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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 
 IN 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Vol. 2, No. 5, pp. 103-186 February 4, 1913 
 
 THE METAPHYSICS OF HISTORICAL 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 BY 
 
 DEWITT H. PARKER 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 
 BERKELEY
 
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 103-186. February, 1913 85
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 
 
 IN 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Vol. 2, No. 5, pp. 103-186 February 4, 1913 
 
 THE METAPHYSICS OF HISTORICAL 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 BY 
 
 DEWITT H. PAEKER 
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 103 
 
 I. The General Character of Historical Knowledge 104 
 
 II. The Nature and Possibility of Representative Knowledge of the 
 
 Past V 110 
 
 III. The Nature of Time 119 
 
 1. The Temporal Experience 120 
 
 2. The Scope of Time 124 
 
 3. The Properties of Time 127 
 
 IV. The Metaphysical Status of the Past 140 
 
 V. The Nature of Historical Truth 152 
 
 VI. Historical Verification 164 
 
 Vll. Historical Truth and Existence 176 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The purpose of this essay is to determine the character and 
 object of our knowledge of the past. Such an enquiry ought to 
 lead to results of interest not only in themselves but also for the 
 general problem of knowledge. For, in the case of knowledge 
 of the past, all the difficulties of the epistemological problem 
 become acute; a reference to this field serves as a ready touch- 
 stone for testing the various theories of knowledge. 
 
 The pursuit of this problem cannot be kept separate from 
 that of another — the metaphysics of time. A term which has an 
 intimate relation to another term cannot be studied apart from
 
 1(1 1 f' iiirrrsUji of f'<il ifuriiid I'lihlirdl itnis in I'll ilnsoj>li ij. I Vol. 2 
 
 till' lallrr. If krinw Icd^'c is suiih' sort nf i-il.ition Ijctwecn subject 
 and ()l)jiM't, il.s nalnrc cannot fail to he iilTcctcMl by the kind of 
 hcinj? |)oss(',ss('d by the oliject : an •'[)ist('rnolot<y in<'vital)ly in- 
 volves an ontolo'^y; the existenlia! status of thr; past is in the 
 hif^hcst degree important for the detennination of the knowledge 
 of the past. This will form an ecpially important part of our 
 ciKpiiry. 
 
 Our proccdiiit' will be; briefly as follows. We shall begin 
 with an elementary analysis of the knowledge of the past. This 
 will lead to certain difficulties, on the one hand epistemologieal, 
 on the other hand metaphysical. After a solution of the former, 
 the consideration of the latter will involve a discussion of the 
 nature of time. This will occupy a large part of our space, and 
 unavoidably somewhat interrupt our progr&ss. Lastly, however, 
 the epistemologieal enquiry will be resumed, and followed into its 
 ultimate issues. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF HISTORICAL 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Knowledge of the past is of two fundamentally different 
 varieties : through memory, and through report, meaning by the 
 latter all knowledge communicated to one whether by word 
 of mouth of an eye-witness or through history and tradition. 
 There is, of course, a third variety, knowledge through inference, 
 such as knowledge of past geological epochs. Yet this last, despite 
 its distinctive character as inference, is, for our present purpose, 
 reducible to memory or report. For all inference proceeds, 
 through analogy or induction, on the basis of observations made 
 by the investigator, to obtain which one must depend on one's 
 own perception and memory or on the reports of one's fellows. 
 We will consider the nature of each of these varieties. 
 
 The memory experience partakes of the directness of original 
 e.xperience. It is intimate, personal, warm as the original with 
 the warmth of our own life. The original experience and the 
 memory experience seem to be of one identical stuff. To be sure, 
 memory is not so full — many a detail is wanting, the outline is
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 105 
 
 hazy, and much of the vividness of the original is gone. Neverthe- 
 less, so much as is there is there in the flesh. Call up any vivid 
 remembrance, and see if this is not true. 
 
 We might, indeed, apply "the exclusion of the introjeetion" 
 in the case of memory, just as Avenarius^ applied it to percep- 
 tion. You think, we might say to the adherent of the contrary 
 view, that the content of your memory is other than the content 
 of the original experience, because you have fallen into the vulgar 
 and egregious error of supposing that your experience is in your 
 head. And this you do the more readily in the case of memories, 
 because, unlike your perceptions, neither you nor your Mitmensch 
 can find them here in the space of direct experience. But if j^ou 
 take the content of your memory "as it is given ' ' and ' ' describe 
 it as you find it, ' ' you will easily convince yourself that inside of 
 your head you could never discover the memory of your experi- 
 ence, and that the experience itself, when you think of it, belongs 
 to the space and time world of your past, as M^ell as, in another 
 sense, to that of your present experience. Immediate experience 
 thus testifies that, when we remember, we are again in the past. 
 Between memory and original experience no dividing line can 
 be drawn. The one is simply a modification of, a change in, the 
 other. Brain physiology lends support to this view, in its teach- 
 ing that there is probably no distinction between the sensory and 
 the memorial areas. 
 
 But is not this result contradicted by the well-known fact 
 of the uniqueness of mental states? Memory and original ex- 
 perience may be of the same character, but they are not for that 
 reason of the same substance. Once lived, an experience is done 
 with ; the memory of it is a different experience, numerically dis- 
 tinct, with a different date and a different setting. One can never 
 
 ' have again the same experience. 
 
 '■^ This objection, although backed by much authority, is a mere 
 
 ,^ dogma. It is, moreover, incompatible with the identity and con- 
 tinuity of the self, indefeasible facts of immediate experience, 
 which presuppose that elements of consciousness remain identical 
 
 (^ despite change and passage of time. If, after a night's sleep, 
 Iq a man were to awaken with sensations and purposes and mem- 
 
 ) 
 
 N 
 
 n) 
 
 W 
 
 Q 
 
 N^ 1 Ber Menschliche Weltbegriff.
 
 ion I'nin rsihf of ('(tlifnniid I'lthlirntions in I'hilosnphif. I Vol. 2 
 
 orics iill tlisliiii't t'r<nii lliosc wliicli lie possfsscd wlicri Ik; went 
 to bod, ho ('(iiild imt, rxfc|)f hy n niisusc of lanj^uapjo wliidi bo- 
 trnvs tlic fulsily of llic hypothesis, be cuHcd the sanu! man. Tlic 
 possibility of the real identity of psychical elements at diff(;rent 
 dates lia.s hctii denied, imt because it is counter to experience or 
 to the facts, l)ut because of a fear of as.siinilating the psychical 
 to the pliysical, because of the acceptance of a new form of 
 spiriliudistie psychology. Despite tlie supposed uniqueness of 
 moments of time, it has not seemed absurd to think of a physical 
 thinpc as remaining identical through various instants and 
 changes, as witness the case of simple motion; or to believe that 
 the "elements" persist despite apparent loss or recombination. 
 For our immediate experience, the self has the same sort of iden- 
 tity as a physical thing. Just as, when unsophisticated, we speak 
 of the same thing as being here now or there then, so we speak 
 of the same thought or memory as now in mind, then as no longer 
 present, yet as now again in consciousness. Our purposes and 
 affections are. for us, the same, quite literally and exactly, through 
 the years and the vicissitudes of the years. Moreover, on all 
 grounds, insight points to the essential identity of physical and 
 psychical. When once this is questioned, the problem of mind and 
 body becomes insoluble, and resort is had to the various forms of 
 dualism, with all their difficulties. The believers in the unique- 
 ness of mental states reduce the identity of the self to the identity 
 of the brain or the objects in which the self is interested, which 
 implies the acceptance, how^ever veiled, of epiphenomenalism. 
 
 That in turn there are difficulties in the thesis here main- 
 tained, I do not deny. It requires, I admit, the recasting of many 
 of our conceptions of time and existence. With the consideration 
 of its difficulties and its metaphysical implications we shall have 
 later to do. We postpone them at present, because they involve 
 the whole time problem. At present it suffices for us to recog- 
 nize, as the cardinal principle of all epistemological investigation, 
 that the deliverances of immediate experience cannot be gainsaid. 
 Logical constructions must be based on these ; and Avlien logic and 
 experience seem to l)e at variance, let us not discount experience ; 
 let us rather re-examine our logic. The two cannot remain at 
 variance, nor can we be satisfied with their disagreement. That
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 107 
 
 they are not actually so, will be one result of our investigation. 
 We shall show that what experience teaches — that the original and 
 the memorial experiences are the same, that a past experience is 
 also a present experience — is also the teaching of metaphysical, 
 logical construction. 
 
 Let us now examine the knowledge of the past which comes 
 to us from report, using this term in the inclusive sense already 
 defined. Let us consider such knowledge as is nearest to memory. 
 Another tells me, from memory, of his o^vn experience. What 
 then are the characteristics of my knowledge of his past? What 
 I get from him are certain conceptual ideas, identical in his mind 
 and mine, coming to me through the so-called interpretation of 
 his words and gestures. These I render vivid and full by asso- 
 ciating therewith a mass of imagery whose substance has been de- 
 rived from my own individual experiences. The place of this 
 imagery is filled in his knowledge of his own past by memories, 
 which, as we have seen, are of the stuff of the original experience 
 which he reports. Here then is the difference between his knowl- 
 edge of his own past and mine. So far as he portrays his past 
 through concepts — and all description is such a portrayal — he is 
 knowing it through a material which is other than his memory, 
 and a fortiori other than the past experience itself ; and I, in re- 
 ceiving this through communication, know in the same terms. But 
 in his memories, the concrete filling of his description, he relives 
 the past, whereas I, through imagination, can picture it only 
 through signs which, though similar, are other than that which 
 is signified. Another man's memory cannot become mine, any 
 more than his past can become my past — this he cannot give me 
 through communication. The same facts are of course true when 
 I read the written report of an eye-witness. WTien Rousseau 
 describes the aqueduct which he built under the roots of a tree 
 in his uncle's yard, however vivid the description, it is not his 
 memory that I get, but his conceptualized description. The differ- 
 ence here is the same as that between my Imowledge of San 
 Francisco before I was there and that which I have now that I 
 have seen the city. The one was purely conceptual, derived from 
 the descriptions of others, made vivid and full by means of 
 imagery derived from experiences of similar places which I had
 
 lOS I' iiirrrsilif of California I'uhlicaiions in J'hilosopliif. I Vol. 2 
 
 seen, sui)i)l('iii('nl('(l hy |)liot(»j,'raplis and [)aint,iiif^. 'I'ln- otiier is 
 of tli(> sfiifT of San Kranfisco itself. 'Hw, dilTcrfnec in tho cliar- 
 a<'f('r (if the r-cc(i«;nil ion of an olijed froiri a description, and the 
 rcco^niifion of it when one luus already seen it, points baek to the 
 fundamental di.sfinction whicli we have been elaborating. "Fam- 
 iliarity" implies the reawakening of an experience that one has 
 already po.s.sessed. There is a principial difference between even 
 tlu! most fragmentary experience and the most accurate descrip- 
 tion of it. It is like that between picture and original. 
 
 In the ca.se of knowledge derived from most so-called history, 
 one is even further removed from the original experiences de- 
 scribed. To be sure, such knowledge has its ultimate source in the 
 reports of eye-witnesses. But it does not reach us unalloyed. 
 It conies reinterpreted, remoulded by the private thoufrhts of 
 the historian. And however accurate the story may be, I no 
 more relive those experiences than I behold my friend in the 
 photograph. 
 
 It would seem, then, that knowledge of the past illustrates the 
 truth of both of the chief theories of knowledge — in memory, 
 of the presentative, in report, of the representative. According 
 to the first, the content of the knowing process is numerically 
 other than the object knoAvn, and the two have an external rela- 
 tion to each other. According to the second, the immanent con- 
 tent is part of the object, whence the latter is itself partly im- 
 manent, and the relation between the two intimate. The object 
 known is, on the former view, transcendent ; knowledge is a cor- 
 respondence between the immanent content and the object. Ac- 
 cording to the latter, the object is the whole of which the imman- 
 ent content is a part, and knowledge is the being in mind of such 
 a part. It is usually assumed that either one or the other of these 
 theories must be true. Yet the difference between them is not 
 absolute. Like all other natural distinctions, it is fluid — a matter 
 of more or less. In all varieties of knowledge, as will be shown 
 in some detail farther on, both are interwoven. ^Ve have as- 
 serted that in all report there is given to us, not the immediate 
 experiences, but the conceptualized description of these; just as 
 when one looks at a scene and describes it to us. one does not 
 give us the scene itself — or one's own visual sensations — but one's
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 109 
 
 ideas of it. Yet this is not quite the truth. The original experi- 
 ence is partially, although very partially, communicated. For the 
 substance of all ideas consists of one 's original experiences. The 
 concept is elaborated out of this material. The past event which 
 one describes has entered, however fragmentarily, into the de- 
 scription. The concept is the quintessence of all one 's experience, 
 of this as well as of the past. 
 
 Hence, so far as the report is that of an eye-witness, the 
 knowledge received through it is, at least to a minute extent, pre- 
 sentative. Even when it is second-hand "history," some touch 
 of the original remains. In a quite literal sense, if only to a 
 minute extent, we all share our experiences with one another 
 and possess as a heritage those of the generations. Yet the dis- 
 tinction between the two kinds of knowledge remains. The idea 
 that is used in representative knowledge is for the most part a 
 copy, not the original itself. The concept which is used to de- 
 scribe an experience, being the precipitate of all one's experi- 
 ences, is remoulded only to a small, sometimes to an infinitesimal 
 extent, by this particular one. To be accurate, however, we 
 should speak, not of presentative knowledge through memory 
 and representative knowledge through report, but of more or 
 less presentative or representative knowledge. For the converse 
 fact is true — there are representative elements in so-called mem- 
 ory. Not all is strictly memory, much is interpretation, "imag- 
 ination," and, what is more important, there are always con- 
 ceptual elements, characterizations, that is, judgments, recogni- 
 tions as "this" or "that," of "this sort" or of "that sort," 
 and whatever else there be of simultaneous running comment. 
 Nevertheless, since each kind of knowledge is preponderantly of 
 one character, we are justified in speaking shortly of presentative 
 and of representative knowledge. 
 
 It will have been observed that thus far we have treated only 
 of the knowledge of past experience. What of the knowledge of 
 past physical events, say of the Lisbon earthquake, or of past 
 geologic ages before there was any human experience? Since, 
 of course, all knowledge of these things comes through human 
 experience, directly or indirectly, such experience, so far as repre- 
 sentative, involves that the knowledge of these is also representa-
 
 Ill) (I nirrrsilif of dalifoniid I'uhlirations in I'hilnsnph]). I Vol. 2 
 
 tivc. Ilcncr ull know lr(li,'c of pliysiciil cvciilx, so far as based on 
 iiircrcnlial coiislnict ion and on tlif reports of otiiers, is repro- 
 sctilalivc. Since tlifi)U^,di iiiriiiorv the oi-i^'inai experience \n 
 partly rcinslatcd and prescntatively known, whatever cognitive 
 eliaraclcr the orifjinal experience possessed will also be poss&ssed 
 by memory. Of this, knowledf^e of the self, won by "innere 
 AnschauiUKj," is, of conr.se. pre,sentativ(»; knowledge of physical 
 objects is presentative and representative: the former so far as 
 ade(juate, that is, so far as depending on .sensation in which the 
 object is given ; the latter, so far as dependent on reproduction. 
 For example, in the perception of a house, the side which I "see" 
 is given in sen.sation, presented ; the sensory elements are identical 
 with the pliysical being of the house; on the other hand, the 
 back of it, that which I "imagine" or automatically "infer" to 
 exist, is knowTi through reproduced ideas, the material of which 
 was supplied out of other experiences — is known, then, repre- 
 sentatively. 
 
 So far, we have simply exhibited the dimorphic character of 
 historical knowledge. Now, each form involves manifold difficul- 
 ties, which must be obviated before we can proceed. AVe shall 
 begin with the consideration of representative knowledge ; for its 
 difficulties, being chiefly epistemological, enter naturally into this 
 connexion, while those of the presentative kind, being mainly 
 metaphysical, will best be considered when we discuss the nature 
 of time. 
 
 CHAPTER 11 
 
 THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF REPRESENTATIVE 
 KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAST 
 
 ^lany doubts have been raised as to the possibility of repre- 
 sentative knowledge, and these doubts become more forcible in 
 the case of knowledge of the past. 
 
 In the fii-st place, it is objected that one cannot define knowl- 
 edge as the resemblance between idea and object. Two things 
 that are similar cannot be said to know the one the other. The 
 idea must be used as a representative of the object, and, if so 
 used, the resemblance of the two must itself be known, for only
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knoicledge. Ill 
 
 on the ground of its resemblance could the idea pass for knowl- 
 edge of the object. But if knowledge of the resemblance is neces- 
 sary for the definition of knowledge through representation, that 
 knowledge cannot be itself a matter of representation, for if it 
 were, an infinite regress of the illegitimate kind would result.^ 
 Thus knowledge cannot occur through representation; for sup- 
 posed representative knowledge rests on knowledge of another 
 kind. Moreover, in the case of knowledge of the past, representa- 
 tion would be impossible; for if, as is usually supposed, only 
 present ideas exist, one could never, by confronting them with 
 their objects, find out that they resembled each other. How, 
 indeed, could an idea resemble that which is not? How could a 
 term which exists have a relation to one that is non-existent? 
 
 Not only must I know resemblance in some way other than 
 through representation, I must know otherwise both my ideas 
 and the objects known, in order to discriminate between the two. 
 How could I discount my ideas in comparison with the reality 
 to which I refer them, unless in some other way I know that 
 reality also? If my knowledge of the reality were itself only a 
 poor idea, I should have to have a second idea — and if this also 
 were only a poor idea, another with which to discount that, and 
 so on in infinitum. In other words, how do I ever know that 
 idea is idea and not reality? For by hypothesis, in this case, 
 idea is all that I have. 
 
 It is by a subtile error, the objector would urge, that you feel 
 that somehow you can at once know that your idea is not reality 
 and yet know the past through the idea which you disparage. 
 For you actually do, in your thought, begin to carry out that 
 infinite regress referred to above. That is to say, you have an 
 idea, and so long as you do not reflect you take it for a direct 
 experience of the past; but, as soon as you do reflect, you get a 
 new and richer idea which you now take to be a direct experi- 
 ence of reality and in comparison with which you discount your 
 former idea. The unrevised idea you take for reality ; but, after 
 climbing a few steps of this ladder, you conclude — and quite 
 rightly from your own point of view — that in no case do you 
 
 2 Rickert, Gegenstand der ErJcenntnis, p. 84. On the infinite regress, see 
 Russell, Principles of Mathematics, Ifs 55 and 99.
 
 1 ]'2 University of California J'uhlications in I'ltilosophy. I Vol. 2 
 
 iTiicli Ihv ul)j('('t itscir, tliat nil is idea. For (jf course it' no 
 siiigh! idea hriiifjs you nearer the object, an infinite series will 
 fail. 
 
 Against llic view that rcpn'smtalion couhl ever give us the 
 ideal of knowledge, even if it did give us partial knowledge, there 
 is urircil an (•Itjcction i>ut in contrary ways by the upholders of 
 two very difTerent theories of truth. On the one hand, it is said 
 that if the truth of an idea be defined as its complete corres- 
 pondence with its object, when the stage of completeness would 
 ha\i' been reached, the idea would be the reality. Complete simi- 
 larity is identity. The idea known to resemble reality would 
 have become reality known directly. If the truth of an idea is 
 defined as the similarity of idea and object, the definition inevit- 
 ably destroys the theory which it was meant to express. For, 
 what can adequately represent a thing, except the thing itself? 
 Although our memories are feeble and unreliable spokesmen of 
 our former lives, what voice could tell us their histories except 
 the living voice? And as for our traditions and books, could 
 they ever, however complete and faithful, tell us the truth, unless 
 they were themselves the truth ? 
 
 From another side,^ relying still on the assertion that com- 
 plete similarity must be identity, it is urged that identity between 
 idea and object can never exist. For not even the content or the 
 general structure of the relations of the idea could ever be exactly 
 similar to those of its object, for however far such similarity 
 might go, the idea, as an event in my life, would be parted in 
 existence from the object as an event in the past, and, as experi- 
 ences, each would have a peculiar wholeness and individuality 
 which would infect the similarity in content, and so prevent any 
 genuine identity. But if there can be no identity, then knowl- 
 edge is impossible ; or if identity is possible, knowledge is not 
 correspondence, for only things which differ in part can corres- 
 pond or represent one another. 
 
