s. Therefore the flow
of time might assume an infinite rapidity, the entire past, present, and
future of material objects or of isolated systems might be spread out
all at once in space, without there being anything to change either in
the formulae of the scientist or even in the language of common sense.
The number _t_ would always stand for the same thing; it would still
count the same number of correspondences between the states of the
objects or systems and the points of the line, ready drawn, which would
be then the "course of time."
Yet succession is an undeniable fact, even in the material world. Though
our reasoning on isolated systems may imply that their history, past,
present, and future, might be instantaneously unfurled like a fan, this
history, in point of fact, unfolds itself gradually, as if it occupied a
duration like our own. If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, I
must, willy nilly, wait until the sugar melts. This little fact is big
with meaning. For here the time I have to wait is not that mathematical
time which would apply equally well to the entire history of the
material world, even if that history were spread out instantaneously in
space. It coincides with my impatience, that is to say, with a certain
portion of my own duration, which I cannot protract or contract as I
like. It is no longer something _thought_, it is something _lived_. It
is no longer a relation, it is an absolute. What else can this mean than
that the glass of water, the sugar, and the process of the sugar's
melting in the water are abstractions, and that the Whole within which
they have been cut out by my senses and understanding progresses, it may
be in the manner of a consciousness?
Certainly, the operation by which science isolates and closes a system
is not altogether artificial. If it had no objective foundation, we
could not explain why it is clearly indicated in some cases and
impossible in others. We shall see that matter has a tendency to
constitute _isolable_ systems, that can be treated geometrically. In
fact, we shall define matter by just this tendency. But it is only a
tendency. Matter does not go to the end, and the isolation is never
complete. If science does go to the end and isolate completely, it is
for convenience of study; it is understood that the so-called isolated
system remains subject to certain external influences. Science merely
leaves these alone, either because it finds them slight enou
|