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.