 These objections to representative knowledge rest for the 
 most part upon a misconception of it. The best way to answer 
 them will be to set forth a correct view of the fact. This we 
 
 3 Joachim, Nature of Truth, chap. I.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 113 
 
 shall do forthwith, and then briefly consider the objections with 
 special reference to our own problem of the knowledge of the 
 past. 
 
 At the very beginning of modern philosophy, the insight was 
 clear that knowledge is an active function exercised by means 
 of ideas. This was recognized by Descartes, and was made into 
 a principle by his greater pupil Spinoza.* Neither perceived any 
 difficulty in the fact that although what is in the mind are ideas, 
 yet something not those ideas can be known through them. How- 
 ever, the power of seeing just how this could be was soon lost 
 even by some of the disciples of the great master, and the result 
 was the artificial and uninspired theory of occasionalism. The 
 precious vision was completely denied to the English school, and 
 through their influence the blindness has descended to the phe- 
 nomenists and empirio-criticists of the present day. Locke's 
 definition of an idea as "whatsoever the mind perceives in itself 
 or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or under- 
 standing," became in Berkeley's hands the doctrine that we know 
 only our own ideas. Locke's misapprehension of the theory of 
 innate ideas, Berkeley's and Hume's failure to render an ade- 
 quate account of universals and of the "immensities and eter- 
 nities," resulted from the same blindness. 
 
 Against the view that it is the immediate content of the 
 knowing process which either is known in the cognitive repre- 
 sentative act (although of course it may be known by another 
 act) or itself knows merely by being like the object, we assert 
 that there is known an object transcendent to the immediate con- 
 tent, that is, one that is not the content itself, and yet that it 
 is the idea which knows, because not a mere content, but part of 
 the act of a subject. We claim that cognition is a property of 
 ideas, just as translucence is of glass. Under certain conditions 
 ideas have a peculiar property which makes them cognitive : they 
 become objectifying; they carry with them a reference to an 
 object and also an indication of the character of the object. This 
 reference to an object, this sense of another, is part of their very 
 nature. Of their own accord, ideas attribute their characters to 
 
 * Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, xliii, schol. ; xlix, proof.
 
 I 1 I nnirrrsihf of California Publications in riiilosnjjhu. I Vol. 2 
 
 .•iiioIImt. 'I'lius every idea is u judj^'inenL of tlie form "Ali is."' 
 Tlie cofjnitive oxporioiuro is ossontially, in the first place, an 
 exix'rieiice of charaeter; lliii.s wlim T look <it, the sky I have a 
 "blue experience," and, secondly, it is an experience of this 
 ehiii-aeter as helonginjx. ii'>t to itself alone but to another, "an 
 ox|)ei-ieiice of object." The eof^nitive experience is a declaration : 
 There is an object such as I experience. Sometimes, however, 
 there is a declaration of beinj?, without much indication of char- 
 acter. The more adequate the idea, however, the more fully does 
 it reveal the nature of the object, the more nearly similar is it 
 to the latter, until finally, in the case of perfect knowledge, it 
 claims identity with its object. Yet before this last stage is 
 reached one does not need to bring idea and object together, see 
 that tliey resemble one another, and then use the one as a repre- 
 sentation of the other; the idea nscs itself as a representation. In 
 cognition one becomes aware that there is an object of such and 
 such a character; one does not need to know the idea as idea, 
 for one may be filled with the objectifying experience itself. 
 
 Ideas get this power of representing because they are not 
 "lifeless like pictures on a panel," but as living and palpitating 
 as an animated body. And this life they get from ultimate con- 
 tact with the reality which they know. As we have seen, there 
 is an ingredient of presentation in all representation. In every 
 idea there is, at least, an infinitesimal fragment of what it means. 
 Through this it gets its reference, its intention. This tiny part 
 is the life of the idea; and just as a bit of living matter will 
 assimilate to itself from its environment foreign matter, and out 
 of it construct a complete organism, so this fragment of the 
 object will draw to itself all material within reach and, so far 
 as it can, make itself like that whole from which it came. Then, 
 although not that whole, the idea will mean it; and will know 
 it. the more completely it has constructed its image. 
 
 How shall we prove that ideas can mean a whole of which 
 they are parts or of which they possess an image? How shall 
 we prove that they have intent? Only by exhibiting those cases 
 where the ability of ideas to transcend themselves most strik- 
 ingly appears, and where, if transcendence, meaning, intent, are 
 
 Compare Brentano. Psychologic, Buch II, Capitel 7, 7.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 115 
 
 denied, palpable absurdities arise. Accordingly, we shall demon- 
 strate this power in a few telling cases, and then, by leading down 
 to the less obvious ones, show that it obtains in all, even in our 
 simplest every day cognitions. 
 
 Consider, first, our ideas of the "immensities and eternities". 
 Take the ideas of infinite space and time. We undoubtedly mean 
 something by these ideas. Moreover, we mean their objects as 
 wholes. "When we think of them, Ave can refer to every detail 
 which they contain. Yet every detail of space or time, every point 
 and every instant, is surely not in the mind. "We can, if called 
 upon, declare some of the more universal characters of space and 
 time; we can say that they are order systems, three- and one- 
 dimensional respectively, continuous, and so on. But we do not 
 mean merely what we can enumerate ; we mean every single 
 element which only the most thorough investigation of space and 
 time could reveal. It was because Locke, Berkeley, and Hume de- 
 manded that what an idea means should be present bodily in 
 the idea, that they denied the being, phj'sical or conceptual, 
 of the infinite. 
 
 Consider, next, the idea which is perhaps the most wonderful 
 of all: the idea of the universe. And by this idea we mean the 
 absolute sum-total of everything — the past, the present, the 
 future, and the eternal world. Now, are we to believe that when 
 we refer to the universe it is a part of ourselves, a piece of our 
 minds? It cannot be said that the meaning of the idea is 
 reducible to so much of the world as we have known directly and 
 somehow got in the mind. For of all that we can enumerate in 
 heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the 
 earth, we can say, after putting it together — this is not all that 
 we mean. And what we do enumerate is for the most part itself 
 plainly only meant, not in any sense present in the mind; for, 
 with the obvious exception of what lies before me in space or is 
 felt within my skin or remembered, the rest is supplied by 
 imagination of the future and distant. And of memory we are 
 aware, when we reflect, if for no other reason than that it is not 
 vivid and full, that it is not our full meaning itself. Moreover, 
 we can see that this intent of our memory is not reducible to the 
 continual coming in, through association, of ever more ideas,
 
 IK) Ihiirnsihf nf CnJifornin ruhlirnlifDis in I'hUoanpIn/. (Vol.2 
 
 lli('rt'l)y making racli later lillin^ of flu- idoa riclicr and every 
 earlier one comparatively poorer. Althouf^h this doe.s happen, 
 althoujxli an idea doi'.s i^wv. rise to tliis (;hain of assoeiated ideas, 
 wherehy it hoeonios more prociso and adequate, yet its meaning 
 ( annnf 1)(> rodueed either to the ehain itself or to the linking,' of 
 one element of the chain to another. For when the chain is com- 
 plete it confesses it.self as not all that it means, and each link, if 
 (jnestioned apart from tlie others, would humbly plead that it too 
 was only a poor part and meant something more. Thus even 
 when the idea is part of what it knows, it may through its self- 
 transcending intent know something, the whole, which is not 
 merely itself. Nor does one need to go to the infinite for illustra- 
 tion of the fact of meaning. One can find illustrations among our 
 most common ideas. Consider our ideas of the ocean, of the 
 earth, of the visual form of a book. We mean the book as a recti- 
 linear solid, but we have never seen it thus. To be sure, we have 
 put the idea together out of different views, but we mean, not 
 these, but the unitary object, with all its color and sensuous com- 
 pleteness such as would appear if we could, although we cannot, 
 intuit it. 
 
 The indispeusablencss of meaning as an element in the cog- 
 nitive function is effectively exemplified by the necessity of the 
 use of the little words all, every, anrj, a, some, and the.^ By means 
 of these we are enabled to refer to objects which we have never 
 presentatively known. Thus, by means of the first two we can 
 make reference to a whole class of individuals of which we have 
 never known more than a single instance. We should be unable 
 to do much reasoning if we could not make this reference; for 
 a large part of thinking involves the notion of class, which in- 
 volves the notion of all; without it we should never, in any prac- 
 tical fashion, be able to deal with the group unless we knew each 
 individual member. The concept of any, as fundamental in reas- 
 oning as that of all, since it lies at the basis of the notion of the 
 variable, is perhaps even more significant in this connexion. For 
 by it we can refer, not merely to a whole set of entities in a mass 
 which we do not know individually, but to a single individual 
 in a class which nevertheless we cannot designate as such. To 
 
 •5 See Russell, Principles of Mathematics, chap. V, ' ' Denoting. ' '
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 117 
 
 quote Russell, the concept "any term," "does not denote, prop- 
 erly speaking, an assemblage of terms, but denotes one term, only 
 not one particular definite term." To adopt a phrase of the 
 same author, "any man" is an object which, if one could not 
 meet it in the street, one surely could not get into the mind — for 
 one could no more find it in the mind by introspection than one 
 could find it in the street by looking for it. 
 
 As for the word "the," the right of the present theorj^ to 
 the use of it would, I suppose, be denied by some of our opponents. 
 For "the" denotes an individual, and they will tell us that we 
 cannot provide for the knowledge of individuals. All ideas are 
 of universal characteristics ; so when we know through ideas, we 
 cannot know the individual. But it is a mistake to say that all 
 ideas are of universals. To be sure, by themselves, as mere con- 
 tents, they define only universals. Yet penetrating their being is 
 the intent "unique member of a class," which we express by the 
 little word "the." This is the tang of the object itself, left by 
 that element of presentation, however minute, which, as we know, 
 inheres in all ideas. Such, we believe, is a correct view of the 
 nature of representative knowledge. We are now in a position 
 to reply to the objections which evoked the discussion. To what 
 extent does the theory that ideas have intent remove these objec- 
 tions ? 
 
 We admit that representative knowledge is not the only kind 
 of knowledge, and even that it involves, remotely, presentative 
 knowledge. But this does not impugn its relatively independent 
 character. It constitutes, moreover, by far the most extensive 
 part of our knowledge. Almost all knowledge of the past is of 
 this variety. 
 
 We admit that one cannot know an object through the mere 
 possession of a similar idea. The idea must have a cognitive func- 
 tion, must be endowed w^ith the life of intention. But when thus 
 endowed, our theory escapes the charge of circularity which can 
 be brought against the crude form of representative theory. One 
 does not know an object because one knows that one possesses 
 an idea which resembles that object. Neither the idea nor the 
 resemblance between the idea and the object need be known ; the 
 resembling idea knows. Of course all these elements can, in turn,
 
 1 IS I'nin rsilji of ('nlifornia rnhlirnlions in I'hilosopkjf. I V"'- 2 
 
 l)c ktiduii hy aiiotlicr cxprricnci-, Imt this knowlcdK*' *>f tlx- know- 
 in^j (Iocs not Ciller into tlic (IfCinition of knowinj^. 
 
 We lijivc alrciitly dealt with tlic gciuTal objection at^ainsl our 
 view, to the elTcct thai unless we could "K^t outside of our ideas" 
 we could never discriminate between an idea and an object. Con- 
 sitler, however, the ca.se of the past. When I think of, say, the 
 deatli of Spinoza, uidess I reflect, the thou{jht never ari.ses that 
 my idea is only a picture. In knowing, I am knowing; I am not 
 rellecting on the problem of knowledge. Yet when I do reflect, 
 I awake to the fact that it was only indirect knowledge that I 
 was engaged in, not direct witnessing of the event. And I do 
 this among other rea.sons for the one suggested, namely, because 
 I compared this idea with a new and richer one.^ And this pro- 
 cess can indeed be carried on indefinitely. Every inadequate 
 idea can be discredited by a new and richer idea. And further, 
 it is true, as was said, that never by this infinite process of idea- 
 tion can I get the past itself as it existed. But although we 
 admit the process and the failure, we deny that the failure is a 
 failure in knowledge. For, although we nowhere get nearer to 
 the existence of the past, we get ever nearer to a more adequate 
 knowledge of it. Even the first idea knew, and the revised idea 
 knew better. 
 
 Finally, the objection that if our ideas were ideally complete 
 they would he the past and therefore could not represent it, is 
 true, but harmless. It is true that the most complete idea contains 
 its object. Now, in the case of the past, this can never be; for 
 the whole past, as we shall prove in our next chapter, cannot 
 recur. Yet because complete knowledge is impossible, partial 
 knowledge is not therefore impossible. Through representation 
 we have such knowledge, and genuine knowledge. 
 
 As for the objection of Joachim, to the effect that idea and 
 object cannot be alike, because, in the case of knowledge of the 
 past, they belong to different moments of time, have different re- 
 lations, and so must be different, it plainly rests on the so-called 
 internal view of relations. The answer to it consists in the asser- 
 tion of the opposed view. That relations may be external, I take 
 to have been proved by Russell, in his work The Principles of 
 
 ' See page 111.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 119 
 
 Mathematics, chapter xxvii, U 428 and Tj 49. However this be, it 
 is a fact of experience that there can be similar objects in different 
 settings, that is, with different relations. One hesitates to point 
 to the two leaves of a tree or to picture and original. I cannot see 
 how logic can gainsay such experiencas. But only a mistaken 
 logic undertakes this. Even if objects in different relations can- 
 not be identical, the representative theory is untouched; for all 
 that it demands is similarity; it does not demand complete 
 identity. 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE NATURE OF TIME 
 
 Thus far Ave have investigated the knowledge of the past 
 wholly from the side of the knowing. We have reached our 
 conclusions quite independently of any assumptions as to the 
 being and nature of the object of knowing. Now that we have 
 outlined our own theory of knowledge of the past from the side 
 of the idea, if w^e would complete that view we can no longer 
 avoid justifying our assumptions explicitly by determining the 
 precise nature and being of the past. Briefly put, our view has 
 been that we know the past through ideas in which are present 
 characters like those of the object, which characters are an- 
 nounced by the idea itself as belonging to the object. The char- 
 acters are immediately, instinctively, and automatically referred 
 to an object, in the knowing act ; the object thus appears either 
 partly in person, in memory, or vicariously, in idea ; this appear- 
 ance is the direct knowledge of the object. Knowledge is the 
 more complete the more fully the characters of the object appear 
 in the idea. "We have already examined some of the difficulties 
 which such an account of knowledge has to face, both in general 
 and with regard to the past. There are others still unsolved. If 
 the memory experience be partly identical with the original, the 
 problem arises as to how one thing can exist at two times. Fur- 
 ther, does a past event exist before it is remembered? If so, 
 what sort of existence did it possess? If not, how can a thing 
 which has once ceased to exist, return into existence? Again,
 
 I'JO r iiirirsil !i of ('(tlifornid l'\ihlii(iliinis in l'liilt)S0}}li ij. I ^'"l- 2 
 
 siipposr tilt' p;ist tines iii)t fxisl. ht»\v t-aii ;my vifw ni;il<f knowl- 
 (•(Ij^(! of tiic n()?i-('xisti'iil inti'lliuil'l"'. ainl in particular how can 
 H view do SI) wiiit'li rc^'ards kiiDwIfdi^c as adt'(|iiatf so far i\n 
 idea and ohji'ft an- similar? How can a tliinj^ wliidi exists be 
 similar to another which docs not exist? On the other hand, if 
 for the purp(xses of knowlcdf^e we must suppose that the past 
 exists, how is it truly past ? Th(» answer to these questions re- 
 quires an investigation of the wlit)lc prtiblcm of time. 
 
 1. The Tkmporai. Experience 
 
 As we now possess it, time is a very complex concept, devel- 
 oped in the sei-vice of multifarious interests, and involving the 
 metaphysical assumptions of common-sense philosophy. In the 
 light of this, we feel, with Professor Royce,^ that "much of the 
 difficulty that appears in our metaphysical views about time is 
 due .... to lack of naivete and directness in viewing the tem- 
 poral aspects of reality," and that in order to get clear and fresh 
 conceptions we mu.st go to the source whence all have flowed, the 
 immediate time-experience itself. 
 
 The fundamental aspect of the temporal experience is that of 
 change, the experience of the influx of elements around a core 
 relatively stable, and of their disintegration. In relation to one 
 another they constitute the so-called time-form. What are the 
 obvious characters of the time-form, as illustrated by the familiar 
 examples of the melody, the line of verse when uttered, the beats 
 of a metronome ? Plainly, serial order and irreversible sense : 
 several elements present together in an arrangement of one after 
 the other, with univocal direction. But these traits do not serve 
 to distinguish time-form from other forms. The words which 
 constitute the verse have a serial order, and taken together with 
 their meaning have an irreversible direction. The distinguishing 
 element in question is that of cliange. Just to see the words on 
 a page is to have an experience in itself wholly non-temporal, 
 which, if it were to last, would be an experience of eternity. But 
 as soon as we repeat the line the experience is transformed, it is 
 now one of change, that is, of coming and of passing away, of 
 
 8 The H'orld and the Individual, 2nd series, lecture III.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 121 
 
 novelty which becomes familiarity. The static meaning has be- 
 come agitated and has altered its posture ; if we wish a static pic- 
 ture of a dynamic thing, we may liken it to a directed line of dots 
 which, till now horizontal, has tipped slightly, up or down. The 
 elements have the same order and direction, only the forward 
 and the rearward ones have somehow been displaced; they have 
 been marked, the former with the brand "new," the latter with 
 the brand "familiar" or "departing." 
 
 It is this element of change which differentiates time-form 
 from all others, making it unique and irreducible. Novelty and 
 passing do not belong to the static and eternal form of series. 
 In the eternal there is, to be sure, variety and unity, but there 
 is not novelty and losing. There, each has a distinct and unique 
 place; but all places are filled; there is no passing of one and 
 rise of other. Here, elements are felt as entering into places left 
 vacant by others, the newcomers crowding out the old. In the 
 eternal and static, all things are known ; in time, acquaintance 
 grows : a stranger enters ; he departs a familiar friend. 
 
 The direction of the time-experience is determined by the ex- 
 perience of novelty passing into familiarity, and then into loss. 
 The new comes before the old, the old before the decaying. The 
 new must always enter from one direction, and the old pass out 
 in the other. 
 
 The time-experience is not primarily volitional, but cognitive. 
 It is most striking when the self passively endures the influx of 
 new unsought sensations. Our deeds are temporal because they 
 are creative and depend on change ; our will looks forward be- 
 cause it grasps at something new. 
 
 At the lowest level, the distinctions of past, present, and future 
 do not exist in full development. Yet there are the beginnings 
 of them. An element, as it goes, leaves the memory of itself, 
 the old element in an altered form. This is felt as past because 
 it has at once two characters, familiarity and loss. It is familiar 
 because it once was completely ours, and is now partially so. The 
 past was once present, and memory is an outgrowth of something 
 always with us. In the background of consciousness elements of 
 the past exist, and all remembering is a completion of them. 
 Memory is marked with the sense of loss because it comes to us
 
 ]'2'2 I' iiiri rsil !/ of Califdrniti I'Khlicnlioii.s In I'liilosojjlii/. ( Vol. 2 
 
 as |)art i)\' a wIkiIc uliidi Uf caiumt jjohscss, yet wlm-li oiifc was 
 ours. Here a<,'airi the fact of (iH'aniii{.j i.s presupposed. Tliroiij^'li 
 till' clcmciils of nicniory we look to iriorc, of which tlicy arc parts, 
 hut not the whoh*. Pa.st, thcti. are those elements of the process 
 of chauKf which. Rraftinj; themselves on to the permanent, belong 
 fo a wliolc. once ours, Ituf incapable of rein.statement. 
 
 Certain views of the nature of pastuess are inaccurate. I'ast- 
 ncss (Iocs not arise out of the felt contrast between memorj' and 
 vivid cxpci-icnce; for the same contrast exists in the case of 
 expectation. Nor does it come throu{?h desire, the straininj;: after 
 somethinfj: and finding' that we cannot get it; for we seek in the 
 future and cannot get. Moreover, the past cannot adequately be 
 described as that which, in contrast with the future, we cannot 
 alter; for the inevitable is also unalterable. 
 
 Future elements are felt Jis new. They cannot, as individuals, 
 be immediately assimilated to the old. Only through the concept, 
 or only so far as the intent of an expectation, are they old, and 
 even so they stand out contrasted with that which means them. 
 Here again, a volitional interpretation is insufficient. We cannot 
 define the future as the object of action, as that which we can 
 create or alter, as that which we seek and can get ; for much comes 
 unasked and inevitably. An object is not primarily future be- 
 cause we strive for it, but because it is a possible new experience. 
 It is future, merely if we represent it as not wholly ours. 
 
