science is really investigating causes
which operate on the mind, it would seem to be entirely on the wrong
tack in presuming that the causes which it is seeking for have spatial
relations. Furthermore there is nothing else in our knowledge analogous
to these causes which influence the mind to perception. Accordingly,
beyond the rashly presumed fact that they occupy time, there is really
no ground by which we can determine any point of their character. They
must remain for ever unknown.

Now I assume as an axiom that science is not a fairy tale. It is not
engaged in decking out unknowable entities with arbitrary and fantastic
properties. What then is it that science is doing, granting that it is
effecting something of importance? My answer is that it is determining
the character of things known, namely the character of apparent nature.
But we may drop the term 'apparent'; for there is but one nature, namely
the nature which is before us in perceptual knowledge. The characters
which science discerns in nature are subtle characters, not obvious at
first sight. They are relations of relations and characters of
characters. But for all their subtlety they are stamped with a certain
simplicity which makes their consideration essential in unravelling the
complex relations between characters of more perceptive insistence.

The fact that the bifurcation of nature into causal and apparent
components does not express what we mean b