Appearance and Reality/Chapter V

by F. H. Bradley

CHAPTER V.

MOTION AND CHANGE AND ITS PERCEPTION.

I am sensible that this chapter will repeat much of the former discussion. It is not for my own pleasure that I write it, but as an attempt to strengthen the reader. Whoever is convinced that change is a self-contradictory appearance, will do well perhaps to pass on towards something which interests him.

Motion has from an early time been criticised severely, and it has never been defended with much success. I will briefly point to the principle on which these criticisms are founded. Motion implies that what is moved is in two places in one time; and this seems not possible. That motion implies two places is obvious; that these places are successive is no less obvious. But, on the other hand, it is clear that the process must have unity. The thing moved must be one; and, again, the time must be one. If the time were only many times, out of relation, and not parts of a single temporal whole, then no motion would be found. But if the time is one, then, as we have seen, it cannot also be many.

A common “explanation” is to divide both the space and the time into discrete corresponding units, taken literally ad libitum. The lapse in this case is supposed to fall somehow between them. But, as a theoretical solution, the device is childish. Greater velocity would in this case be quite impossible; and a lapse, falling between timeless units, has really, as we have seen, no meaning. And where the unity of these lapses, which makes the one duration, is to be situated, we, of course, are not, and could not be, informed. And how this inconsistent mass is related to the identity of the body moved is again unintelligible. What becomes clear is merely this, that motion in space gives no solution of the problem of change. It adds, in space, a further detail which throws no light on the principle. But, on the other side, it makes the discrepancies of change more palpable; and it forces on all but the thoughtless the problem of the identity of a thing which has changed. But change in time, with all its inconsistencies, lies below motion in space; and, if this cannot be defended, motion at once is condemned.

The problem of change underlies that of motion, but the former itself is not fundamental. It points back to the dilemma of the one and the many, the differences and the identity, the adjectives and the thing, the qualities and the relations. How anything can possibly be anything else was a question which defied our efforts. Change is little beyond an instance of this dilemma in principle. It either adds an irrelevant complication, or confuses itself in a blind attempt at compromise. Let us, at the cost of repetition, try to get clear on this head.

Change, it is evident, must be change of something, and it is obvious, further, that it contains diversity. Hence it asserts two of one, and so falls at once under the condemnation of our previous chapters. But it tries to defend itself by this distinction: “Yes, both are asserted, but not both in one; there is a relation, and so the unity and plurality are combined.” But our criticism of relations has destroyed this subterfuge beforehand. We have seen that, when a whole has been thus broken up into relations and terms, it has become utterly self-discrepant. You can truly predicate neither one part of the other part, nor any, nor all, of the whole. And, in its attempt to contain these elements, the whole commits suicide, and destroys them in its death. It would serve no purpose to repeat these inexorable laws. Let us see merely how change condemns itself by entering their sphere.

Something, $A$, changes, and therefore it cannot be permanent. On the other hand, if $A$ is not permanent, what is it that changes? It will no longer be $A$, but something else. In other words, let $A$ be free from change in time, and it does not change. But let it contain change, and at once it becomes $A^{1},A^{2},A^{3}$. Then what becomes of $A$, and of its change, for we are left with something else? Again, we may put the problem thus. The diverse states of $A$ must exist within one time; and yet they cannot, because they are successive.

Let us first take $A$ as timeless, in the sense of out of time. Here the succession of the change must belong to it, or not. In the former case, what is the relation between the succession and $A$? If there is none, $A$ does not change. If there is any, it forces unintelligibly a diversity onto $A$, which is foreign to its nature and incomprehensible. And then this diversity, by itself, will be merely the unsolved problem. If we are not to remove change altogether, then we have, standing in unintelligible relation with the timeless $A$, a temporal change which offers us all our old difficulties unreduced.

$A$ must be taken as falling within the time-series; and, if so, the question will be whether it has or has not got duration. Either alternative is fatal. If the one time, necessary for change, means a single duration, that is self-contradictory, for no duration is single. The would-be unit falls asunder into endless plurality, in which it disappears. The pieces of duration, each containing a before and an after, are divided against themselves, and become mere relations of the illusory. And the attempt to locate the lapse within relations of the discrete leads to hopeless absurdities. Nor, in any case, could we unite intelligibly the plurality of these relations so as to make one duration. In short, therefore, if the one time required for change means one duration, that is not one, and there is no change.