 Past and future are not absolutely distinct. As we saw, 
 future objects are not whollj' unfamiliar. So far as expected, or 
 so far as a concept fits the new individual experience, it was 
 already there. Experience is a unity, and the universal is in 
 the particular. The so-called future grows out of the past, and 
 contains, in new forms, many of its elements. Only the wholly 
 new elements can be called absolutely future. Yet they come 
 wrapt up in the old. and forthwith become old. 
 
 The full development of the distinctions between past, present, 
 and future requires reflection. The felt continuity of our life 
 must be splintered into three disjointed parts. Objects must be 
 reflected upon, and the memory or expectation not be confused as 
 present experiences with their objects. Once more we come upon 
 the fact of meaning. The memory which is ours and present
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 123 
 
 means something more which is no longer ours and is past; the 
 expectation, also present, means an individual experience, not yet 
 possessed, which is future. Only thus can arise the negativity, 
 the contrast, the holding of one thing over against another, neces- 
 sary for the experience when full grown. This experience in its 
 fullness involves the thought, first, of a limited range of existence, 
 the present, and, secondly, of another field which does not belong 
 to the first, yet which once did belong to it, the past and future. 
 In contrast with an eternal realm like that of mathematics, where 
 an element, if it belongs in a class, always belongs there, elements 
 are here thought of as excluded from a class to which they once 
 belonged or to which they may later be added. The consciousness 
 of time implies the awareness of a limitation of being which 
 cannot be overcome by knowledge. But the experience of past- 
 ness is not simply the experience of a genuine limitation in being. 
 It is not sufficiently describable as the awareness that now is not 
 then, that this is not that. For it is also the experience of loss, 
 and loss is more than limitation. This feature, being one of the 
 unique characters of this experience, can be expressed only in 
 terms of itself. It is the feeling that to us belonged something 
 which we have no longer. 
 
 If our account be correct, it is clear that axvy attempt to find 
 in the time-form every feature of the time-experience, and, by 
 applying a generalized type of this to the hypothetical absolute, 
 to make conceivable a retention of the actual time-distinctions 
 of our finitude within an all-embracing experience, is futile. The 
 distinctions of past and present are not completely contained in 
 the elements which belong to the specious present. In the time- 
 form we have, to be sure, earlier and later, coming and going. 
 One element does not occupy the same place as another in the 
 time-sequence, and one is more forward or more backward in the 
 time-direction. But there is no goyie, no lost. When I hear a line 
 of verse, the first words are not "over and done with" at the 
 time when the later ones arrive. They are simply behind and 
 fading, but not faded; passing, but not past. We experience past- 
 ness completely when we reflectively experience loss. Awareness 
 of difference of position and of vividness within the specious 
 present, or even of a change of these, does not suffice for this 
 experience.
 
 124 University of California I'uhlicaliuns in I'liilosopin/. \ Vol. 2 
 
 The clrmcnts must he \\'\i as ahsi-iit fioni llic six'ciDus [)rf'Sf'nt, 
 as rxclmlcd I'l-iini all llial we iiiiiiirdiatrly experience. The felt 
 cxi'lusivcricss of past ami picsciil is licncc not at all comparable 
 to lliat of one point (»ii a line with i-cfcrcnfo to another. There 
 one point is simply not an(»tlH'r, hnt both belong to the same nni- 
 vcrsf of (iiscoui'sc. In lln' temporal experience, on the other 
 hand, the two elements exelude each other from the same universe. 
 The one is felt to have a character wiiich the other ha.s lost, 
 and which absolutely differentiates them. They belong to two 
 ditferent realms. Tn vain does one endeavor to reconcile the in- 
 completeness, strivin<?, and pursuit which are admittedly char- 
 acteristic of the temporal experience, with the completeness, at- 
 tainment, and repose attributed to the absolute consciousness. 
 
 2. The Scope of Time 
 
 Thus far we have discovered time within experience only, in 
 the coming in and disintegration of its elements. But nature lies 
 within experience, the growth and decay of conscious elements 
 is also a growth and decay of natural elements. I watch the 
 burning of a candle — the wax melts and, running down, accumu- 
 lates on the mouth of the receptacle. Here are all the features 
 of change — the coming to be of new and the passing away of 
 old characters around a central persistence, the general candle 
 form. Or through years I watch an organism. I perceive growth 
 and correlated therewith always decay, yet. despite both, identity 
 and continuity. Is this apparently temporal character an illu- 
 sion? 
 
 The belief that the temporal character of natural objects is 
 an illusion, or, in other words, that time is subjective, is based 
 on the obvious fact that we never find anything in nature unless 
 we also, in some sense, find it in ourselves. All nature, we know, 
 must, in a way, pass through the self. Perhaps in so passing 
 it takes on, to our view, characters, among Avhich are the tem- 
 poral, which do not properly belong to it. 
 
 However, the fact that in knowing objects we Icnow them does 
 not prove that the characters we find in them are subjective only. 
 For, as we have seen, it is of the nature of the idea, either through
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 125 
 
 containing part of the object itself or through a copy of it, to 
 announce its own characters as being literally and objectively 
 those of the object. Nevertheless, no epistemological theory would 
 maintain that every feature of the knowing state, as psychical 
 fact, belongs to the object which appears through it. We have 
 always to inquire, how much of the idea is declared by it to 
 belong to the object, how much is merely its own. Every epis- 
 temological investigation involves the separation of the objective 
 from the subjective. The question is, What temporal characters 
 do we actually observe in nature ? 
 
 In the arising and disappearing of elements we have so far 
 discovered the essence of time. And this, as we have seen, in 
 nature we seem clearly to observe. Yet, so the Kantian would ob- 
 ject, what we always find both in ourselves and in what you call 
 "nature" is a coming of such elements into consciousness and 
 their gradual fading away out of it; the coming and going 
 of visual sensations into and out of the field of consciousness 
 really constitutes what you take to be time in the candle. The 
 objection rests upon a misunderstanding. Only figuratively 
 should one think of the elements as coming and going "in con- 
 sciousness." Consciousness is nothing besides them. It is no 
 room or receptacle which contains them. Like space, it is simply 
 a whole which they form. Now, elements may either pass from 
 that whole, as when I turn my face from the candle, and so have 
 no reason, as I can recover them, to think they have vanished ; or 
 else they may decay in that whole, as when, in my sight, the candle 
 burns down and the light goes out. In the latter case, the ele- 
 ments are irrecoverable, and have vanished not merely from con- 
 sciousness, but from existence. 
 
 There is a difference between passing from the self and dis- 
 integrating within the self. Growth and disintegration are the 
 differentiae of time ; not entering and leaving the self. And this 
 growth and disintegration we observe in nature. The elements 
 which arise in nature may also arise into the self, and their decay 
 may be a decay in both. Not coming and going in consciousness, 
 but coming and going at all, make up the essence of time. 
 
 Yet not everything which we associate with time belongs to 
 nature apart from consciousness. In nature there is no memory
 
 1 L'(! (hiivrrsity of dalifnniiti I'uhlications in Philosophy. ( Vol. 2 
 
 <»r cxpcclal idii. Tlic Mi<'iii(tr\- wlndi Ilriinj^' sui)i)o.s('(l to 1><; a 
 uiiivorsal |)r-()|»cily of liviiij,' niatlcr is iiof n-ally this. Habit and 
 litTcdity produce another like tlic old, they do not preserve the 
 old. Or, if they pi-cscrvc the old, it i.s that which is universal in 
 the old, not Ihr iiidividual. Memory alone preserves what is 
 individual in the past. |<'ui' in niciimfy alnnc, tlirou^'li a i)art 
 that remains, is nn-ant the individual wlirilc wliicli, by hein<^ 
 meant, is so far conserved. 
 
 Likewise, in nature there is no foresight or expectation. Again 
 what seems to be this is not really such. The blackberry bush 
 will put forth its thorns just the same when sheltered in the cul- 
 tivated garden. Nature cannot foresee any specific event. 
 Nature's foresight is habit or a vague foreboding. It is the 
 privilege of consciousness to predict. 
 
 Since nature has no memory or expectation, the Bergsonian 
 thesis that she has no duration is sustained. What in nature 
 corresponds to the sense of duration is, as we shall see, correla- 
 tion. The sense of duration is a purely p.sychical complex made 
 up of memories, expectations, and comparisons. A full discus- 
 sion and test of this we reserve for another place. Yet this 
 truth does not involve the non-temporal character of nature. Not 
 duration, but growth and decay, are the real temporal facts, and 
 these, as we have seen, are facts of nature. 
 
 Time, then, belongs to nature and to consciousness; but it 
 does not belong to all that is. All ideal and universal objects, all 
 mathematical and logical entities, are eternal and non-temporal. 
 For they do not arise and perish, they are not subject to change. 
 To be sure, our knowledge of them begins at a certain date, grows, 
 or fades away. What we think of them changes as we change. 
 Our knowledge of the number system has altered since the 
 Pythagoreans, and doubtless Cantor and Russell and Dedekind 
 have not taught us all that we are yet to learn. Yet the number 
 series does not change, and its elements, although ordered in a 
 way somewhat similar to the moments of time, are not tempor- 
 ally one before the other. Only our consciousness of it is tem- 
 poral ; as when, for example, we count, becoming aware first of 
 one, then of two, and so on. each element being past when the 
 next is present. No analysis of the numbers themselves would
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 127 
 
 yield any hint of change, or of the distinctions of past, present, or 
 future. To be sure, they might all be present at a given date to 
 the knowledge of a being with a sufficiently wide span of atten- 
 tion. But this would not make them in themselves present or give 
 them any time relations, since they might also be present to an 
 earlier or later state of consciousness. The like is true of all con- 
 ceptual objects. But to this subject we shall return at the end 
 of this monograph. 
 
 3. The Properties op Time 
 
 So far we have considered time chiefly as a character of the 
 immediately known inner life. But, as we have already seen, 
 time is not merely subjective. It is a category of nature as well. 
 We have j'et to determine the universal properties of time, and 
 especially those of that portion which particularly concerns us — 
 the past. 
 
 That time is a series is clear from the fact of change. Con- 
 sider again the burning of a candle. One given length exists, 
 then another, then another. There is a disappearance or an in- 
 flux of elements, one after the other. The process of change 
 occurs in stages, each whole situation constituting an instant, 
 serialized by a transitive, asymmetrical relation. The process, 
 we have stated, is constituted by the influx or efflux of elements — 
 but of what is it a process ? WJiat changes ? Wliatsover remains 
 identical throughout various stages is the thing which changes. 
 We speak of a changing candle because there is a visible identity 
 in the phenomenon. In general, a "thing" changes when ele- 
 ments are added to or subtracted from a stable part. The self 
 is an example. The instants of a man 's biography are successive 
 psychical wholes. His identity, that which makes it possible to 
 speak of "him" at all, is the mass of organic sensations, feelings, 
 and purposes, which focally or marginally are with him always. 
 He grows with the increment of experiences and decays with 
 their disintegration. The union of identity with diversity in 
 change is, at least in the case of the self, an experiential fact. 
 
 In characterizing growth as an "addition," and decay as a 
 "subtraction," I do not mean to imply any particular view of
 
 IL'S rnivcrsily of dalifiiniiit I'ublicalion.s in riiilosopin/. [^'"'- 2 
 
 till' kind <>r wlmlc wliicli ii tliiti;^' or n si-H' forms, least oi" all that 
 it is a mere "sum dl" parts." The whole in (|ue>»tion may have 
 any orfjjanization you please. Whatsoever its stni<tiiti', and what- 
 ever its mode of as.siniilat ion, soniethinj? will be added to it in 
 growth, and somethinj; taken from it in deejay. This is the most 
 general deseriptioii (»l' the process. 
 
 Bradley's well-known view, that (;hanf»e is a contradictory con- 
 cept because identity and divei*sity cannot be united, has been 
 refuted, we believe, by Russell. Bradley's argument, briefly 
 stated, is this. Let a given cross-section of the change-process of 
 anything; be a. Let a remain identical while h is added. Then 
 that stajxe will be a -\- b. a, we say, has changed into a -\- b. But 
 what is a that has remained identical? 6 cannot be simply juxta- 
 posed. Its adjunction must have effected some alteration in a. 
 Let us then rewrite a an a -\- p, a being that part which has re- 
 mained identical, /8 being that novel part introduced into a by 
 the change. But clearly, the same reasoning applies to a in re- 
 lation to 13. Hence we must find a new expression for a, — and so 
 on without end. 
 
 Bradley has here given us, I think, a true description of 
 our procedure in the conceptual dealing with pervasive change. 
 Growth is no mere accretion from the outside. Change is contin- 
 uous, and often centripetal into the very core. All parts may 
 be affected, even the most minute. We may not be able to ob- 
 serve the change, yet it probably exists. Nevertheless — herein is 
 contained the answer to Bradley — identity as well as difference is 
 omnipresent here. Distinguish forever in the fashion illus- 
 trated, yet you will always find identity. You can no more get 
 rid of it than you can reach the end of an infinite series. It is 
 a fact that will pursue you. Of course, empirically, you will be 
 unable longer to find diversity; at last the identity will seem to 
 be pure. Pure or not, it will always be there. And the infinite 
 progress, although practicalh^ inconvenient, is logically harmless. 
 
 Time, then, is a series. What are its properties? (1) In 
 the first place, the series is simple. If one takes one's stand 
 upon the individual consciousness, this is obvious. Its sim- 
 plicity is that of our unified inner life. Change is here incident 
 to a single whole. But time is no mere individual affair, relative
 
 1913] Parker: 31 etaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 129 
 
 to each biography. There are many temporal processes, but only 
 one time. Time is the series which results from their correla- 
 tion, and this series is simple. What is the principle of the 
 correlation ? 
 
 The principle is this — those stages of different processes are 
 contemporaneous which exist, or existed, together. To ask what 
 events are contemporaneous with a given existing event is to ask, 
 what other events exist? The time order of events which are 
 under direct observation is set up very simply. Those which we 
 observe to exist constitute a "now," or moment. Coexistence is 
 observable just as the collineation of points on a line. One can 
 observe, for example, the coexistence of various bodily sensations. 
 These events pass away. This is also a matter of observation. 
 Other events coexist, displacing these, which are perhaps remem- 
 bered. The relation of before and after is then plainly estab- 
 lished. 
 
 The co-presence and the succession of events are thus matters 
 of observation. Memory, apart from error, will of course reflect 
 this. When events cannot be observed and remembered, their co- 
 presence and succession have to be established by analogy and 
 induction. Only thus, for example, can the time relations of 
 geological strata or organic fossils be discovered. Here we reason 
 on the basis of coexistences and sequences directly observable. 
 
 Time is nothing apart from processes. Time is simply the 
 abstract for their correlation and ordering. The elements of 
 individual series are levelled with others through coexistence ; the 
 order in which they exist or do not exist, their order in arising 
 and perishing, is their time order. 
 
 Russell ^ has objected to all so-called relativistic views of time 
 on the ground that since events form a many-one series — many 
 events being co-present at a single time — they cannot be inde- 
 pendent of each other and merely correlated, but must derive their 
 order from the order of an objective and absolute time, a se- 
 quence not deducible from them. Co-presence, from this point of 
 view, means co-presence at a given time, and so implies the inde- 
 pendent existence of time. Events are correlated by relation to 
 time — time is not the abstract for their correlation. 
 
 9 "Is Position in Space and Time Absolute or Relative?" Mind, July, 
 1901.
 
 ]'M\ I' iiliu rsH 1/ nf Cdlifornia I'lthlicdlions in I'liitosopln/. I Vol. 2 
 
 Tlicrt' is liolli tnitli ;iii(l rrr<)r in lliis view. It is wntiij^ in 
 .sn|)|)nsin^ lli.'il CO pfcsciicc implies iiriic. As Uf luivc seen, en- 
 cxistciK'i' is primary, "(MJ-prcscncc at a {^ivcii tirnc!" pn'sui)pases 
 tliat the ordrr of coexistences has already been established. A 
 ^iveii moniciit is iiofliinf? bnt a level of events. P^vents are co- 
 prcsenl simply becaus*' fliey coexist or have eoexisted. The 
 ni()nu'nt"at which" is determinable solely with reference to other 
 levels of coexistence, either as preceding or succeedinj:?. Yet 
 Russell is right in insisting that time is not merely a matter of 
 point of view. Processes are not independent of each other, for 
 the principle of their correlation cannot be deduced from any 
 single one. They are levelled through the pos.session of a com- 
 mon character, coexistence, and serialized through objective rela- 
 tions of succession. Even to possess a common character is to 
 be mutually related, and to be related is to be subject to an 
 objective law independent of the point of view of each. Hence 
 time is not merely the ' ' form of the inner sense, ' ' but an objective 
 series of levels of inner senses. The levels are the instants or mo- 
 ments of time. Events or wholes, stages in individual processes, 
 are levelled with others through the relation of coexistence ; they 
 form a single series of levels because the levels are one before 
 another in a determinate order. 
 
 No difficulty is incurred by this view of time as a series of 
 levels of coexistent phases of experience, from the fact of dif- 
 ferences in their so-called rates of change. In order to be con- 
 vinced of this, one must apprehend the status of duration as a 
 character of objective time. I have already asserted that in 
 nature there is no sense of duration. This is, in fact, wholly sub- 
 jective. It depends on attention, interest, expectation, etc. It 
 is a feeling which accompanies the existence of elements in con- 
 sciousness in relation to other elements. Objectively, it is wholly 
 a matter of correlation. An element endures or lasts long when 
 it is coexistent with the emergence and passage of many other 
 elements. One process is slower than another when to a few 
 stages of the former there are correlated many of the latter. 
 For example, to say that the sun takes twelve times as long to 
 complete its orbit as the moon does hers, is simply to define a 
 correlation between twelve series of positions defined by the revo-
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 131 
 
 lutions of the moon and one series of positions defined by the 
 revolution of the sun. As Mach has suggested, to say that a 
 process ' ' takes time, ' ' as, for instance, the cooling of a body does, 
 is to say that a series of heat values is dependent functionally 
 on other such series in surrounding bodies and, indirectly, on 
 the position of the sun, and, in fact, on every other series of events 
 in the universe. To have to wait for an event, to say of it that 
 a certain length of time will elapse before it appears, means that 
 certain other phenomena will inevitably intervene to conscious- 
 ness. Objectively, time is just the order of the correlation of 
 facts. 
 
 It would be a misapprehension of the view here defended to 
 suppose that it assumed the independence of processes. There 
 is only one process, just as there is only one time. The one 
 existence-stream wells up inside the relatively isolated centers 
 of experience, and may be artificially divided into many distinct 
 natural eddies. Yet, in truth, nature and consciousness overlap, 
 and all nature is one flux. From changes in one apparently 
 isolated series can be determined changes in another. The so- 
 called spatial distance of one from another is usually a condition 
 of lateness in such dependent changes, that is, it involves that 
 if h in center n depend on a in center m a whole series of other 
 changes will precede in n and m. Hence, since nature is a whole 
 and there are no independent processes, one might, as Mach has 
 shown, replace t in physical equations by the path of the sun, 
 or by any other continuous and parallel process, provided one 
 could discover the law of the concomitant variations. And, of 
 course, this is what, for all practical purposes, is done. The t 
 of physical equations, like all other expressions for so-called abso- 
 lute time, is just a symbol for the correlation of events, usually 
 with the sun. For the proof of this, one has only to refer to the 
 works of Mach, Ostwald, Poincare, and Stallo. 
 
 If our view of time be correct, Bradley's supposition that 
 there might be many time series is futile. His appeal to the 
 varieties of personal experience, we have already disposed of. 
 Even if there were experiences entirely remote from ours, they 
 would belong to the same time. For they would either exist or 
 not exist ; their comings and goings w^ould necessarily align thom
 
 ll{2 I'tiirrrsihf of ('(ilifoniiti I'lihlicat ions in rinloso])li ij. I V<j1. 2 
 
 with ours. Since cxistfncc nnd iinn-cxistciKM- jirc «listinctiori.s ab- 
 solute. iill-j)ervasive, aiid siii^'le, so, a.s time is hasf-d on the.sf! dis- 
 tinct ions, finie ilseir is ahsohite, all pervasive, and sirif^h?. Of 
 any remote exper'ience we should <iid\ need to ask. docs it exist, 
 und it would thereby be levelled with wlial(^ver exp«!rience of ours 
 existed. Appeal to the apparent manifoldnoss of the tim(; of 
 fiction is irrelevant. Keal time can b(; predicted only of what 
 exists or has existed. 
 
