IV
For, apart from the definition of the ontological predicate, the subjects of which we usually assert Being belong to certain well-known but sharply contrasted types. In the first place, we ordinarily ascribe Being to nature, to the physical world so far as it is contemporaneous with ourselves. We say this whole present physical world now is. We regard this world as a peculiarly concrete instance of what it is to be. And in particular Realism often prefers present natural objects as its instances of Being. This natural realm is spread out before us in space, and appears to be of an infinitely wealthy variety of constitution. In the second place, we ascribe Being to our fellow-men, and, in particular, to their conscious inner lives as beings that possess or that are minds. This social realm is also one that we may call a second region of concrete fact. In the third place, and in a very notable way, we also attribute reality to the whole world of past events. We may say indeed that the past is not now, or that it no longer is. But we may say with equal assurance that the past has a genuine and irrevocable constitution, and that assertions now made about the past are at present true or false. In fact, true and false witness in most practical matters relates in general to the past. We moreover make the past a region for historical research; or, as in the case of geology, we regard past events as the topics of a strictly inductive and very elaborate natural science whose work is done in the present. So the past is for us a very genuine being. Our knowledge and interpretation of the present world,
