Temporal succession

“ Let us first take 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 ? If there is none, does not change. If there is any, it forces unintelligibly a diversity onto , 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 temporal change which offers us all our old difficulties unreduced. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Succession implies time; the lower members of a series of sedimentary rocks are certainly older than the upper; and when the notion of age was once introduced as the equivalent of succession, it was no wonder that correspondence in succession came to be looked upon as a correspondence in age, or "contemporaneity." And, indeed, so long as relative age only is spoken of, correspondence in succession 'is' correspondence in age ”

“ The period of time through which a primary succession operates is usually too great to make a complete study possible within a single lifetime. Secondary successions run their course much more quickly, and a decade will sometimes suffice for stabilization, 272though even here the period is normally longer. The longest and most complex succession, however, may be accurately studied in a region, where several examples of the same succession occur in different stages of development. ”

“ The reasons that destroy the absolute nature of time, inasmuch as it is subject to measure, do not seem fully to obviate another difficulty, arising from the consideration of time in itself. If indeed time be succession, what is this succession? It is evident that things succeed each other; but if there be no before or after, that is, time existing before succession, since succession consists in some things coming after others, what is the meaning of succeeding each other? Thus, time is explained by succession, and succession by time. ”

“ Then, as the succession to come will end by being a succession past, we persuade ourselves that the duration to come admits of the same treatment as past duration, that it is, even now, unrollable, that the future is there, rolled up, already painted on the canvas. An illusion, no doubt, but an illusion that is natural, ineradicable, and that will last as long as the human mind! ”

“ A still deeper difficulty results from such an effort to evade the double sense in which the facts of succession are known in your experience. If you can have present to you only one event at a time in a series of successive events, how long, or rather how short, must an event be to contain within itself no succession at all, or no difference between former and latter contents? In vain do you suppose that, at any time, you have directly present to your consciousness only one of the successive words that you hear me speak. ”

“ What is succession? Being and not-being. A thing exists; it ceases to exist; here we have succession. Whenever time can be calculated, there is succession; and whenever succession can be calculated a being and a not-being are considered. The perception of this relation, of this being and not-being, is the idea of time.
27. Time cannot exist without being and not-being; because in this, succession consists; wherever there is succession, there is some mutation ”

“ To ask this question is at once to answer it; unless, indeed, a thing is to exist, and is to hold its diversity combined in an unity, somehow quite outside of time. And this seems untenable. A thing, if it is to be called such, must occupy some duration beyond the present moment, and hence succession is essential. ”

“ On the other hand, to speak of our succession as being properly discrete seems quite as indefensible. It is in fact neither the one nor the other. I presume that what we notice is events with time between them, whatever that may mean. But, on the other hand, when we deal with pieces of duration, as wholes containing parts and even a variable diversity of parts, the other aspect comes up. And, in the end, reflection compels us to perceive that, however else it may appear, all change must really be continuous. ”

“ This truism—or paradox—that all we know of succession is but an interpretation of what is really simultaneous or coexistent, we may then concisely express by saying that we are aware of time only through time-perspective, and experience shows that it is a long step from a succession of presentations to such presentation of succession. ”

“ The idea of succession necessarily enters into that of time, and vice versa, the idea of time into that of succession. We may conceive that one thing succeeds another; but this would be impossible without succession, without a before and after, that is, without time. ”

“ If we were to attribute succession to time itself, we should be obliged to cogitate another time, in which this succession would be possible. It is only by means of the permanent that existence in different parts of the successive series of time receives a quantity, which we entitle duration. ”

“ Constant, gradual movement toward a stable formation is characteristic of continuous succession. Contrasted with this is intermittent succession, in which the succession swings for a time in one direction, from xerophytic to mesophytic for example, and then moves in the opposite direction, often passing through the same stages. ”

“ As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. ”

“ Thus the succession of life presents nothing fortuitous or arbitrary, but a continuous plan carried out uniformly in time and space, with certain materials of fixed properties, and with certain structures predetermined from the first. ”

“ As we saw before, it is true that, in one sense, each one of the elements or partial events of a sequence excludes the former and the latter elements from being at the time when this particular element exists. But that, in another and equally obvious and empirical sense, all the members of an actually experienced succession are at once to any consciousness which observes the whole succession as a whole, is equally true. ”

“ Nought as matter, it creates itself as form. The sprouting and flowering of this form are stretched out on an unshrinkable duration, which is one with their essence. So of the works of nature. Their novelty arises from an internal impetus which is progress or succession, which confers on succession a peculiar virtue or which owes to succession the whole of its virtue—which, at any rate, makes succession, or continuity of interpenetration in time, irreducible to a mere instantaneous juxtaposition in space. ”