 (2) In our own experieneo, time is sensibly continuous. '° Even 
 the phenomena of sleep and swooning are only apparent excep- 
 tions. For our immediate experience, these are changes, not lapses, 
 in consciousness. Introspection has no means of answering Locke's 
 (piestion, wliether the soul always thinks. Left to itself in its 
 backward searcli, it can find only experiences succeeding one an- 
 other. One could not experience a lapse in consciousness; for 
 to do so would require that one should experience one's owti 
 non-existence — the very conception of which is contradictory. 
 One could not find a lapse by mere memory, for to do so would 
 require that one should find emptiness; now to find emptiness 
 presupposes that one is already aware of the being of something 
 that has boundaries between which there might be a filling; but 
 aside from sophistication gained elsewhere, consciousness is un- 
 aware of boundaries in the stream of its own life. We come to 
 believe in gaps, first, from the reports of our fellow men who 
 tell us that time was, that is, that their own life was awake and 
 moving, while we were still and asleep. Through correlating 
 individual streams of consciousness we see that to elements of 
 one there correspond no elements of others. The observation that 
 recurrent physical processes have seemingly skipped those inter- 
 mediaries which we expect normally to occur, confirms our belief. 
 We prefer to regard our own lives as discontinuous rather than 
 nature's, because we have learned to think of her as having an 
 existence and habit independent, and superior to our own. Thus 
 even if there are gaps in the indi\ndual experience — empty spaces 
 in the lives of each — time is not thereby rendered discontinuous. 
 For if, correlated with these, there exists any experience of other 
 
 i>^ See Ostwald. Xaturphilosophie, Fiinfte Yorlesung, on which our account 
 is largely dependent.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 133 
 
 men or of nature which is continuous, time is continuous also; 
 for time is just the order of whatever experiences there happen 
 to have been. Hence there can be time between phases of indi- 
 vidual experience, but "no time between time." Even if the 
 universe were to fall asleep and then waken, there would be no 
 lapse of time : for there is no time where there is no existence ; 
 the waking would follow immediately on the sleep ; it would be 
 merely another experience, contiguous with the world's last 
 dream. 
 
 Within our individual conscious experience itself there are 
 no reasons for regarding time as continuous in the mathematical 
 sense. We certainly cannot discover by introspection an in- 
 finity of elements. And such an infinity would not make com- 
 pletely intelligible what we mean by the felt continuity of con- 
 sciousness. Time, in the inner life, is continuous as sensible 
 space is. Our conviction that it is continuous in the mathematical 
 sense is due to our measurement of it by physical processes. We 
 asvsume that physical processes are mathematically continuous, 
 because we assume that space over which motion proceeds is 
 continuous. But no one, of course, has ever observed continuity 
 either in space or in motion. The assumption of continuity helps 
 us to predict ; it works well in our science, hence our belief. 
 The sensible continuity of time involves at least connexity, ab- 
 sence of breaks; that is, that between any two parts of the series, 
 if there is anything, it is always part of the series, and, further, 
 that no discrete elements can be found. Those who regard time 
 as discontinuous are idealists who base their conviction on the dis- 
 continuity of the pulses of attention. But they neglect the entire 
 sphere of inattention. When this is taken into view, consciousness 
 has the continuity described — it has no breaks, and, during wak- 
 ing at least, "fills" time. 
 
 In the subtle little book, Les donnees immSdiates de la con- 
 science, the serial view of time has received an acute critique at 
 the hands of Bergson. The argument is, we think, fatal to any 
 conception of time as a punctual series, in which any element 
 which occupies a given position is necessarily excluded from every 
 other. What Bergson has called la penetration mutuelle des 
 elements, the existence of elements in both past and present, is,
 
 i:{4 (hiirt rsitji of (Uilifnrnin I'lihlii-nli'ms i)i fhilosoph}/. I V'ol. 2 
 
 as \\v liavc seen, ai) in(liit)ilalilr fad of memory, and quite ir- 
 rccoiicilahlc with llic piiiichial iiiia^'c Yet, hocan.s(,' time i.s not 
 n piiiii'lual scries, if is not tliereforc no scries at all. There can 
 !)(■ tin (|iicsti<iii as fit I lie being of stages in all change, stages which 
 do form a series of some kind. Consider only the growth of an 
 organism, motion, our familiar burning candle, the flight of a 
 man's Ihouglit.s. The stages hero are not mere conceptual sec- 
 tions in a homogeneous unit: tlicy are real; that is, they corres- 
 pond to something actual — the successive emergence and decay 
 of elements. Justice is not done to this a^spect of time in Berg- 
 son's treatment. Yet it is quite as fundamental as that upon 
 which he insists — the conservation of the past. Both aspects are 
 essential to a complete view. 
 
 There are other illustrations of series besides that of the 
 points on a line. There is a very simple spatial one, which illus- 
 trates many features of the time series. Consider a series of 
 overlapping areas of various sizes. Here parts of space exist 
 identically in various areas. Yet the latter may be arranged in 
 a continuous series. Each position, that is, each whole area, is 
 unique, but the parts of areas are not all so; some will run 
 through the entire series. The positions will be distinguished by 
 possessing or not possessing elements which do not or do belong 
 to the others. The properties of time are parallel. The "events" 
 are unique, that is, the whole stages or cross-sections of a process. 
 But the elements of these are not unique, they are repeated in 
 various wholes, exist at various ' ' times. ' ' The wholes are always 
 different, but the elements may not be unique. Take the self as 
 an illustration. It begins its career as a definite whole of ele- 
 ments. Growth consists in the continual modification of this 
 through the loss of some elements and the gain of others. Self- 
 identity may be more or less. After maturity, for example, it is 
 probably greater than before and after puberty; yet there is 
 always some of it. Thus the organic sensations are largely iden- 
 tical "over-night," and the thoughts of the morrow may be the 
 same as those of yesterday. 
 
 Similar facts are patent when we consider not only the indi- 
 vidual but the social temporal process. It is the totality of the 
 material assimilated by each generation which is different. Yet
 
 1913] Parker : Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 135 
 
 the social heritage is an accumulation — there is a fund of iden- 
 tity around which accretions form. But the whole is not con- 
 served. Each invention by displacing other things, either in use 
 or interest, destroys something. The temporal process is conser- 
 vative, constructive, and destructive. 
 
 Our conception of time removes a difficulty involved in our 
 epistemology. The problem was, If memory and, to a certain 
 extent, report actually present us with the past, how can that 
 which they present exist at two times ? Our view shows how we 
 can "get the past over again," not, to be sure, the complete 
 past, but part of it. It shows that present and past are not 
 wholly incompatible. Hence, even if ideally adequate knowledge 
 involving reinstatement of its total object be here impossible, 
 knowledge is still possible. 
 
 Here is a striking illustration of the interdependence of 
 ontology and epistemology. The conception of time as a linear 
 spatial series plainly involves a purely representative theory of 
 knowledge of the past. Each mental state must be unique and 
 hence can know only through being similar to the past. This is 
 the view of time accepted by the ordinary scientific psychology. 
 We now know that it is not at all inevitable and that it is con- 
 tradicted by the facts of self-identity and memory. 
 
 It would be objected to our view, that an element cannot exist 
 at two times, for in order to do so it would have to maintain its 
 identity despite its entrance into new relationships. And, so it 
 is claimed, a thing cannot be identical in a new context. This 
 objection rests upon the view of relations as internal. We have 
 already replied to it. Partial identity despite change of relation- 
 ships is a fact of immediate experience. I am partly the same 
 as man and as child, before and after entering into civic relation- 
 ships. We repeat, no logic can invalidate the truth of such ex- 
 periences. For a logical defense of the external view of relations 
 and critique of the internal, I must again refer to Russell. 
 
 (3) That time has direction, is deducible from the universal 
 character of conscious experience, whose form it is. We have 
 already laid stress on the appreciable aspects of this : the sense 
 of novelty, of the breaking in of new contents upon the self and 
 the passing of the old, of the direction of the will, which estab-
 
 l:{() (hiirrrsihf of Califitrnid f'uhlications in I'liilosophif. I Vol. 2 
 
 lislirs tlic Icli'dln^nc'il ur-fliT. '!'(» Ilidsc will) l)('lii'Vf in tho eternal 
 existcricc of the whole i>\' tiriif, 1 iiin'-scn.s(; is, of course', wliolly 
 of nil appreciable and subjective character. But to tlioso who 
 believe tliat only a singlf- pnisent exists, the time-direction is 
 an irreducible character of the irreducible fact of becomint^. It 
 rests (tn the asymmetry of the relations before and after of be- 
 coming::. The fact of cominf^ into existence and passinf? out of 
 existence in an order is the fact of time-direction. 
 
 (4) The most impressive, emotionally, of all the characters of 
 time, is perhai)s that of its lack of double points. No moment 
 is at once past and future to any other. Each divides the others 
 into two mutually exclusive classes, the past and the future. 
 Time does not at ;uiy point turn back on its course. Time is 
 irreversible, the past is irrevocable. In memory we may call 
 back some of the past, but the complete past returns not again. 
 Hence the sadness of the time process. 
 
 INIaeh and Ostwald derive our belief in the irreversibility of 
 time from such processes as wearing out, decay, growing old, 
 the dissipation of heat, and so on. There are no truly reversible 
 or recurrent processes in nature. Cyclical processes and so-called 
 recurrent processes are only apparently such. The coexistence 
 of the unlike phases of other such processes and of irreversible 
 processes renders these processes also, because of the unity of 
 nature, really non-recurrent. But our belief is. I think, more 
 deeply and inwardly grounded. Time order, we have seen, is 
 identical with the order of co-present experiences. And it is 
 from the law of our inner life that we feel assured that the past 
 cannot wholly recur. For the past to become our future we 
 should have to be boys again, we with our sophistication and 
 sober purposes should have to be innocent and playful. And this, 
 of course, could not be. "We might know the past boy that we 
 were, just as we know another boy now. but we could not he that 
 boy. any more than we can be this boy. For to be a boy depends 
 on having just those limitations which would be destroyed if our 
 being should flow together with his. Knowledge and ignorance 
 cannot coexist. One cannot be exactly what one is and some- 
 thing else besides.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 137 
 
 The continuity of the change-process and the identity of the 
 self through change thus prevent any sudden recurrence of the 
 past. But might not the reinstatement of the past be gradual? 
 Only an immediate following of the past moment upon a present 
 one is rendered impossible through continuity. Suppose the lost 
 elements gradual^ to be replaced and the new ones as gradually 
 to fall away, might not, after sufficient time, the old actually 
 recur, not in my life or yours, but in that of our children ? Might 
 not various areas of our illustration be repeated, not once only, 
 but often, in the course of time 's infinity ? Like the arts, civiliza- 
 tions might be lost and found many times. The ancient myths 
 of the cyclical course of the world, of transmigration and re- 
 incarnation, would be confirmed. There would be a sort of univer- 
 sal alternation of generations. The same roles in the drama of the 
 world would be impersonated many times by different actors. 
 "Why is the familiar image of time a straight line rather than a 
 cubic ? 
 
 Apart from any a priori ground for the belief in the unique- 
 ness of the moments or stages of the time-process, our conviction 
 of it rests on a generalization supported by the entire range of 
 our experience. The actual laws of the world speak universally 
 in its favor. Nowhere, in either space or time, do we meet with 
 the exact similarity of any demonstrable whole. Parts of a whole 
 will be found alike, but invariably others will differ. Owing to 
 the well-grounded inference of the interaction of all existents, 
 in order for any considerable part of a contemporaneous w^orld 
 to be exactly like any part of a preceding epoch, two entire cross- 
 sections of time would have to be alike. The improbability of 
 this is enormous. 
 
 Yet, besides these empirical grounds, there is an a priori one 
 for the uniqueness of moments. By an a priori ground I mean 
 one based upon the nature of experience as such. Experience 
 is living, organic ; its changes are pervasive and cumulative ; and 
 although it may decline, and fall back to the general character of 
 a preceding stage, the new stage will nevertheless bear traces of 
 the intervening development which will differentiate it from the 
 earlier similar one. A difference in position in the temporal
 
 i:5S University of (Jalifoniia I'lihlications in Philosophy. [Vol. 2 
 
 ficries n«'<'('s.siliitc.s ;i (lillrfcncc in cli.ir.ictrr, just hccauHo each (ivt-r- 
 lics tlir wlidlr r.itif^'r of the prcccdint^. To suppose that two 
 iiKUiiciils art' cxacUy nWkr. except lor position, involves a coritra- 
 clictioii ; for tlieir character depends on their position. 
 
 The impossihilit y of the retention of the complete past in the 
 present, or the recnrronce of any past moment as a new future, 
 prevents in any Tnetaphysically sympathetic heart full feeling for 
 the optimism of i)ro}:^ress. We can progress only through destroy- 
 iniT. 'riic new is perhaps better than the old. Still the old was 
 good and its i)ure and integral value is irrevocably lost. 
 
 (5) Last, we have a deep-seated conviction that the past 
 hud no beginning, and that the future will have no end. The 
 universality of this belief is rather weakened by the prevalence 
 of creation stories. Yet it seems doubtful if any beginning of 
 time was thought of by thase myth-makers. After all, the gods 
 or chaos existed previously. 
 
 Philosophers have attempted to disprove the possibility of a 
 first moment of time. To suppose a first moment, it is said, is 
 to suppose a time when time was not. Yet this argument is 
 obviously sophistical, for it really presupposes the infinity of 
 time, which is tlie point in dispute. The hypothesis was not that 
 of a beginning of time in time, but of a beginning of time at all. 
 By the hypothesis there was nothing before the first moment ; 
 indeed, it is illegitimate to speak of before at all except after the 
 first moment. This reasoning becomes more cogent if we bear in 
 mind that apart from events in time, that is, apart from experi- 
 ence, there is no time. Individual subjective time certainly has 
 a beginning at or near conception, and an end at death. 
 
 The arguments against an infinite past are equally falla- 
 cious. The chief of these is Kant's, contained in the First Antin- 
 omy. To suppose an infinite past is to suppose that at each 
 moment an infinite time had elapsed ; but this would mean that 
 an infinite series had been completed. "But the infinity of a 
 series consists in this, that it can never be completed by a suc- 
 cessive synthesis." Lotze has given a correct answer to this 
 argument: "It is not with itself that the endlessness of time is 
 in contradiction, but only with our effort to include its infinite
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 139 
 
 progress in a finite one of the same kind."^^ We, to be sure, can- 
 not count an infinite series, we cannot embrace the whole in any- 
 successive synthesis, but this does not prove that an infinite does 
 not exist. And there is nothing contradictory in supposing that 
 at each moment an infinite series has preceded. The possibility 
 of a series with a last but no first member is demonstrated by the 
 example of the series of negative whole numbers. 
 
 Ex nihilo nihil fit is the ancient and sufficient reason against 
 the supposition of a first moment. "We know of no origination 
 which is not an outgrowth, the coming to be of which was deter- 
 mined by an existent. It was thus that our own experience was 
 born, it is thus that natural products are made. For a similar 
 reason, the universe can have no end. The disintegration of an 
 existent is ultimately due to the onslaught of another, it is a 
 sequence of conflict, out of which one element always rises a victor. 
 Destruction is relative to growth or persistence. We have only 
 to think of the death of the organism, undoubtedly due to the 
 attack of exterior forces which feed on its destruction. It is 
 unthinkable that any simple element should, in itself, perish. 
 A whole can perish only through the conflict of its own elements 
 or a conflict with external forces. But in each case some elements 
 are rendered more stable in existence : in the former, certain of 
 its own ; in the latter, part of its environment. The inner decay 
 of the simple and the harmonious is impossible. Suicide is no 
 exception. Hence the universe can never come to an end. For 
 of external enemies there are none, and inner disruption of some 
 of its parts is relative to the growth of the rest. Since existence 
 has been always, time also has been always, and since existence 
 shall be always, so shall time. 
 
 11 Lotze, Metaphysics, Bosanqnet 's translation, p. 245, octavo edition.
 
 •}0 r iiinrsihi of ('itlifurinn I'lihliral Ifnis in I'hiloaophy. [Vol.2 
 
 (IIAI'TKK IV 
 
 TIIM .MI-rrAI'llVSICAL STATUS UF THE PAST 
 
 In our iiccoiint oF time \\v liave assumod tho common-scnsf? 
 view tliat only the "present" exists. For that view, time is not 
 an existent whole Only it part exists. The distinction between 
 past and present is both relative and absolute : relative, since 
 from the point of view of one moment all preceding moments are 
 past ; absolute, since one and only one of such points of view 
 exists, or is present in the jiregnant sense of the term. 
 
 ^letaphysics cannot take the non-existence of the past for 
 granted. Perhaps the belief of common-sense is a prejudice. 
 May not the distinction between past and present be purely 
 relative? In other words, may not the present, or "now," be a 
 logical variable, applicable to any moment and so to all moments, 
 rather than to one only, and that a changing one? "We have 
 tacitly assumed that becoming and disintegration are ultimate 
 facts; perhaps they are illusions, perhaps the universe is time- 
 lessly or time-inclusively actual. 
 
 In recent times the view of common-sense has been impugned 
 as a piece of popular and false metaphysics, and the whole time 
 series regarded as actual. The distinction between past and 
 future is wholly relative, it is declared. From the point of \'iew 
 of each moment the others are either past or future, but no one 
 point of view is truer than another. The experiences of passing 
 away and of becoming are illusions. The past and future are 
 inaccessible, not non-existent. Wlien I say, my past is gone, my 
 old self is dead, I really mean. I am not that self, that self is 
 another self. In fact, "all that is pa.st, all histories, actions, and 
 states of our earlier time" are, not to be sure now, but then, 
 "still existing and happening," "and every individual being Sn 
 has alongside of itself as many doubles. S^. So, S3, completing 
 themselves one after another, as it counts various moments in 
 the existence which it seems to have lived through,"*^- and, so we 
 
 12 Lotze, Metaphysics, Bosanquet's translation, p. 258.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 141 
 
 ought to add, as many other such doubles as it shall live through, 
 to and including the one that dies. Thus there is no real loss 
 or gain in the universe; the experiences of loss and gain are 
 experiences, the one of the relative inaccessibility of various 
 moments with regard to one another, the other of the discovery 
 of new contents. Birth to the one to whom it occurs is an experi- 
 ence, a character of the universe which simply is, eternally ; to 
 the onlooker it is another experience, also eternally posited; 
 death means simply the boundary of an eternal series of 
 experiences which have a common character or bear certain 
 teleological relations to one another, and possibly an experience 
 of rebirth and memory of the preceding experiences on the part 
 of another moment in the "future life," also eternally actual. 
 Thus the distinctions of past and future are, at bottom, equiva- 
 lent to the distinction between existent pulses of consciousness 
 which eternally undergo certain experiences with regard to one 
 another. Nothing really moves or happens, but things feel as if 
 they were moving or happening. 
 
 This theory is often regarded as having a decided emotional 
 advantage over the common-sense view. But if we realize just 
 what the theory implies, our judgment on this question will 
 depend on whether we are optimistic or not. For not only 
 "forever shalt thou love and she be fair" and all the glories of 
 ancient Greece and Rome be conserved in the eternal, but also 
 forever shalt thou be rejected, and all the crime and misery of 
 the darkest eras be enacted and bemoaned. In this metaphysical 
 city of the dead, all evils as well as all values are conserved. 
 
 Essential to the understanding of the meaning of the question 
 is the realization that we are not here concerned with any Brad- 
 leian existence of the past, in a transmuted form, within an abso- 
 lute and eternal experience, nor with its existence in an eternal 
 and time-inclusive specious present, such as is described by Pro- 
 fessor Royce. Our past experiences transmuted, or even simply in- 
 cluded within the absolute, would not be those experiences as we 
 lived them. An experience which included all other experiences 
 would be another than they. Our inquiry is whether, in all their 
 limitation, particularity, and exclusiveness, the past moments of 
 experience exist. Our question is: Does the infant's cry in the
 
 M'J fhiirrrsihj i>f ('(ilifnniid I'lihliintiotu in I'hilosoph]!. (Vol. 2 
 
 nif^lif rxist ill all ils t'cif distress ami i^'intrarMtc ? — not, Docs it 
 exist as known or scon hy llic Nyriii)ath«;tic yet satisfied absolute? 
 Tli(> cxistoncc of \\\v one is dilTcrciit from the existence of the 
 other, and it is only with the former that we are here concerned. 
 