On the other hand, if the change actually took place merely in one time, then it could be no change at all. $A$ is to have a plurality in succession, and yet simultaneously. This is surely a flat contradiction. If there is no duration, and the time is simple, it is not time at all. And to speak of diversity, and of a succession of before and after, in this abstract point, is not possible when we think. Indeed, the best excuse for such a statement would be the plea that it is meaningless. But, if so, change, upon any hypothesis, is impossible. It can be no more than appearance.

And we may perceive its main character. It contains both the necessity and the impossibility of uniting diverse aspects. These differences have broken out in the whole which at first was immediate. But, if they entirely break out of it, they are dissipated and destroyed; and yet, by their presence within the whole, that already is broken, and they scattered into nothings. The relational form in general, and here in particular this form of time, is a natural way of compromise. It is no solution of the discrepancies, and we might call it rather a method of holding them in suspension. It is an artifice by which we become blind on either side, to suit the occasion; and the whole secret consists in ignoring that aspect which we are unable to use. Thus it is required that $A$ should change; and, for this, two characters, not compatible, must be present at once. There must be a successive diversity, and yet the time must be one. The succession, in other words, is not really successive unless it is present. And our compromise consists in regarding the process mainly from whichever of its aspects answers to our need, and in ignoring—that is, in failing or in refusing to perceive—the hostility of the other side. If you want to take a piece of duration as present and as one, you shut your eyes, or in some way are blind to the discretion, and, attending merely to the content, take that as a unity. And, on the other hand, it is as easy to forget every aspect but that of discreteness. But change, as a whole, consists in the union of these two aspects. It is the holding both at once, while laying stress upon the one which for the time is prominent, and while the difficulties are kept out of sight by rapid shuffling. Thus, in asserting that $A$ alters, we mean that the one thing is different at different times. We bring this diversity into relation with $A$’s qualitative identity, and all seems harmonious. Of course, as we know, even so far, there is a mass of inconsistency, but that is not the main point here. The main point is that, so far, we have not reached a change of $A$. The identity of a content $A$, in some sort of relation with diverse moments and with varying states—if it means anything at all—is still not what we understand by change. That the mere oneness of a quality can be the unity of a duration will hardly be contended. For change to exist at all, this oneness must be in temporal relation with the diversity. In other words, if the process itself is not one state, the moments are not parts of it; and, if so, they cannot be related in time to one another. On the one hand, $A$ remains $A$ through a period of any length, and is not changed so far as A. Considered thus, we may say that its duration is mere presence and contains no lapse. But the same duration, if regarded as the succession of $A$’s altered states, consists of many pieces. On the other hand, thirdly, this whole succession, regarded as one sequence or period, becomes a unity, and is again present. “Through the present period,” we should boldly say, “$A$’s processes have been regular. His rate of growth is normal, and his condition is for the present identical. But, during the lapse of this one period, there have been present countless successive differences in the state of $B$; and the coincidence in time, of $B$’s unchanging excitement with the healthy succession of $A$’s changes, shows that in the same interval we may have present either motion or rest.” There is hardly exaggeration here; but the statement exhibits a palpable oscillation. We have the dwelling, with emphasis and without principle, upon separate aspects, and the whole idea consists essentially in this oscillation. There is total failure to unite the differences by any consistent principle, and the one discoverable system is the systematic avoidance of consistency. The single fact is viewed alternately from either side, but the sides are not combined into an intelligible whole. And I trust the reader may agree that their consistent union is impossible. The problem of change defies solution, so long as change is not degraded to the rank of mere appearance.

I will end this chapter by some remarks on the perception of succession, or, rather, one of its main features. And I will touch upon this merely in the interest of metaphysics, reserving what psychological opinions I may have formed for another occasion. The best psychologists, so far as I know, are becoming agreed that for this perception some kind of unity is wanted. They see that without an identity, to which all its members are related, a series is not one, and is therefore not a series. In fact, the person who denies this unity is able to do so merely because he covertly supplies it from his own unreflecting mind. And I shall venture to regard this general doctrine as established, and shall pass to the point where I think metaphysics is further interested.

It being assumed that succession, or rather, here, perceived succession, is relative to a unity, a question arises as to the nature of this unity, generally and in each case. The question is both difficult and interesting psychologically; but I must confine myself to the brief remarks which seem called for in this place. It is not uncommon to meet the view that the unity is timeless, or that it has at any rate no duration. On the other hand, presumably, it has a date, if not a place, in the general series of phenomena, and is, in this sense, an event. The succession I understand to be apprehended somehow in an indivisible moment,—that is, without any lapse of time,—and to be so far literally simultaneous. Any such doctrine seems to me open to fatal objections, some of which I will state.