“ On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on. ”

“ This train, the measure of other successions. So that to me it seems, that the constant and regular succession of ideas in a waking man, is, as it were, the measure and standard of all other successions. Whereof, if any one either exceeds the pace of our ideas, as where two sounds or pains, &c., take up in their succession the duration of but one idea ”

“ On principles somewhat similar to those on which, with reference to the average term of life, the genealogist fixes the probable period of some birth in his chain of succession of which he cannot determine the exact date, it seems natural to infer that the birth of the fish should have taken place at least not earlier than the times of the Cambrian system. ”

“ These three phases of life may be traced over the whole earth, and their succession is invariable, from which it may be inferred that they are due to causes acting universally, and not sporadically in one or more centres. ”

“ Hence it is on account of its extrinsic terminability to successive terms of duration that God’s eternity is conceived as equivalent to infinite succession; for what virtually contains in itself all possible terms and intervals of succession virtually contains in itself all succession, and can co exist, without intrinsic change, with all the changes of contingent duration. ”

“ Just as we form the idea of continued succession in space by distinguishing different parts of extension, and perceiving that one excludes the others, so we also form the idea of continued succession of time by distinguishing different facts and perceiving that one excludes the others. ”

“ For the sake of simplicity I have called the mode of succession Primogeniture whenever a single son or descendant succeeds to the authority over a household or society. It is remarkable, however, that in the few very ancient examples which remain to us of this sort of succession, it is not always the eldest son, in the sense familiar to us, who takes up the representation. The form of Primogeniture which has spread over Western Europe has also been perpetuated among the Hindoos, and there is every reason to believe that it is the normal form. ”

“ This outside consciousness can never be in any other state than the finite. For wherever you have succession and duration, you have time. Where you have succession in extent, you have space. In regard to this outward finite nature, one change follows another; and if change follows change, there must, in respect to such change, always be succession; and where you get succession, you must necessarily have time. Hence the spirit, in its finite nature, must always be in time till it shall cease to change; when progress ends, time will cease with the finite. ”

“ We can arrest a perception in its course; we can shorten its natural duration, to make room for another; we can vary the succession by change of place or amusement; and we can in some mea{382}sure prevent variety, by frequently recalling the same object after short intervals: but still there must be a succession, and a change from one thing to another. By artificial means, the succession may be retarded or accelerated, may be rendered more various or more uniform, but in one shape or other is unavoidable. ”

“ And more, it may be assumed with safety, that when completed, it will furnish us with a series of regular successions, with but slight and regular interruptions, if any, from the species which represented the simplest beginnings of life at the dawn of creation, to those which have displayed complication and power in a later or in the present period. For the labors of the paleontologist are daily bringing to light structures intermediate between those never before so connected, thus creating lines of succession where before were only interruptions. ”

“ If, to avoid succession in external existence, they return to the punctum stans of the schools, I suppose they will thereby very little mend the matter, or help us to a more clear and positive idea of infinite duration; there being nothing more inconceivable to me than duration without succession. ”

“ Incomplete successions are of great significance, inasmuch as they indicate that the stages of a succession are often due more to biological than to physical causes, the proximity and mobility of the adjacent species being more determinative than the physical factors. ”

“ Further study has revealed relations between the animals of past time and those now living, and between the law of succession in the former and the laws of growth and distribution in the latter, so intimate and comprehensive that this labyrinth of organic life assumes the character of a connected history, which opens before us with greater clearness in proportion as our knowledge increases. ”

“ Hence succession implies the existence of the thing that excludes, and the non-existence of the things that are excluded. All variations involve some such exclusion; hence all variations involve succession.... To perceive the existence of things which exclude one another is to perceive succession and time; to measure it is to measure time.” Thus far Balmes. [10]
But, if the flowing duration can be easily conceived as the existence of such things as exclude one another, the case is very different with regard to standing duration. ”

“ But, familiar with the latter idea and indeed beset by it, we introduce it unwittingly into our feeling of pure succession; we set our states of consciousness side by side in such a way as to perceive them simultaneously, no longer in one another, but alongside one another; in a word, we project time into space, we express duration in terms of extensity, and succession thus takes the form of a continuous line or a chain, the parts of which touch without penetrating one another. ”

“ Here, then, we find a succession of progeny for several generations, and all quite unlike one another, yet without any immediate parental agency. Why is it not an example of spontaneous generation? and why may not new species be produced in this manner? ”