 The distinelidn we an* niakinj,' is no false abstraction of the 
 "mere understaiidin;.?. " Tt is one whieh we have to make in 
 order to be true to the nature of consciousness and to avoid con- 
 tradiction. It is impossible to hold that the finite consciou.sness 
 is a part of the eternal moment. For to the finite consciousness a 
 certain limited rej^ion of fact (A) is known; to the absolute con- 
 sciousness there is known all that the finite consciousness knows 
 and everything else (A + B). lUit it is impossible to know the 
 whole and only a part. Knowledge and mere ignorance cannot 
 be united. In vain does one appeal to the transitional experi- 
 ences of growing in knowledge, or to the double consciousness 
 apparently present in remorse and correction of error. For here, 
 although, to be sure, we have a sort of combination of ignorance 
 and knowledge, of sin and virtue, we do not have a union of 
 mere ignorance and knowledge, mere sin and virtue. Unless the 
 world realizes a contradiction, mere ignorance and knowledge are 
 never combined. I cannot commit a fault, believing it to be a 
 good deed and doubting not of the truth of my conviction — a 
 common experience — and also doubt. Yet just this sort of con- 
 tradiction, we are told, the absolute realizes. In vain also would 
 one remind us that everj^ false proposition we hold implies all 
 true and false propositions, and thence reason that our ignorance 
 implies a complete knowledge. For the reasoning is not cogent, 
 since it argues from the implication of propositions to the im- 
 plication of the knowledge of propositions; and secondly, if 
 cogent, it would not prove the point in question. For it assumes, 
 what cannot be proved, that complete knowledge would include all 
 partial knowledg:e ; where the inference rests on the ambiguity of 
 the term knowledge, which means either the object known or the 
 knowing of it. Complete knowing involves knowing the part ; it 
 does not necessarily involve being the knowing of only that part. 
 
 The same contradiction appears in the use of the specious 
 present to illustrate the possibility of this view. Take the favorite 
 instance of the melody. It is reasoned that because we can
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 143 
 
 grasp many notes at once, the absolute can include the whole of 
 time at once, that is, the total series of experiences. But it is 
 one thing to know at once an infinite series of objects — which, as 
 Professor Royce has proved in his Supplementary Essays, is pos- 
 sible — and quite another thing to include an infinite series of 
 experiences. For, to keep the illustration, to be a finite knower 
 means to know only one note. Now the absolute cannot know 
 only one note and also know all. 1, 2, 3, 4, , . ., I might know 
 together, but I could not do this and also know only 1, 2. An 
 omniscient consciousness might, besides, exist throughout time, 
 and at each moment know the whole time series, but it would 
 not thereby, and could not, he the whole series of conscious beings 
 which fill time. 
 
 The problem before us is also not that of the existence of the 
 past in the present in the way we have shown to be actual. As we 
 have seen, certain elements are stable, persisting through every 
 moment. In memory, and to a diminished extent in ''report," 
 still more of the past is conserved. Such parts of the past are 
 always present. Now, to use the language of Hegel, all this 
 ''Aufbewahrung" and "Erinnerung" of the past in the present 
 is unquestioned, and remote from our problem. We ask, does 
 the whole past exist, does every moment, as we have defined it, 
 exist? In terms of our illustration, do all the areas which rep- 
 resent the time series exist as they do on our paper, or does only 
 one ? Does the whole past life of you and me, does the whole of 
 history, exist? Our question is not whether the past in some 
 sense or other exists now, but whether it exists as it did exist 
 at all. Is Washington, not now, hut then, still crossing the 
 Delaware? 
 
 How shall we answer this question? Plainly we can do so 
 only if we answer the broader question. How do we know whether 
 anything exists or does not exist ? Let us ask this question about 
 certain well-known objects. First, how do we know that we 
 ourselves exist? 
 
 We know this because we have an idea of ourselves and 
 because this idea is filled out in our immediate experience of 
 ourselves. In one whole of experience we are both the idea of 
 ourselves and ourselves also. We ourselves are taken ui) into
 
 1 1 1 Univvrsit]! of ('alifiir)iin /'uhlinations in Philosophy, f Vol. 2 
 
 tlir i(ic;i. Ill ;iiiy conscidiis riioiiifiit, wi- rxpcrifiifc tin- t"iilfillin<'iit 
 (if the iiit'Miiin^'- of lliis i<icii. 'I'liis vcrilifjif ion of our own (-xist- 
 encc (Iocs not, liowcvcr, dilTcr in kind from any othf-r vcrificjition. 
 No more llum when uc verify llw hi'int,' of mathematical ideas 
 by ohliiitiiii^,' .III I'Xix'r'ience of clear a/id ade(|uate fulfillment of 
 meaninf^ do we compare our id(*as with our objects by getting 
 outside of our ideas. There is no tliird consciousness which looks 
 on and compai-cs our idea of activity or existence with its object 
 and sees tli;it they a^n-cc. Tlu; experience is single, an experience 
 of the fulfillment of an idea — a perfectly definite and unique 
 experience. Of course by a reflective act we may know both our 
 idea of ourselves and the object of that idea, and make judgment 
 that the latter was fulfilled in the former. But, as a rule, this 
 judgment is after the fact. Thus we Imow our own exi.stence 
 directly, by getting a vivid and full idea of the self in the self. 
 The knowledge of the existence of my fellow is just as direct 
 as that of my own self. I know that my fellow is active or exists, 
 by possessing vivid and full ideas of other-experience. My 
 knowledge of him is no inference from his bodily states. It is as 
 direct as any knowledge can be. I possess ideas which themselves 
 speak, and laugh, and think, but it is not I who talk and smile 
 and reason to myself, but my friend; these ideas, although they 
 are mine, are cognitive ideas. They announce the being of 
 another; they refer to, they mean, that other's presence. 
 Separated though we are from each other's being, we are not 
 therefore alone, for our ideas are not all mere pictures which 
 simply come and go, outwardly resembling other objects of which 
 we know nothing ; some of these ideas not only are and resemble ; 
 they mean, they know. Of course our ideas of our fellow's 
 thoughts are always accompanied by ideas of sound or motion. 
 But our own thinking likewise always has a sensuous medium and 
 setting, yet we do not infer our thinking from these accompani- 
 ments. Just so our ideas of our fellow s thoughts are as directly 
 cognitive as our ideas of his movements. If we cannot know a 
 man's thoughts directly, how can we know his movements? If 
 the one are pictures without a cognitive function, why are not 
 the others? Thus we know the existence of our fellow by pos- 
 sessing vivid ideas which announce his being.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knouiedge. 145 
 
 Now, if applied to the past, this test of existence is not suc- 
 cessful. I have, for example, an idea of my past self. This idea 
 of course exists, and it contains elements of that past self to 
 which it refers. Yet it means a whole, of which it is itself but 
 the smallest fragment. And that meaning cannot be fulfilled. 
 However vivid and accurate my memory, it never contains the 
 whole of life that it means. Our memory announces the subject 
 matter of our childhood's sorrow; it tells the reasons, and per- 
 chance we judge them right; but it does not weep to us. This 
 which is true of our own past, of which we possess more vivid 
 ideas than of aught else, is a fortiori true of all other past objects. 
 
 Yet, is failure to find an object real proof of its non-existence? 
 If I look in a room for something and do not discover it there, 
 may the fact not be that it is elsewhere? In order to prove that 
 I searched for a non-existent phantom, I must have reason to 
 believe it there or nowhere; which belief must rest on grounds 
 of a different character from mere inability to discover it some- 
 where. A negative particular, to be demonstrative, requires sup- 
 port from a universal. Again I watch the candle burn down. 
 Suddenly it goes out. Do I rightly believe that the light no 
 longer exists, because I cannot recover the sensation? It has 
 gone from my mind, to be sure ; and in all its fullness I cannot 
 recover it. But what warrants the universal disjunction — a 
 sensation must be in the mind or nowhere — which forms the 
 major premise of my conclusion? Is inability to discover a 
 proof anything more than just inability to discover ? 
 
 Perhaps we may think of ourselves with reference to past and 
 present as of a man confined and shut from the sight of nature 
 in a single room of a house through which hitherto he has been 
 free to wander. He can see only the single room ; yet he retains 
 the memory of the whole. The present is the room, the past is 
 the rest of the house. Now, because the man can see only one 
 room, will he argue that it alone exists? Will he not rather 
 believe that not only that exists which he meets in the ' ' progress 
 of his experience," but also that which is implied by what he 
 meets? This is essentially Bergson's argument for the existence 
 of the past. The present, which we perceive and hence know to 
 exist, implies the past, just as one room of a house implies the
 
 1 1(1 Vnivrrsit]! i>f Califoniid I'lthlicntlons in I'liilosoph i/. f Vol. 2 
 
 whole; w licri'fori', jiisl ;is from tlic si^'lit of one room we n-ason 
 to I lie cxi.stciu'c of flic liouHc, So from llic ftxistcnce of the present 
 to that of the pjist. The pjist is iiiacccssihic. not non-existf-nt ; jast 
 rts is — to chanf^e tlie illustration — the other sidi; of the moon. 
 INrt'c|)tioM or implication in what is perceived, is the test of 
 existenee. 
 
 Doubtless the present cloe.s, in some sense at least, imply the 
 past. The man imjjlias the boy. Hut whole man and whole boy 
 cannot eocxist in the same present, just as two bodies eannot oe- 
 eupy the same space. In part, to be sure, they are identical, yet 
 in much they are incompatible. Nevertheless, just as two bodies 
 can coexist in different spaces, contiguously, so perhaps that part 
 of the boy uliicli is impenetrable to the man may coexist with 
 him, not in the present, but //( the past. Perhaps the past is a 
 fourth dimension of reality, where all things, all thoughts, and all 
 feelings which we suppose to have perished, still persist. 
 
 The foregoing argument is plausible, and I admit that mere 
 inability to find or find anew is proof not of non-existence, but 
 of incompetence. But the cogent argument for the non-existence 
 of the past is positive, not negative. For we have a direct knowl- 
 edge not only of existence, but of the disintegrating of existence. 
 The passing away of elements, we have seen to be the prime char- 
 acter of temporal experience. We are now in a position to inter- 
 pret this experience more narrowly. It is the experience of the 
 becoming non-existent of a part of ourselves, of our fellows, or 
 of nature. The immediate content of experience does not pass 
 suddenly from presence to pastness ; it goes through a transitional 
 stage. "We can experience this in the doing of any deed. The 
 deed is not simply posited and then gone; it is "doing," arising 
 and disintegrating. We have the same knowledge of the passing 
 of the existence of the consciousness of another. We observe the 
 emerging and dissolving of his emotion, his coming to understand 
 our thought, his passing from one topic to another. No one, of 
 course, has ever observed his own non-existence; been conscious 
 of his own unconsciousness; witnessed the disappearance of his 
 entire self. Yet such an experience is only the unattainable limit 
 of quite undeniable and commonplace experiences. We do ex- 
 perience the wavering of our consciousness. The content it em-
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 147 
 
 braces may become increasingly small in extent, intensity, and 
 vividness. This occurs in falling asleep. To be sure no one has 
 ever observed himself fall asleep ; the passage from consciousness 
 to unconsciousness is a chasm which no consciousness can bridge. 
 A limit may come after all the members of the series of which it 
 is the limit.^^ Thus the idea of one's own total non-existence, 
 when the "earth-forgetting eyelids keep the morningless and un- 
 awakening sleep," is a limiting concept irresistibty forced upon 
 us by the experiences of the partial loss of much that one calls 
 one's self. But the idea of the total non-existence of a self, of 
 his having once existed but as no longer existing, is derived chiefly 
 from watching one's fellow fall asleep or die. Here one passes 
 from a condition where one gets ideas which denote consciousness 
 or activity, through a state where those ideas are less numerous 
 and increasingly less active, to one where no such ideas appear. 
 Has consciousness become inaccessible, just as the consciousness 
 of the man in China is inaccessible, or has it ceased altogether? 
 The former supposition rests on the misinterpretation of this 
 experience. 
 
 It rests on the confusion, already noticed, of the experience 
 of passing out of the self with the experience of disintegrating 
 wdthin the self. It is a different experience — that of turning the 
 head when certain elements of the landscape leave our view, from 
 that when the light is extinguished in our view. Contents not 
 only come into and go out of the self, they arise and break up 
 within it. We know that the latter have not gone elsewhere, 
 because we know that they do not exist to go. The mind is not 
 a stage on which thoughts and feelings flit to and fro ; it is just 
 the totality of these themselves, and their supposed disappearance 
 is really their perishing. 
 
 One reason for this confusion is the apparent "return" of 
 thoughts. When the time of rest comes, we leave the thoughts 
 that busied us during the hours of labor. The next morning 
 they crowd upon us, seemingly quite the same, and we greet them 
 as old friends. Moreover, they do not return like memories, pale 
 
 13 For the conception of non-existence as a limit, see Boodin, Time and 
 Beality.
 
 148 Univcrsihj of Califoniia I'ufjlicalions in I'hilosophy. f Vol. 2 
 
 jiikI inc(»?ii|ilc|i' ; (licy rrtiii-ri lull hlnodcd and whole. ()v(t and 
 over aj,'ain we think Ihf saiiif IhouKhls. And the identity of 
 the srlf is (h'stroycd and the plain deliverance of consciousness 
 falsified it", in det'ei-ence to precfjiieeived theory, we {tssert that tlie 
 thouglits arc now, hut their meaning old. 
 
 Well, just as the thoughts of yesterday could be disintegrated, 
 those same thoughts can be reintegrated. The same thoughts 
 form a)inr. We can observe their new formation, just as we ob- 
 served tlieir origin and (h'cay. Existence is a creation and a 
 birth; it is also a re-creation and a rebirth. When elements and 
 their complexes disappear, they do not need to be praserved in 
 some pale limbo of the pavst, in order to reappear. To think so 
 is evidence of bondage to the crude metaphysics of substance, in 
 ignorance of the fluid and resilient character of reality. Creation, 
 partial annihilation, and partial re-creation are the nature of 
 reality. The man exists not at all between dreamless sleep and 
 awakening. Yet, in the morning, identically the same man re- 
 exists. Of course not the whole man, for part of him will have 
 perished irrevocably. Only such elements can re-exist which are 
 compatible with the changing present. Still, in part, our life 
 is a continual resurrection. There is mysterv' in this, only in the 
 eyes of those w'ho accept a crude prejudice. It is the rendering 
 of our most intimate experiences. 
 
 As for the implication of the past by the present, it is of 
 course a fact. Yet the implication is not of existence. Since 
 the total past does not exist, it must affirm something else of 
 the past in relation to the present. That which is really implied 
 of the past is the truth that it did exist, or the character of 
 having existed, and to this truth we pass not by mere implication, 
 but by direct experience. 
 
 We do so in this wise. The experiences of the dissolving of 
 content are the lines which connect present and past, existence 
 and non-existence. Our immediate experiences are known to us 
 as existing. Our memories tell us of content which does not 
 exist, w^hich yet stands in a most intimate relation to what does 
 exist. Even as we make this observation we observe the slipping 
 into non-existence of the existent. It is through such experiences 
 that we connect the idea of existence with what our memory tells
 
 1913] Parker : Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 149 
 
 us does not exist. For in such experiences we seem to combine, 
 as it were, existence and non-existence. The transitional ex- 
 periences lead us to make the judgment : this which does not 
 exist, did exist. Through the categorj^ of the becoming non- 
 existent we pass to that of the once existed. This idea of exist- 
 ence Avliich attaches to that of non-existence is the category of 
 had existence. "When w unites with w -no^, it becomes was. "Was 
 (were)," "did exist," is the category of the past. 
 
 We are not seeking an explanation of the categories of pass- 
 ing and becoming, or of "did exist" and "will exist." We do 
 not hope to convince anyone who says that the existent and non- 
 existent he understands, but that which is coming into or passing 
 from existence or once did exist he does not understand. We 
 know the reason tvhy he does not understand : he seeks to construe 
 an ultimate category in terms of something else.^* Yes, change, 
 becoming, passing away, and their derivative, the ivas, are ultimate 
 categories. They are the categories of our time experience. Who- 
 ever denies them must treat time as an illusion. One must either 
 understand or deny time ; one cannot explain it. AATiat is ultim- 
 ate we cannot interpret, for there is no vantage point from which 
 to survey it. That is mysterious for which, although it can have 
 no explanation, we seek to find one. Mystery gives place to 
 understanding as soon as we cease to seek for the reason of the 
 ultimate premises. 
 
 Besides the actual observation of the disintegration of con- 
 tents, we have another indication of the non-existence of the past. 
 The past possesses no longer one of the prime characters of exist- 
 ence. Whatever exists changes and grows, and never attains 
 completion. It is ever developing itself and, interacting with 
 other existents, is a force in the world. In short, it is active. The 
 past, on the other hand, is complete, and cannot grow. Out of 
 the present, to be sure, is being precipitated always more of the 
 past; new chapters are added; but the significant thing is that 
 the old are finished. The living can make their mark, but the 
 record of the dead is complete. And only so far as present, is 
 the past a force in existence. Unlike the total present, the total 
 past does nothing. In short, the past is inactive. Accordingly, 
 
 1* Compare Lotze, Metaphysics, Bosanquet 's translation, p. 265.
 
 150 lJn\v( rsiiij of (UiUfornid J'lihlicalions in Philosophy. I V"'- ^ 
 
 con rspDiidiii^' t(i tlir aclivily of llic cxistciil and the iii;u,'tivily 
 dl' the noil cxislciit, I shall licrraricr rclVr sliort ly to idcjis which 
 know tlic former as "active," and to tlio-se whicli know tlic latter 
 as "inactive." And since ideas, so far as adeciuate, resemble 
 their objects, these distinctions denote genuine characters of them, 
 I<'or just as the objects of the one kind are fluid, while those of 
 the hitter are static, so are the corresponding ideas. 
 
 Not only do we thus have positive proof that the past does 
 not exist; we may also urg(! that the notion of its eternal actuality 
 contradicts the entire meaning of the temporal experience. This 
 is especially clear in the ca«e of our volitional experiences. 
 
 Thus, in distress we strive to get rid of pain, vee do not seek 
 merely to get a painless experience. Our primary effort is to 
 destroy the pain. Our aim is to annihilate the old, not to insti- 
 tute sometliing new. The distressed will would not be satisfied 
 merely to produce a relieved will, if itself were to exist never- 
 theless. We do aim to be free from pain, but we assume that 
 such freedom guarantees the non-existence of pain. The efforts 
 of the painful consciousness are not so altruistic as to aim only 
 to produce a sense of relief iu another consciousness contiguous 
 with its own. 
 
 The obverse of this experience is made equally ridiculous, if 
 one accepts the view of the actualitj'' of the past : I mean the 
 effort to retain a pleasant experience. That view would have to 
 interpret this as the attempt to create in another experience what 
 one experience possesses. But of course it is the effort to prevent 
 the experience from disappearing altogether. It clings to what 
 is behind ; it does not push something in front. 
 
 The meaning of our creative activity is likewise falsified by 
 this view, if extended to make the future exist as well as the past. 
 The artist or the practical man is aiming to make something abso- 
 lutely new ; to bring into existence, not merely to stand in some 
 sort of teleological or other relation to what does exist. However 
 vivid and compulsive his ideal may be, he is aware that it does 
 not exist ; that the work of his will is realization, a making real, 
 not a mere static being, related as eternal condition to an eternal 
 actual product.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 151 
 
 Surely if our making, growing, gaining and losing experience 
 is static and eternal, our experience is illusory and falsifying. 
 We mourn not over the merely inaccessible, we mourn for what 
 is lost ; our hopes are not in a joy that is actual, but in one that 
 we genuinely create. We grow; and in growing, we are not a 
 mere series of eternal experiences that greet one another across 
 the intervals of the time-stream. For in growing we also outgrow ; 
 and we find something that existed not before ; we both gain and 
 lose. We are not a whole series of selves, but one self. 
 
 Accepting as proved the thesis that the past does not exist, we 
 have, finally, to answer the question which precipitated the entire 
 discussion. If the past does not exist, how can we know it? In 
 reply, we point out, in the first place, that we unquestionably do 
 know many things of which existence cannot be predicated. The 
 mathematical entities are illustrations. Our knowledge of these 
 is fully as adequate as our knowledge of the past, yet they clearly 
 have no existence. One might, to be sure, assert that when we 
 know them they come into existence. They then have what Bren- 
 tano calls "intentional inexistence" in the mind: that is to say. 
 there then exist ideas which mean them as their objects. Yet 
 they have no independent existence ; as mere ideal objects, they 
 cannot exist at all. They are not, and never could become, con- 
 crete experiences, which they would have to be in order to exist. 
 