1. The first objection holds good only against certain persons. If the timeless act contains a relation, and if the latter must be relative to a real unity, the problem of succession appears again to break out without limit inside this timeless unit.

2. But those who would deny the premises of this first objection, may be invited to explain themselves on other points. The act has no duration, and yet it is a psychical event. It has, that is, an assignable place in history. If it does not possess the latter, how is it related to my perception? But, if it is an event with a before and an after in time, how can it have no duration? It occurs in time, and yet it occupies no time; or it does not occur in time, though it happens at a given date. This does not look like the account of anything real, but it is a manufactured abstraction, like length without breadth. And if it is a mere way of stating the problem in hand—viz., that from one point of view succession has no duration—it seems a bad way of stating it. But if it means more, its meaning seems quite unintelligible.

3. And it is the more plainly so since its content is certainly successive, as possessing the distinction of after and before. This distinction is a fact; and, if so, the psychical lapse is a fact; and, if so, this fact is left in flat contradiction with the timeless unity. And to urge that the succession, as used, is ideal—is merely content, and is not psychical fact—would be a futile attempt to misapply a great principle. It is not wholly true that “ideas are not what they mean,” for if their meaning is not psychical fact, I should like to know how and where it exists. And the question is whether succession can, in any sense, come before the mind without some actual succession entering into the very apprehension. If you do not mean a lapse, then you have given up your contention. But, if you do mean it, then how, except in the form of some actual mental transition, is it to come ideally before your mind? I know of no intelligible answer; and I conclude that, in this perception, what is perceived is an actual succession; and hence the perception itself must have some duration.

4. And, if it has no duration, then I do not see how it is related to the before and after of the time perceived; and the succession of this, with all its unsolved problems, seems to me to fall outside it (cp. No. 1).

5. And, lastly, if we may have one of these occurrences without duration, apparently we may also have many in succession, all again without duration. And I do not know how the absurd consequences which follow can be avoided or met.

In short, this creation is a monster. It is not a working fiction, entertained for the sake of its work. For, like most other monsters, it really is impotent. It is both idle and injurious, since it has diverted attention from the answer to its problem.

And that, to the reader who has followed our metaphysical discussion, will, I think, be apparent. We found that succession required both diversity and unity. These could not intelligibly be combined, and their union was a mere junction, with oscillation of emphasis from one aspect to the other. And so, psychically also, the timeless unity is a piece of duration, not experienced as successive. Assuredly everything psychical is an event, and it really contains a lapse; but so far as you do not use, or notice, that lapse, it is not there for you and for the purpose in hand. In other words, there is a permanent in the perception of change, which goes right through the succession and holds it together. The permanent can do this, on the one hand, because it occupies duration and is, in its essence, divisible indefinitely. On the other hand, it is one and unchanging, so far as it is regarded or felt, and is used, from that aspect. And the special concrete identities, which thus change, and again do not change, are the key to the particular successions that are perceived. Presence is not absolute timelessness; it is any piece of duration, so far as that is considered from or felt in an identical aspect. And this mere relative absence of lapse has been perverted into the absolute timeless monstrosity which we have ventured to condemn.

But it is one thing to see how a certain feature of our time-perception is possible. It is quite another thing to admit that this feature, as it stands, gives the truth about reality. And that, as we have learnt, is impossible. We are forced to assert that $A$ is both continuous and discrete, both successive and present. And our practice of taking it, now as one in a certain respect, and now again as many in another respect, shows only how we practise. The problem calls upon us to answer how these aspects and respects are consistently united in the one thing, either outside of our minds or inside—that makes no difference. And if we fail, as we shall, to bring these features together, we have left the problem unsolved. And, if it is unsolved, then change and motion are incompatible internally, and are set down to be appearance. And if, as a last resource, we use the phrases “potential” and “actual,” and attempt by their aid to reach harmony, we shall have left the case as it stands. We shall mean by these phrases that the thing is, and yet that it is not, and that we choose for our own purpose to treat these irreconcilables as united. But that is only another, though perhaps a more polite, way of saying that the problem is insoluble.

In the chapter which comes next, we must follow the same difficulties a little further into other applications.