 Now, the case of the knowledge of the past is similar. That 
 the past ha.s ideal being is unquestionable. Possession of being 
 is requisite for the being known of any object. We cannot ask 
 if in this sense the past is real. If our ideas of the past have 
 any meaning, any sense, they refer to an object which has at 
 least logical being. The object referred to by any idea which has 
 meaning, that is, which does not involve a contradiction, ha.s 
 being. We prove the being of the object of our ideas by an 
 attempt to get adequate, fully realized ideas,^"' or, where this is 
 impossible, to make sure that our ideas do not mean objects which 
 are with themselves or with other objects contradictory. Thus 
 to prove the being of the color red I seek an experience which 
 
 15 It is a postulate, that adequate ideas cannot be contradictory. For ex- 
 ample, mathematicians prove the consistency of postulates by "finding" 
 an object which realizes them.
 
 152 Unirrrsil 1/ of Cnl ifonnd I'lihlifol i())is i)i riiil()snj)h]i. (Vol. 2 
 
 shall satisfy m- fiillil all that I iman hy n-fl ; in other word.s, I see 
 flic colnr. Ilci-r I iiicaii all that I cxpcficiKM' arnl experience all 
 thill T mean. If on the other IimimI I wisJi to make .sure of the 
 hein^; of the t^rey nuittxT of my brain, 1 am earet'ul to discover 
 that my meaning does not contradict other well-founded meanings 
 and is, in addition, the only meaning that makes the total physio- 
 logical knowledge of my body harmonious. Intermediate are 
 such cases as our ideas of physical objects like a desk, where we 
 can get partly adequate ideas, but for the rest rely on the con- 
 sistency of our ideas with the remainder of our knowledge. 
 
 Just so, we are sure of the being of the past. We cannot, 
 of course, realize our meanings ; but we can, within limits, ascer- 
 tain that they are not self-contradictory. Later, when we dis- 
 cuss historical verification, we shall pursue this subject further. 
 It is suflficient here to indicate that knowledge does not imply 
 the existence of the object known, but only its being. It must 
 be borne in mind, moreover, that to possess any objectifying idea, 
 so long as it is not self-contradictory or inconsistent with other 
 meanings, is to know the object meant by that idea. To possess 
 objectifying ideas is all that can be meant by knowledge. Now, 
 we possess such ideas of the past. The possession of these ideas 
 is knowledge of the past. "Whether the objects of these ideas 
 exist or not, is indifferent. In order to know, the ideas of course 
 must exist ; the total object meant by them need not exist. The 
 memory of our past is not the total past remembered. But, so 
 long as our memory refers to an object, is a genuine, that is, a 
 consistent meaning, it knows its object. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE NATURE OP HISTORICAL TRUTH 
 
 The past does not exist, j-et can be known, — such is the con- 
 clusion of the preceding chapter. The possession of objectifying 
 ideas is the knowledge of the past; whether the object of those 
 ideas exists or not, is irrelevant so far as mere knowledge is con- 
 cerned. For the past, at any rate, has Being, that is, a deter- 
 minate character which we can imitate, can embody in our ideas.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 153 
 
 This what has "intentional inexistence" in the idea; in the 
 knowing experience we are aware of it as a character that be- 
 longed to a complete experience that has disappeared. We have 
 thus shown how we can know the non-existent past. But our 
 account of the knowledge of the past has been decidedly incom- 
 plete. Much is yet to be made clear. Having determined the 
 possibility of a knowledge of the past, we have next to enquire 
 what that knowledge would reveal if it were as complete as pos- 
 sible ; in other words, what the ideal of history is, the nature of 
 Historical Truth. 
 
 The effort to determine the ideal of a knowledge so frag- 
 mentary as that of the past may well awaken a quid juris? The 
 rationale of such an endeavor is, however, as follows. "We re- 
 flectively consider all that our actual knowledge reveals ; we then 
 observe that there are certain lacunae in this revelation, blank 
 places which would have to be filled in order that what we do 
 know may be itself complete; these blank places thus do not go 
 unwitnessed ; their being is testified to, inadequately : just as the 
 map of a country, while accurately reproducing the shape of the 
 boundary, and other features, also hints that there is much which 
 does not appear in the drawing ; or just as from our knowledge of 
 the law of the w^hole number-series, we are aware of the being 
 of more numbers than we have ever observed. This implies that 
 our ideas can mean, can know partially and inadequately where 
 they do not know completely. Now we project an ideal of knowl- 
 edge, by supposing that where our ideas are insufficient, there they 
 are complete, where they are obscure, they are clear. We take 
 a survey of the whole field, and imagine that the whole is pos- 
 sessed of all the details which it implies but does not present. 
 We apperceive a formal structure, a scheme of relations which 
 itself implies more; we then say: This outline completed would 
 be the whole, the Truth. 
 
 Our first task in determining the nature of historical truth 
 is the settlement of an important controversy. Is history a natural 
 science, a branch of psychology interested in the analysis of past 
 mental states and the ascertainment of their laws, or an appre- 
 ciative science, aiming at the living understanding and criticism 
 of their meaning, or intent?
 
 If)-} f^nircrsil !i of ('(iliftiniid I'liIiliCal ions in riiilosoph if. (Vol. L' 
 
 'I'lic ;ii).s\\Ti- to this (|ii('sti(iii is. \\c hdifvi'. tli;il it mihodics a 
 f.'ilsc (lisjiiiift ir)n. Until tlic [)sycliii|(i^fic;il ;in(l tin- ai)j)rfciativ(' 
 troatmciits of history arc necessary for the fullest ktiowlcdj^c of 
 the past. For each represents one of the two fundamental kinds 
 of kno\vled<;e, or rather one of the two aspects of complete knowl- 
 edge. Knowlcd^'*' is ideally a universal concept filled with an 
 individual representation; it is a unification and a j)rcsentation ; 
 a nieaniu}:? and an imafjje. It demands the individualization of a 
 concept through, if possible, the very object itself, or else through 
 a concrete representation thereof, — image, picture, map, etc. Tlie 
 one side presents the individual object itself, the other exhibits 
 its identity (or its relations) with other objects. Now, each of 
 these functions may be emphasized at the expense of the other. The 
 emphasis of the one results in classificatory, abstract, analytic 
 science ; the emphasis of the other, in concrete, biographic, appre- 
 ciative science, — at the extreme limit, in art. There are many 
 gradations between the extreme limits of each. The psychological 
 treatment of history is of the former kind. It seeks to find uni- 
 versal concepts under which to subsume men and events, thus 
 establishing laws and causal explanations. In so far as psycho- 
 physical laws are possible, it connects the life of individuals 
 and societies with physiological and physical facts. It differs 
 from abstract psychology, which deals with mere conceptual con- 
 tents, because it asserts that contents of such and such kind and 
 character "did exist." The object of pure abstract science is 
 eternal, for the mere concept cannot, as such, exist. 
 
 Only when we consider states of consciousness not as mere 
 ideal contents, but as individualized in an existence, do they be- 
 come an object of historical science, a piece of the past. To be 
 sure, this existence is gone, it is not eternal, for it is just that 
 which arises and passes away and cannot be recovered. Yet the 
 truth that existence did attach to a given ideal content is eternal. 
 Such truths are the objects of history. That the complex of 
 describable characters which we call Lincoln did exist, that it 
 did mean and will and do something whose effects we appreciate 
 to this day, that is an historical truth or fact. Psychological 
 history does not seek to reproduce the past ; nor does it aim merely 
 at embodying the ideal and eternal being of the past; it seeks
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 155 
 
 to incorporate a complex of truths or propositions, which indeed 
 truly are, eternally, and which assert that psychic being of such 
 a nature did live and die. History becomes appreciative, when 
 we take our memories, and whatever other objectifying ideas 
 that we can get which refer to the past, and revivify them. We 
 fill out the abstract truths with a concrete life. As Simmel 
 says,^'' appreciative history is a Nacliahmung of the sub- 
 jectivity of others, only this subjectivity does not exist. Unlike 
 the direct assimilation of the subjectivity of our fellows which is 
 the testimony to their existence," this nacJibilden is, like the 
 drama, an evoking of an activity w^hich corresponds to no exist- 
 ence. But, unlike the drama, history imitates an activity that did 
 exist. Caesar did live, whereas Peer Gynt did not. The active 
 ideas which make up our concrete knowledge of the past, of our 
 fellow's existence, of a fictitious character, have in each case a 
 specific and well-known nuance. We are aware that the active 
 ideas which give us even the fragments of knowledge of our fel- 
 low man when he speaks to us in an ill-understood tongue (to 
 make the cases parallel in point of inadequacy of knowledge) dif- 
 fer from the active ideas which the historian awakens in us in 
 order to make some figure of the past live again for us, and we 
 are also aware that both kinds of ideas differ from those which 
 we derive from a dramatic performance where we learn the char- 
 acter of the hero. These differences express respectively the three 
 propositions which always, in such cases, come under our apper- 
 ception : "he exists," "he did exist," "he does not exist." Ap- 
 preciative history thus takes its place alongside of the imitative 
 arts which deal with life. It is a make-believe, a curious and 
 cunning effort to re-create an experience of other-activity which 
 does not but yet did exist. As Simmel says, it requires the same 
 imitative and sympathetic imagination employed by all inter- 
 pretative and creative arts. 
 
 Thus both Miinsterberg and his opponents are right. The 
 two kinds of history are complementary. Each gives what the 
 other lacks, and neither is dispensable. The concept and the 
 intuition, science and life, are not antagonistic; the one gives a 
 
 1 6 GescMchtsphilosophie, p. 240. 
 '7 See pages 143, 144, above.
 
 1 .")() University of Calif oni in J ' ublications in rhilosophij. I Vol. 2 
 
 j>art of all objects, tin; otlicr llic whole of a sirif^le (jbject. Yet 
 Miiiisterborp'.s"' critioism of Riekert's'" view that history and 
 psychol(){?y dilTer only in 1li;if tlie one deals with the individual, 
 the other with the universal law, is unanswerable. Science does 
 seek a knowledge of objects a.s well as a knowledge of laws. Its 
 aim is nothing short of acquaintance with the universe of all 
 entities, individually and in their relations. Riekert's theory of 
 science would be good if it were frankly pragmatic. For the 
 needs of life, the short-hand formula, we admit, is the prime 
 object of interest. Knowledge of the formula enables us to pre- 
 dict and prepare. But to satisfy our scientific craving, knowl- 
 edge of the entire " unilhersehhares Mannigfiiltifjkcit" would 
 have to be added. And, besides, the law is not a mere tool use- 
 ful for purposes of simplification.^" It gives us the form of 
 objects, and this form interests us for its own sake. Science seeks 
 knowledge of series of objects, together with the laws of such 
 series. 
 
 Rickert has room for only a subjectivistic view of history. 
 For him no true units can be given to the historian; they can 
 only be created in accordance with his interests. So many his- 
 torians, so many units. Yet units are really given. They are 
 the self-felt unities of the single volitional acts of individuals 
 whose lives history aims at reproducing and re-enacting. All such 
 teleological unities are the matter of history. To be sure, in 
 accordance with our limited purview and sympathies, our actual 
 history selects. But it is not for this reason creative, but partial. 
 Its limitations are regrettable. They are due to us, not to the 
 object. Riekert's efforts to reinstate the objectivity of the his- 
 torical unit, and to find a basis for the selection of historical 
 material by appealing to transcendent norms, is futile. The 
 standard of knowledge is the object, not the interests of the 
 knower. The form of history is not a transcendent value, but 
 those truths which assert that such and such individuals did exist. 
 The business of history is simply to reproduce and vitalize these 
 
 18 GrundzUge, drittes Kapitel "Die Welt der Werte, " sechste Abschnitt, 
 TIB. 
 
 19 Dip Grenzen der naturicissenschaftUchtn Begriffsbildung, drittes u. 
 viertes Kapitel. 
 
 20 Compare Eickert, op. cit., p. 123.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 157 
 
 truths. The more of these truths it embodies, the more compre- 
 hensive it is, the more perfect its work. 
 
 Although the individual volitional act is the starting-point, 
 the unit, it is not the goal of history. History aims at under- 
 standing the meaningful connections of the activities that have 
 gone. It traces the influence of one act on another within the 
 life of a single person, and through the lives of others. It sees 
 how the ideal of one moment is carried out in another, or fails 
 to find fulfilment, then only to reappear perhaps in a later and 
 more hospitable age. It re-enacts the struggle and the victory 
 of aims. But the daily aspirations and routine life of the man 
 on the lonely farm are not less its proper object than the fate of 
 the Caesars or the tragedy of the Cross. 
 
 The fact that appreciative history re-enacts the individual 
 intent as it lived, in all its narrowness and ignorance, and also 
 sees that intent in all its relations to the other intents which 
 knew, imitated, or contended against it, gives rise to a problem. 
 "When the self is seen in its interrelations, is it not another self? 
 When the momentary will is understood in the light of its basis 
 and ultimate issue, is it not another will from that which half 
 blindly resolved and acted ? Is not the contrast between the self 
 as it understood itself and as we understand it, one that cannot 
 be healed? If we know the subject in its relations, do we not 
 cease to know the subject as it actually was? If you destroy 
 its loneliness, do you not destroy its essence ? History cannot know 
 the individual as he was, if it knows him as related. The thing 
 apart and the thing as related are not one and the same. 
 
 Of course there might be a purely individualistic history, 
 which would strive to re-create the personality just as it lived, 
 without interpretation or understanding. It would record the 
 judgments of the persons themselves upon themselves or upon 
 one another, it would not itself judge of the truth or falsity of 
 these, or add its own judgments. It would not assert what the 
 influence of one intent upon another actually was; it would 
 merely record what the first intent hoped its influence would be, 
 and what the other felt it to be. Such history would be difficult, 
 but would it be impossible?
 
 ir)S IJniversitij of Cdlifoniid I'ublicationa in Philosophy. fVol. 2 
 
 Yet lliis would phiiiily iiol \>r llif wlmlc of history. And 
 llif conlrjidict inn in keeping' Ititlli |)(»inls of view, tlic individual 
 and llic universal, is only appari.'Ul. It is soIvcmI il" \\'(; k(!(;p in 
 mind that truth is not (.'xistencc. Trutli might include existence, 
 but it is more than existence. Truth gives relations between 
 existents; llie (•one(i)t as well as the individual; and by existing 
 an individual does not destroy that which is true of him, nor 
 do these truths destroy his actuality. Tlie truths ah()ut a person 
 ai'e no iiioi-e he than the iclalions of a thing are its individual 
 being. The similarity of two colors is not those colors, although 
 it "is" between them. 
 
 Thus, Kant's purpo.ses and thoughts as he lived them, as he 
 transcribed them iu the "Criti(iue of Practical Reason," were 
 his actuality. Tliat actuality of course is gone, and cannot re- 
 appear. Yet "that it existed" is an eternal truth. This truth 
 in its isolation might be the object of some very "objective" and 
 impartial biographer. Kant as he was when writing this Critique 
 would then be reproduced. And the effort of another historian 
 in tracing the intluence of this work, in judging of its success or 
 failure, in showing how, unknown to its author, it was destined 
 to influence all later ethical speculation and even to reappear in 
 a doctrine which the old philosopher would have been ashamed 
 to recognize as his offspring, would not in sooth reproduce Kant 's 
 existence. But it would reproduce the "truth about Kant." 
 Kant as understood is not Kant's past existence, but Kant's 
 ideal and eternal essence. But the two Kants, although thus 
 genuinely separated, are not opposed or unrelated; for the one 
 Kant is the truth about the other. The individuals as understood, 
 and the teleological relations between them, did not and do not 
 exist; yet they are. They are eternal truths which do not pass 
 away. The man passes away, the truth about him does not. .\nd 
 although the individual, isolated person disappears, the truth 
 that he existed does not. There is only one proposition that is 
 not eternal, namely, that A exists. Yet this becomes "A ex- 
 isted," which is eternal. The truth that all truths are not eternal 
 is the truth that there is change. Thus there are two sets of 
 truths, separate but not opposed, which history may reproduce:
 
 1'^13] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 159 
 
 the truth that A existed, which tells us what he was as he saw 
 his own intent and blundered accordingly; and the truth which 
 is true of A, that he did err and that his error resulted in the 
 sleep of science for nearly two thousand years, which tells us how 
 A would appear if known and interpreted by a final insight. Both 
 existential and ideal truths are the legitimate objects of history. 
 They are side by side and in peace. 
 
 Here we have the solution of an apparent contradiction 
 springing from the nature of relations. When I think of Aris- 
 totle, as I did a moment ago when I wrote the last paragraph, 
 did he not become a different Aristotle? for as he was, he was 
 not thought of, for my thought did not exist ; but now that I 
 think of him he has entered into a new relation which was ndt 
 true of him then. Two entities are not one and the same unless 
 you can predicate of the one all that you can predicate of the 
 other. Thus every time I think of Aristotle, it would seem, I do 
 not think of the same Aristotle, for Aristotle thought of is not 
 the same as Aristotle not thought of. The absurdity results from 
 again confusing truth with existence. My thinking of Aristotle 
 did not enter into his existence ; for it itself did not then exist, 
 nor can it enter into his existence, for his existence is now gone. 
 But that I now think of him is true of Aristotle, and it was true 
 long ago that I should think of him. In other words, although 
 my thinking of Aristotle did not exist when he lived, and forms 
 no part of his existence, that I this day think of Aristotle is part 
 of the eternal truth about Aristotle, Avhich is true, not now or 
 then, but eternally. This truth is part of his ideal essence, being 
 one insignificant detail of his vast influence. Thus his essence 
 is unchanged by my thought; for that essence is eternal and 
 includes the truth that he was the subject of my thought on 
 this day of Grace ; and his existence is unchanged, for it docs not 
 exist to change, and the truth that he did exist in the way he did 
 is consequently unchanged. Hence when I think of Aristotle I 
 may think of the truth that he existed, without thinking of his 
 essence which includes my being. And even if I did think of 
 that essence I might think of only a part of it. An intent can 
 fixate a part of being without thereby destroying it. I seldom 
 think of my thinking.
 
 160 Universilif <>f (UiJifornid I'uhlicatioyis in J'hilosophy. [Vol. 2 
 
 The case is similar, altli<)ii^,'li le.ss eoinplicatcd, wlien I think 
 of abstract objeets. Suppose I think of the number One. Do 
 you say that the number One has become other because formerly 
 it was not thoup^ht of, wliilc now it is, thus entering into a new 
 relation? And do you ask which number One I am thinking of? 
 The answer is that Ihcrc is oidy a single number One, which is 
 unalTceted by my third<ing, just because it is eternally related 
 to all knowers. The truth that One is known to me is one of 
 the relations which are eternally true of One. This relation does 
 not come into existence when I think of One; for it has no 
 existence and is not in time. Being known to A, to B, to C, is part 
 of the being of One. It is as eternal as One is. The whole 
 truth about any term includes all its relations, and these rela- 
 tions extend to every moment of time. Only after all time is 
 "in," so to speak, is the whole truth extant. And it is just this 
 whole truth that constitutes the realm of eternal being. Extend- 
 ing over the whole of time, it is timeless, an hence unaffected by 
 change. It anticipates, as it were, all change. But although 
 every ideal entity is thus related to the whole of being, and when 
 we know it we mean it as a member in this whole, stiU we may 
 by means of our selective intent fix upon it apart from its rela- 
 tions. Such selection cannot affect the nature of what we know 
 when most of its relations are external. One such external rela- 
 tion is just this knowing act of ours, to which indeed the ideal 
 entity is related and which has been anticipated, so to speak, 
 in its eternal status, but which may be ignored by our knowing 
 process. 
 
 To return to our own field, history, and to express briefly 
 the results of this discussion. There are two sets of truths, the 
 eternal and the temporal. The former is the totality of all true 
 propositions that may be asserted of any given individual, which 
 propositions include its relations to all other individuals and to 
 every ideal entity. It is the individual's total significance. This 
 truth stretches over all time, and when we refer to it we mean 
 it thus in its timeless completeness. Ideal history could only be 
 written after the entire time-process was completed. Hence 
 it is unaffected by change and has anticipated our own knowing 
 act. Our knowledge, however, need not include this whole truth.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 161 
 
 but may selectively reproduce a part. The second group of his- 
 torical truths is of the form ' ' A existed ' ' ; they have become such 
 through the becoming false of the correlative proposition "A 
 exists." They state what A ivas in his actuality, that is, as he 
 was apart from those relations of which he was necessarily ignor- 
 ant and which did not enter into his consciousness. They repro- 
 duce his mere actuality, they view him apart from his ideal 
 significance. They are themselves eternally true, but they are 
 true only after he has perished, just as the proposition "A will 
 exist" is true only before A becomes actual. The actuality of 
 the man, which is reported by these truths, is not the same as his 
 ideal being ; the former passes away, and the truths which report 
 it are not the same as the latter. Yet they are, after he has gone, 
 eternal like the latter and are together with the latter. 
 
 The paradoxes which beset the monistic absolutist theory of 
 truth, paradoxes so ably and frankly set forth by Joachim-^ in 
 his Nature of Truth, and common to his own, to Spinoza's, and 
 to Professor Royce's views, arise through seeking to make the 
 existence of an individual a part of the ideal truth about him. 
 They do not distinguish the individual, as his own actuality 
 isolated him, from that actuality as viewed in all its relations and 
 in its bearings on what is meant and striven for. If we do not 
 seek to join what nature has put asunder, the contradiction disap- 
 pears. This, to be sure, results in a duality of truth ; but at what 
 gain? Clearness and comprehension. Error will not fit into the 
 scheme of truth, nor sin into a man's true self. That A erred 
 is a truth which is no part of the truth about which A erred — 
 although, since in being all things are together, it is related ex- 
 ternally to that truth. A man's mistakes in arithmetic are no 
 part of numerical being; were this truth not fixed and objective, 
 it could not serve as a corrective of his mental process ; in fact, 
 he could not err at all. Nor is a man's life as he lived it part 
 of that ideal judgment upon him which beholds him in the light 
 of all history. He is not part, but topic, of his reckoning. AVere 
 he a genuine part of this judgment, he would have to be aware 
 of it, for his existence is his awareness ; and if so, he never would 
 have erred. 
 
 21 The Nature of Truth, chap. v.
 
 1()2 IJniversil}! of Californiu Publications i)i I'hilosopliy. \ ^'"l- 2 
 
 Ilisloi-y ;is ;iti ;i|)|)Ccciat ivc .sciciifc lijis to iip-cl the chart^c of 
 subjec(i\ il\ . 'IMiis churgo, we believe, is due to a coni'usioii be- 
 tween an clliical judfxinent iipo?i liistory and lustory as we liave 
 viewed il. The liviciii;^ of the interrehitioris of purjxjses, the 
 selliiiLT forth how the aim of our period of a man's life in- 
 Hueiieed that of anotiier period, how his acts afTeeted the acts 
 of contemporaries and successors, and, h)oking back, liow they in 
 turn were inHuenced by the deeds of his ancestors, — this threading 
 out of the mutual i-eference of intents and i-esulting actions 
 is as objective as tlie study of a crystal, and may be entirely 
 unbiased by ethical judgment. Still, albeit something different 
 from this, an ethical judgment upon history, as Professor San- 
 tayana claims, may be objective and non-individualistic. As he 
 represents it," such a judgment would take as standard the ideals 
 which were implicitly recognized by the men of the past them- 
 selves. The historian would not foist the ideal which is mandatory 
 upon himself upon men of alien traditions and nature. The ideal 
 which gives the "ought" to conduct is primarily individual, it 
 is relative to the endowment and nurture of the person; it is 
 universal only secondarily, where genuine interests meet, as they 
 do in the case of man, on the basis of similarity in organization 
 and environment. Such ideals, one for each life and overlapping 
 where they may, are, we believe, part of the eternal world. Their 
 being and authority become known and felt by every reflecting 
 conscience. An ethic that is liberal and individualistic is not 
 therefore antinomian or anti-social. Because the good differs in 
 part for each individual, it is none the less insistent, and leads 
 just as surely to the service of the many. A pluralism of ideals 
 is not a denial of ideals. Although ethical truth is a relation in 
 the form "A is good for B, " it is no less true; for this relation 
 has eternal truth. There is always an absolute standpoint. '" Vie- 
 ler Edlen niimlich bedarf es. und vielerlei Edlen, dass es Adel 
 gebe ! ' ' On the basis of a knowledge of the needs and aspirations of 
 the men of the past, the historian can discover their ideals, can 
 even come to laiow them better than the men themselves did. 
 and can judge them accordingly. Such judgments form, 
 we believe, a genuine part of history; for the relation of the 
 
 -- Reason in Science, pp. 258, 259.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knoxdedge. 163 
 
 individual to what he ought to have been, forms part of his 
 eternal significance. 
 
 The ethical reading of history is subjective, only when the 
 historian judges the individual from the standpoint of that ideal 
 which may be, to be sure, authoritative for himself, but has no 
 validity, or only partial validity, when applied to another. When 
 such judgments result from ignorance of the relativity and 
 plurality of ideals, they are trivial and contemptible examples 
 of ethical autocracy, and, being false, form no part of history. 
 Still I am far from denying place to the sincere expression of 
 repugnance for an alien ideal. Such an expression, when it 
 understands itself as an utterance of private taste, and does not 
 mistake itself for an ethical judgment, is a legitimate manifesta- 
 tion of personal life ; and where in practice ideals are really con- 
 flicting, and compromise is no part of the good of each, sucli utter- 
 ance is courage and duty. And these judgments have their 
 proper place in history ; for that the purposes of A or B are repug- 
 nant to mine is a part of the interrelation of aims which history 
 records. They must, to be sure, be recorded in history; what 
 they cannot do, is to serve instead of history. Their importance 
 is relative to the personal weight of the historian, which com- 
 pared with that of all other individuals must be but insignificant. 
 Their legitimate place is not in the genuine ethical judgment 
 upon history, but in that part of the subject which simply records 
 individual interests. There they would probably find themselves 
 as some among many insignificant statements of personal pref- 
 erence. 
 
 Again, it is charged that the forms of history are subjective. 
 Simmel compares an historical narrative to a work of art. Those 
 brief summaries of a century, those bold aperqus, which are so 
 fascinating yet so untrustworthy, seem like the painting of a 
 landscape, to be constructed by selecting what elements yon will 
 and rearranging them to make a pleasing and uniiied effet-t. lii- 
 questionably history, as it is written, is selective, and the form 
 is largely adapted to our aesthetic interests and our limitations 
 of view ; but it is not for this reason subjective, in the sense of 
 failing to report the truth. If I choose to consider only the 
 even numbers, my neglect of the odd numbers does not falsify
 
 1(11 (hiirrrsihi of Ctilifoniid I'lihlicntions in riiilosophi/. [Vol.2 
 
 those flijit T do consider. Tf T discover tlie relations between 3 
 and 27, and am intentionally oblivious of tbeir relations to otber 
 numbers, I may not, to be sure, b(! able to find out all tbe truths 
 about the relations of 8 and 27, but I can at least discover some. 
 Or if in fnnil of a window T lake my stand in such a way that 
 some ujxly buildings are shut out from my view, and what I do 
 see thereby gets a grouping that plefuses, I none the less see as 
 it is what I do see. History may be partial and artistic, but none 
 the less true. To sum up an age in a sentence requires that one 
 leave out much that is true, but so long as what is said is true, it 
 is unobjectionable. ^loreover, such .surveys are necessary. Only 
 by means of thorn can one get a truth that covers a wide range of 
 facts. Such truths must be abstract, and consequently can find 
 expression only in brief compass. But the abstract is none the 
 less true ; it may reveal the form or the law of a whole series of 
 particulars. One does not need more than a few sentences to 
 express the truth that Greek philosophy passed from a stage of 
 cosmic to ethical and logical speculation, then united both in Plato 
 and Aristotle, and finally became eclectic and religious. Brevity 
 does not militate against truth, and the most universal truth of 
 all may be the briefest. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 HISTORICAL VERIFICATION 
 
 We have briefly sketched the ideal of historical knowledge. 
 This ideal nowhere appears complete in human experience. Only 
 fragments of it are toilsomely Avon. "We now turn to the ques- 
 tion, by what means do we get possession of these fragments, 
 how do we assure ourselves that they are genuine? What is 
 the process of historical research and verification ? 
 
 It is no part of our task to go into the details of this subject. 
 They belong primarily to the business of historical science and, 
 although of interest to us, cannot come within the scope of this 
 paper. We shall seek to make plain only a few leading epistemo- 
 logieal principles, which lie at the basis of all growth and 
 verification of knowledge, in their relation to the cognizance of 
 the past.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 165 
 
 By Historical Truth we have meant the ideally complete whole 
 of historical knowledge. By true ideas we mean ideas that em- 
 body any part of this Truth. The test of the truth of ideas must 
 be internal, or intrinsic. Since the idea is not the object, and 
 we never escape from our ideas, we can only compare idea and 
 object if we accept as a fact the power of the idea to reveal the 
 object. But how do we know that this revelation is true and 
 not that of a lying prophet ? There are two indications. First, the 
 idea must be adequate, consistent, self-satisfying, luminous. It 
 must give us an experience of what it means, and mean nothing 
 other than we experience. It must not suggest anything more 
 than it says, hint of any thing which it does not impart. Sec- 
 ondly, what the idea claims to reveal must be consistent with 
 everything else, which other ideas claim to reveal. It must fit into 
 a consistent whole. As soon as a contradiction is revealed in our 
 objectifying ideas, they cease to objectify, they no longer claim to 
 report being. Like witnesses caught in a falsehood, they blush 
 and confess their deceit. In regard to simple, unrelated ideas, the 
 question of consistency cannot arise. Complex ideas which seek 
 to unite incompatible objects, to put one into a context into 
 which it does not fit, are inconsistent. Thus the simple idea of 
 blue cannot be inconsistent. Its truth consists in its adequacy : 
 the fact that M'hen we "look at blue," as we say, we have an 
 experience which announces itself as an experience of object, and 
 does not, so far as blue is concerned, suggest that anything more 
 could he experienced; this self-fulfilling cognitive experience is 
 what we mean by looking at the object. On the other hand, the 
 complex idea, "the commensurability of the diagonal and the 
 side of a square," is inconsistent, because it seeks to place the 
 numerical value of the ratio between the two lengths in the series 
 of rational numbers, to which it does not belong. The incon- 
 sistency of a complex idea usually arises through want of 
 adequacy in its constituents. As soon as it was discovered just 
 what we mean by the elements of the idea which served as our 
 illustration, the inconsistency was discovered, and, in addition, 
 the right relation of its parts. Thus, in the end, the test of the 
 truth is the adequacy of the idea, — ^seeing is believing. Consist- 
 ency itself must be transparent in the complex idea. Perfected
 
 l(t() Uiiivcrsihi of ('(ilifoniin I'lihlical ions in Philosophy. I ^'**^- - 
 
 know li'df^c iniisf he self liimiimiis. Kvcri it" ccrtfiinty could he 
 niaintaiiu'd (tnly liy a dialectic of i)r(*rnisos implic^d by every 
 denial of tlieni. this would slill be lb(; ease, for the evidence that 
 X implies not-X would, in the end, be intuitive. Since most of our 
 ideas nre conipiex and inaile(|uatf, we could probably never 
 determine whether they were consistent or not, if we did not 
 have with us a stock of simple ideas — those of the sense qualities 
 and llie simpler relations, some of which form a part of everj' 
 conii)l('X idea. The niakint,' of tlicse siinfjle idea.s adequate by 
 seeurinjj: tlie appi'opriate experience's and the consequent revela- 
 tion of inconsistency or its absence (so far as we can thereby 
 discover) is the process by which all hypotheses in science are 
 tested. 
 
 Now, in those cases w^here it is impossible to have some of the 
 elements of a complex idea adequate, the difficulties of verifying 
 ideas are of course enormous. In the case of the past, we possess 
 such self-satisfying ideas only, and perhaps doubtfully, with 
 regard to the immediate past. ^Moreover, most of our ideas are 
 extremely fragmentary ; they mean a large range of facts, but 
 report little detail. Our memory, for example, w'hich is the 
 basis of all our knowledge of the past, refers to a mass of 
 experience, tells us that there was such a mass, but informs us 
 of only a decidedly few events. Now, since our ideas are thus 
 inadequate and partial, what is the basis for our confidence in 
 what they do reveal? Moreover, since the past is inaccessible, 
 even non-existent, how can we verify our ideas at all? Again, 
 all our supposed verifications of history are made apparently by 
 present or future facts: how can we verify the past by the 
 present or the future? 
 
 In the first place, all evidence that there were any past events 
 is necessarily contained in the objectifying ideas which in one 
 way or another mean the past. The fact that we have an idea 
 of the past is the only possible testimony to the being of the 
 past. Whatever an idea announces, so long as it docs not con- 
 tradict an}' other idea, we must accept. Unless we do this, we 
 can have no knowledge at all. For the possession of objectifying 
 ideas is, we reiterate, just knowledge itself. So long as ideas do 
 refer to an object, even if they are inadequate, that is. even if
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 167 
 
 they do not reveal the M^hole of every feature of what they mean, 
 they must be accepted as revelations of being. The witness of 
 ideas must be accepted until proved contradictory. There is no 
 proof which is not an ontological proof. 
 
 This does not mean that the test of truth is the satisfaction 
 we find in our ideas individually, or in the consistency of a set 
 of ideas, or in their usefulness to us as a means of ordering 
 experience. Nor does this mean that our will is expressed in 
 our ideas. "We cannot help possessing these objectifying ideas; 
 we do not determine that contradictory ideas no longer objectify. 
 These things are with us as our bodies are ; we do not choose 
 them, we cannot get rid of them; they compel our assent. We 
 may or may not be satisfied with our ideas. The consistency of 
 our objectifying ideas may please us if we are interested in 
 science; we hate it if it contravenes our wishes or other non- 
 objectifying ideas. We cannot choose what we shall believe to 
 have been our past. Objectifying ideas are reflexes, not volitions. 
 The truth of our ideas of the past cannot be reduced to their 
 efficiency as tools for the ordering of experience, for the reason 
 that they announce the heing of the past, which is their true 
 cognitive function. The objectifying intent of ideas is ignored 
 by the instrumental and phenomenalistic theories of truth. 
 
 But if any objectifying idea is accepted, cause must be shown 
 why others are not. One such cause might be that only the 
 ideas of self and other present objects are adequate. One might 
 refuse to believe in anything not immediately experiential. 
 Thus one might refuse to believe in all but the immediate past. 
 But such a standpoint is in reality untenable. The ideas that 
 we verify here and now, announce a being that is related. 
 They reveal the relations of these objects to other objects, the 
 ideas of which, to be sure, are not adequate, yet are nevertheless 
 present. Now, relations without end-terms are contradictory. 
 An adequate idea of A-related is contradictory unless the B 
 that is not adequately presented, or some other such object, is 
 accepted. You cannot accept A as father unless you accept B 
 as son. The case of the past is parallel. All our ideas of what 
 we adequately verify, either of our own or of our fellow's ex- 
 perience, reveal an existence which is related to much that does
 
 1G8 Jhiivrrsitjf of California I'ublicniions in J'liiloaoph]/. [Vol. 2 
 
 nol ;i(l('(|ii;ilrly ;ii)|)c;ir, ;ilt lioiiu'li it (Iocs npjx'ar inadequately. 
 The deed llial I do lo-day appears as iinplitHl by another deed 
 from wliicli it sprang. The; purpo.se of my fellow, as I pereeive 
 it now, comes to me as part of a seri&s of jiurpo.ses extending 
 somewhere beyond what I see. My friend at the marriage with 
 no jireeedinfT love-making or agreement de convenance is a con- 
 tradiction. T have jus adcfpiate a knowledge of the implication 
 of lliis silualioii ])y other situations as I have of the situation 
 itself. Although I do not have an adequate idea of that other, 
 I must accept something whose general character would fill in 
 the blank which the nature of the relation perceived involves. 
 
 But, so far, this proof that the past did exist betrays the 
 insufficiency of all ontological proofs of existence. The purposes, 
 whether my own or my fellow's, which I verify do indeed imply 
 the being of other purposes; they do not imply that they did 
 exist. For plainly we have purposes which imply deeds in the 
 future, 5'et these deeds are not actual. And similarly the deeds 
 of a man who dies in his youth, when part of a coherent scheme 
 of intentions, imply countless others which are never realized. 
 It would seem not to be contradictory of what we know of 
 existence, to suppose that this present, full-grown and energetic, 
 sprang with all its purposes and beliefs, by generatio aequivoca, 
 from an absolute nothing. 
 
 All this we must admit, yet our admission is not fatal to our 
 contention. Did our present purposes imply others in the past 
 in the same way that they imply others in the future; did our 
 ideas of the past testify only to the being of the past, then our 
 case would surely be lost. But unlike our ideas of the future 
 or of merely ideal entities, those of the past, as we have seen, 
 include the further idea of the proposition "did exist." My 
 idea of the decision which (or something like it) is implied by my 
 present act of writing this essay, reveals not only an ideal essence, 
 but in addition the proposition "it was." But why believe this 
 report ? Well, in the first place, there is nothing to contradict it. 
 Unless we believe our objectifying ideas, we have no means of 
 knowing at all. Yet surely the idea of this proposition is not 
 adequate; were it to become so, might not a contradiction 
 appear? Since you cannot adequately verify any past deed
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 169 
 
 (with the exception of the immediate past), how can you verify 
 any simple proposition of this type? And if you cannot verify any 
 one proposition, you cannot verify any at all ; that is, you cannot 
 verify that there was a past. Surely you have not refuted the 
 sceptic, who will believe in that only of which he can obtain clear 
 and distinct ideas! Not yet; but the refutation is at hand. It 
 grows out of the considerations about relations, set forth above. 
 As we know, the essence of our temporal experience is becoming. 
 What we verify now, appears as coming from something else, as 
 growing out of another existence which it supplants. Our idea 
 of this is as adequate as our idea of our ovm. actuality, for our 
 actuality is just of this nature. I never do a deed that does not 
 announce itself as ''having come from one that did exist." 
 Without an existence that was, the existence that is is contra- 
 dictory, just because it is an existence that becomes. Becoming, 
 without something which did exist from which it became, is a 
 contradiction. We have the term and the relation, but the other 
 term that is required is one that must have existed, not one that 
 has merely ideal being. Here is a relation that has not mere 
 logical being, but existence, and can exist only if its end-term 
 did exist. The proposition ' ' A becomes, ' ' which I verify, implies, 
 not the entity of B, but the proposition "B became." I cannot 
 accept the one without the other. The present grows out of the 
 past ; this very growing I verify ; the one cannot exist unless the 
 other has existed. Thus the proposition that there was a past is 
 proved. 
 
 But since mere existence has being but no existence, since the 
 that is never separated from the what, the nature of much that 
 did exist can also be demonstrated. The general character of 
 the past can be proved from the present. We verify- deeds and 
 relations of a type that demand an end-term of a specific Iciiui. 
 All that we said at first about the implication of the past by tlie 
 present is now confirmed ; for the implication is one that carries 
 with it "having existed" as well as being. The reason why we 
 cannot determine from the present more than the general char- 
 acter of the past, is that we actually verify only a little of the 
 present itself. The fullness of even our own moments, although 
 of course it exists, is verified only to the smallest extent. We
 
 17(* Univcrsittj of Califonila I'i(f>li(nlif)ns in I'lnlosnjtlnf. [ Vol. 2 
 
 vci'iry only llic ^'ciirrjil rciitiii-cs, and, rrasDiiin^ rPDrn their rcl.'i- 
 lioiis. we can (Ictrciiiiiir oiil\ I lie altstrai-t fliaractfrs of tin; cnd- 
 tcrms. 
 
 Tlins my pn-sciit dn-ds imply a drcisiori to writi' a moiio«^raph 
 about the past, l)iit since my m<'mory of the latter is inadequate 
 and my knowledf^e of my own act is quite as inadequate, I can 
 only be sure th^it there was a decision, of a certain {general nature. 
 ]\roreover, we cannot be sure that the content of all moments has 
 this sort of implication. There is much that seems to have no 
 logical connection with that out of whicii it grew; at least, no 
 such implication has yet been made out. Hence, although because 
 it too becomes it must have come from something that was, we 
 are unable to determine icJiat was. In so far as our lives are 
 dreamful and incoherent, we cannot trace these necessary rela- 
 tions. For further information we have to rely on empirical 
 psychological methods. 
 
 That there was a past, we may be sure. Aside from deduction 
 from the present, our knowledge of it is based on memory, our 
 owTi memory, the memory of our fellows, and on records, which 
 are nothing but recorded memory. The memories that we at 
 any time possess are few and inadequate; but, as we have seen, 
 their inadequacy need not lead us to distrust them utterly. 
 Especiall}' when recorded soon after the event, memory has a 
 fair degree of accuracy. Growth in knowledge of the past 
 depends upon getting richer memories, upon gathering objectifj'- 
 ing ideas from our fellows and from records. Since, because of 
 the feebleness of the mechanism of memory, we are unable, for 
 the most part, to render our ideas of the past adequate, we can 
 verify them only one with another and so see to it that they are 
 not inconsistent. Consistent memories, living or recorded, we 
 must needs believe, if we are to obtain any knowledge of the past. 
 
 Fortunately, records can be tested in another way besides 
 comparison inter se : namely, with reference to the objects of 
 which they make mention. If a writer refers to an event, say 
 an eclipse, we can discover his veracity by finding out whether 
 such an event has a place in the physical series. ^Moreover, if 
 another writer asserts that he also saw it, we have a means of 
 determining their contemporaneity. We laiow that the conscious
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 171 
 
 series is correlated with the series of physical events in such a 
 way that only those experiences which have existed together can 
 obtain adequate ideas, immediate experiences, of the same por- 
 tion of the latter series. Of course this verification of records 
 assumes the validity of the process of scientific induction. To 
 what extent it is reliable we shall investigate anon. We turn 
 first to consider certain other difficulties which the processes of 
 historical research and verification commonly arouse. 
 
 How can records, which are present existing physical objects, 
 inform us of past experiences which no longer exist? This diffi- 
 culty rests on several prejudices and errors. To begin with, the 
 physical objects may, as we have seen, be past as well as present. 
 Yet even if they are not, the propositions that I discover by 
 reading, say, the inscription on a monument, are a part of 
 historical truth, which is a portion of the eternal world. j\Iy 
 reading of the inscription and my consequent finding of these 
 propositions are, to be sure, present facts, but I cannot see that 
 this is relevant to the truth or temporality of what I find. ]\Iy 
 finding a fact now, does not make what I find merely present. 
 So long as we bear in mind that ideas are not what they know, 
 that by their objectifying intent they can refer to anything 
 remote in time or timeless, whether in heaven or earth, it will 
 not puzzle us to know how by an act in the present we can 
 verify what is not present. 
 
 Nor is there any difficulty in the fact that I learn historical 
 truth, an "intangible" thing, only by means of hard rocks and 
 visible ink and paper. We have long since abandoned the 
 prejudice that only what we can touch and handle has being. 
 It is no less wonderful that we can by our ideas know books and 
 tables than that we can know propositions. That I cannot know 
 the latter apart from the former is irrelevant. I cannot know 
 anything without a brain or a digestive tract, yet who will say 
 that this fact has any epistemological significance ? The processes 
 of psycho-physics are without significance for the theory of 
 knowledge. There is no importance attachable to the fact that 
 before I can get an idea which embodies a proposition, my 
 occipital lobes must be stimulated by ink and paper, and the 
 entire associative apparatus set to work. It is even doubtful
 
 172 Unli'frsihf of (Uilifontin I'lihlicaliofis in Philosophy. [Vol. 2 
 
 whctlicr wlicM I know a proposilioti T iimst, also Uuow tlic words 
 in wliicli it is rraiiird. Wlu-n llic iriiiid is fixed f)n tin- meaning, 
 "when feathered into lu-rsclf, " "none of those thirif^s IroubU' her, 
 neither sounds nor sights." At any rate, however I obtain these 
 ideas, whether always in conjunction with ideas of sounds or 
 sitrhts. oi- not. i1 is sufficient that I do obtain them. I fret mean- 
 ings, consistent witli and enricliinp: my other objectifying ideas 
 which refer to the past. Just as I can accept the testimony of 
 luminous memory, so I can accept other objectifj'ing ideas, how- 
 ever derived psycho-physically. Our knowledge moves within 
 the charmed circle of ideas, in which democratic company the 
 dignity of each depends only on its clearness and its harmony 
 with its fellows, and not at all on ancestry. 
 
 ThiLS, I have an idea, no matter how obtained, that there 
 once existed a man named Socrates, who preached the gospel of 
 the rational life and for various reasons was put to death by his 
 own countrymen. j\Iy ideas about him and his fate are, let us 
 say, vague : I know that he made a speech in his own defense, 
 but just what he said I do not know ; I know that he taught 
 that virtue is one with self-knowledge, but I do not know how he 
 justified this view. My ideas mean more than they reveal; they 
 crave for the detail of what they do impart. I read the works 
 of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, I get new ideas about Socrates 
 and fill out the meaning of those which I already have. I dis- 
 cover the arguments which he used at his trial, I learn his 
 method of induction and maieutic scrutiny. Are these new ideas 
 consistent among themselves, with all the other ideas which I 
 have about Greek history and Greek character, with my ideas, 
 adequate or inadequate, of human life in general and the world 
 of nature? If so, then I may be confident that what I learn is 
 true. 
 
 ^Memory is fragmentary, and much less than is ever remem- 
 bered is recorded. Hence, even if we could gather together all 
 that was ever written on stone or bronze or paper, our histories 
 would be imperfect. We fill up the lacunae by means of 
 hypotheses. The validity of these hypotheses rests on the validity 
 of empirical psychic laws, obtained by induction.-^ Here 
 
 -3 See Wundt, Logik der Geschichtsicissenschaft, Bd. 2, Teil 2. Sigwart, 
 Logic, translation hj Helen Dendy, vol. 2.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 173 
 
 abstract psychology helps to make histo^J^ At best, induction 
 gives only probable results. Oftentimes two or more hypotheses 
 are equally possible. Because of the so-called plurality of 
 causes, and the uncertainty of effects where the materials for 
 induction are few, many interpretations of history are possible. 
 From a given set of acts testified to by our records, historians 
 can perhaps with equal reasonableness suppose several different 
 motives for the actions of a Cromwell or a Napoleon. Even if 
 psychology had deduced exact laws, we could not apply them 
 with very much confidence to the past, because of the paucity 
 of facts. "We could not get sufficient constants with which to 
 solve our equations — which, since mental life is complex, would 
 contain many variables. These facts about historical interpreta- 
 tion are legitimate ground for a measure of scepticism, notably 
 illustrated by Balfour in his Defense of Philosophic Douht.-* 
 Yet they do not make history hopeless. We do possess the 
 objectifying ideas obtained from recorded memory, whose general 
 accuracy we can trust. Of course, even the understanding of 
 records, when their language is not well known, rests somewhat 
 on probability; yet, where the meaning of the words has been 
 transmitted through translations, or through the memory of 
 successive generations, in spite of transformations in the mean- 
 ing of the vernacular itself, none except the professional sceptic 
 can reasonably doubt that we can obtain a modicum of fairly 
 accurate information. If we could not have well-grounded faith 
 in records, we might indeed be sceptical. But, of course, many 
 versions of history remain open. 
 
 Not only the interpretation of records, but also their cor- 
 roboration and testing by means of the facts in the physical world 
 to which they refer, is derived largely from inference. We can 
 get at so-called physical objects only through memory and 
 inference from the facts which w^e verify in the present. Thus 
 the validity of all hypotheses in history rests on the validity of 
 inference, and hence, in the end, on the validity of so-called 
 empirical laws. 
 
 Empirical physical laws express the laws of series of physical 
 facts. Such laws are uncertain, compared with mathematical 
 
 24 Chap. iv.
 
 174 (Inii'crsil !i of Califoniia J'ltblications in I'hilosophy. I ^^^- 2 
 
 axioms, Itccausc, while in the cjisc of llic latter all the data to 
 which Ihcy ii|)|)ly an- at hand, in the former there is a paucity 
 of (lata. In the one ease, a comph'tr verification is possiliie: wo 
 ean sec how the law is excmplilied in every fact which we choose 
 to examine. In the oilier ease, we can never be sure, even when 
 all the facts at our command fit into our law, that there do not 
 exist within the series in question other facts which would 
 render a diflPerent formula necessary, or perhaps make any exact 
 formula impossible. The basis for our confidence in such laws 
 jis we do obtain rests on the random character of our facts. 
 They are a chance selection, a fair sample, which may be .sup- 
 posed to illustrate the character of the whole. ^'^ Assuming the 
 law, and having a few facts, we can predict the nature of other 
 facts with a degree of probability proportionate to the number 
 and representative character of the facts upon which our previous 
 induction was based. 
 
 From a deterministic point of view, whether we infer physical 
 facts in the past or the future is indifferent. Of course one end 
 of the series, through memory, is more accessible to us than the 
 other. We might, however, for all I can see, have had some sort 
 of prescience by which we could divine so-called future objects. 
 As it is, we simply dip into the world of facts; through percep- 
 tion and memory, we find different kinds of series, many times 
 repeated perhaps, and guess as best we may what laws they 
 would exemplify if we could find all the facts which belong to 
 them. AVliether by means of our laws we infer, from a few facts 
 now, other facts in the future or the past, is indifferent : we are 
 simply referring to different ends of the series to which our facts 
 belong. Thus, whether from the laws of the solar system I infer 
 to-morrow's or yesterday's sunrise is indifferent, so far as the 
 process of inference and the degree of probability are concerned. 
 The only difference is that I can verify to-morrow's sun, but not 
 yesterday 's. 
 
 The inference of psychical facts seems to be on the same plane. 
 Even if from empirical psychic laws we are unable to determine 
 the existence of concrete states of consciousness, we can never- 
 theless determine the possihility. the character, of such acti%'ity. 
 
 25 Compare Charles Peirce, Studies in Logic.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 175 
 
 We can determine that if A existed, or if A will exist, he was, 
 or will be, of the character B. Existence, even if contingent and 
 arbitrary, is subject to possibility, that is, to abstract deter- 
 mination. And a possibility of existent character is just as 
 determinate and lawful an entity as a stone or a reflexive rela- 
 tion. Just as we can discover the nature and behavior of bodies 
 when in certain relations, so we can determine the nature and 
 reactions of psychic facts. The matter of psycho-physical paral- 
 lelism is irrelevant : the correlation of psychical objects with 
 physical objects is simply another fact about each. If the law 
 of correlation were completely determined, I could pass from a 
 fact in the psychical realm to a fact in the phj^sical realm, and, if 
 of the appropriate nature, from a neurosis to a psychosis. If the 
 correlation is accurate, and there are determinate physical laws 
 of the brain, there are corresponding psychical laws. The facts 
 from which we can deduce such psychical laws are given to us 
 b}^ memory and perception, just as physical facts are given to 
 us. Hence, from them we can deduce the laws of the possi- 
 bilities of physical existence, and in turn infer other concrete 
 existences. 
 
 But we are not, in the case of the past, restricted to mere 
 possibilities. For, as we have seen, we know that there was a 
 past, and we also know that certain events took place in the past. 
 Since existence must conform to possibility, we can infer that 
 these events must have been of such and such a general char- 
 acter. In accordance with our empirical psychic laws, we can 
 make the probable inference that if A occurred it was of the 
 character B, because A could not exist unless it were also B. 
 
 To sum up : we verify and enlarge our knowledge of the past 
 (verifi^cation and growth in knowledge go hand in hand) by 
 enriching the meaning of such objectifying ideas of the past as 
 we possess, through seeing that these ideas are consistent with 
 themselves, with one another, and with such other ideas as we 
 derive by induction to fill in the lacunae.
 
 17() Univcrsil !J of ('alifoniin I'lihlicttI ions in I'hAlosojjIiij. I Vol. 2 
 
 CIIAI'TKi; \ II 
 
 HISTORICAL TRI Til AXI) KXTSTEXCE 
 
 Historical research and verification are the processes by which 
 we win historical truth. They are matters of faithful effort and 
 creation, the bringing into existence of something new, occur- 
 rences unique and novel in our changeful lives. In contrast with 
 this coming and going of our ideas, we have often spoken of the 
 truth as fixed and changeless. Even though this very search for 
 truth is part of history, yet the truth about this search does not 
 change. The truth that contemporary events would happen 
 might have been known to the discerning prophet long before 
 their occurrence. When he made his judgment he had an object 
 — the truths in question. To be sure, the events did not exist, 
 but the truth about them was eternally, else it could not have 
 been foreseen. Whoever judges, no matter when, judges about 
 being; whoever entertains an objeetifj'ing idea, refers to that 
 which is.-® That we do not know the whole of this truth, is of 
 course itself a truth ; and that we often err, is another truth. 
 "History is always badly written and always has to be re- 
 written." Is it not then a mere assumption that this truth is? 
 Nay, even the truth that we know only in part and that we err, 
 itself implies the being of truth. The part implies the whole, 
 and false propositions imply true ones. 
 
 "But surely," it will be objected, "one can, in a way, make 
 a mistake about things which do not exist. For example, I can 
 have a false idea about a Centaur, which is nothing but a creation 
 of the nightmares of early mythology. Or I can err about 
 transcendental forms of space, w'hich are not real. ' ' To this the 
 reply is, that we are not considering being real, but only being. 
 To be sure. Centaurs probably are not real, that is, do not exist, 
 and multi-dimensional spaces cannot as such exist. Yet. for all 
 that, they are. The Centaur is at least a possible existent, that 
 
 ■JO Coiiiparo Brentano, Psychologic, loc. cit. Royce. The World and the 
 Individual, first series, lecture VII.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. Ill 
 
 is, the conception of it involves no contradiction ; hence, at least 
 this truth has being, namely, that it might exist. And what 
 after all is a possibility? Is it not an entity? But suppose 
 the Centaur did involve a contradiction; it would still, as a 
 contradictory conception, as an attempted union of simple 
 objectifying concepts, have being. It is at least a fancy of the 
 poets. Multi-dimensional spaces equally have being. They are 
 objects of knowledge ; we can quarrel and err about them ; surely 
 one does not contend or make a mistake about nothing. 
 
 From our point of view, nothing exists save the totality of 
 concrete experiences which are present at a single point in the 
 time series. The men and women of the past and future do not 
 exist; neither do ideals and fictitious entities. Yet for all this, 
 we assert the being of the past and future, namely, of all the 
 characters of those that did or will exist, their mutual relations 
 and influences, their several various or identical ideals, and, 
 last — that which distinguishes this realm from that of an interest- 
 ing drama — the proposition that these characters did or will 
 exist. And we also assert the being of the laws of physical 
 objects, of all universals, of mathematical and logical entities, of 
 fictions, of ideals, of the relations trivial or important between 
 any and all these things. There is no snobbery in the society of 
 being ! 
 
 Being that is not existent, being that is not the same as ideas 
 of being, truths, propositions which are not somebody 's judgments, 
 — such conceptions seem, to many, metaphysical monstrosities. 
 Moreover, the dualism between existence in time, and being that 
 is eternal, will be to many intolerable. What is this being tliat 
 does not exist, it will be asked; what is its support in tlie real 
 world? — what is its relation to time? Is it not a mere abstrac- 
 tion, a %w/)to-/i09 as illegitimate as Plato's? These protests of 
 monism cannot be disregarded. In order to investigate their 
 legitimacy, we shall examine some attempts at construing truth 
 and being in terms of concrete existence; always with especial 
 reference to Historical Truth. 
 
 In w^hat way shall we seek to make truth identical with exist- 
 ence? The phenomenalist will endeavor to make it one with the 
 ideas which mean it. But whose ideas are the Truth? Surely
 
 17rt Ihiiiu rsity of (Jalifoniia I'lihlicalions in I'hilosoplnj. I ^'<-»l- 2 
 
 not those of any one of us. The ideas of historical tnith, for 
 oxainple, of even the h-arncd historian are eonfcsscdiy frag- 
 mentary. Even we, to be sure, knew eriouf^h to etiabh; us to 
 define certain eharaeters of Ihe 'I'rulh; Imt we meant mon? than 
 we knew. Our intent overreached otir acconij)lishnient. We 
 were aware of liow much more our own knowh'd<,'e implied. 
 Secondly, the Tnitli is plainly one, whereas we knowers are 
 many. Last, our knowledge perishes; but the Truth passes not 
 away. It does not affect the truth that John Smith lived and 
 died in some obscure town, that in a few generations no one will 
 know that he did exist. We cannot make the being of our own 
 unrehearsed dreams dependent on our memory, which will soon 
 perish forever at our death. 
 
 If the Truth is not the knowledge of any one of us. it is not 
 the combined knowledge of all, a totality of objectifying ideas. 
 You cannot get the Truth by piecing together errors. Since the 
 views of each are a part of history, if history were a static and 
 eternal immediacy, this might be true. But since parts of the 
 immediate mean other parts, since they recognize and fall short 
 of ideals, and since they all perish in turn, they cannot be what 
 the}' mean, cannot be what they aim at, cannot be the eternal. 
 Moreover, the totality of these views would have a being unknown 
 to any one of them. 
 
 Another view is that of Professor Royce, expounded also by 
 Joachim in his recent book. The Nature of Truth. The truth 
 consists of the finite and partial views together with a complete 
 view, united in one whole of consciousness. Historical truth is 
 truth about men who have played their parts in life, ethical 
 truth concerns the ideals of willing subjects; neglect that about 
 which truth is, and you cannot understand it at all. Apart 
 from fact and will, truth and ideal are meaningless abstractions. 
 Complete interpretation of the fact, complete understanding of 
 the will, is the Truth. But truth is not mere fact and will, nor 
 mere reflection and ideal, but fact and reflection upon the fact, 
 will and understanding of the will; for in order to know com- 
 pletely, one has also to be what one knows. 
 
 We need not stay to examine this view in detail. It involves 
 all the contradictions flowing from the conception of one con-
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knoidedge. 179 
 
 sciousness supposed to include many others as parts of itself, and 
 also the false epistemologieal thesis that the true idea necessarily 
 possesses the existence of its object. We have already dealt with 
 it when we examined Professor Royce's conception of the eternal 
 and time-inclusive moment, and elsewhere. Moreover, there is 
 no need of our again setting forth the difficulties of this theory 
 when it has been so convincingly done by Joachim himself in 
 the last chapter of his book. We shall only call attention to one 
 thing, which we could not have considered before we had proved 
 that the past does not exist. Since finite consciousnesses pass 
 aw^ay, a further contradiction breaks out in the Absolute Self — he 
 is at once an eternal actual whole, yet his parts become non- 
 existent. 
 
 There is still another way of construing truth in terms of 
 knowledge or existence. The truth about the past is what we 
 mean when we study history, it is the goal of the objectifying 
 ideas which arise when we enter upon research or let our memory 
 wander as it will. It is that which gives our ideas their signifi- 
 cance; it is what our ideas would become if they were complete. 
 It is, to be sure, not actual; it is only an ideal, a potentiality; 
 but it is such as to be capable of realization, and apart from the 
 intent of conscious beings it is not at all. Thus although the 
 Truth is not identical with any knowing process, it is not inde- 
 pendent of all such processes. 
 
 ]\Iuch that is contained in this last view is true, almost to 
 the extent of being obvious ; but it is not very illuminating, and 
 it embodies some errors. Of course the Truth is that which we 
 mean ; it is the ideal which we strive to realize. And just as the 
 artist could not paint a picture unless he had something to copy, 
 and to serve as a standard, so we could not know unless we had 
 an ideal of knowledge. But just as the model need not perish 
 if the artist ceases to paint her, so the Truth cannot cease to be 
 if our meanings vanish. Suppose that to-day all idea-s were to 
 disappear ; still the truth that these ideas were, would be. ]\Iore- 
 over, if, as is said, the Truth does not depend upon each idea 
 severally, A's or B's or C's, how can it depend upon any? 
 Indeed, it is impossible to make truth depend on anything that 
 can pass away; for, as Professor Santayana puts it, if nothing
 
 JHO Ihiircrsil If of Cnl iforiiin I'lihlical ions in l'hiloso}>h]i. I ^'•''- 2 
 
 oxistod it would still be true that all cxisfcncos vvcro wantinf?; 
 hut it cannot he true; that there is no truth; for to assert this 
 involves a contradiction. 
 
 I'ut, after all, what is a mere potentiality, possibility, ideal? 
 Is it anythin<ic else than a va<;uely conceived entity which bears 
 certain relations to the actual? Thus, tlie ideal of knowled{,'e is 
 something which I conceive jus what I might attain, given cer- 
 tain conditions; my ideal self is a definite character which is 
 what I most deeply wish to be. That is, possibilities and ideals 
 are well defined entities; when you call them ideals and possi- 
 bilities, you simply state something about them ; namely, the 
 truth that they might become actual, or that they are what we 
 want. But in order to be an ideal or a possible existent, a thing 
 must first be. You cannot make its being dependent on its also 
 being an ideal or a possibility. It is not merely what we mean 
 or w^hat we want ; for it is granted that our meanings and wishes 
 are vague or erroneous. In fact, this view simply defines some 
 relations Avhich eternal entities bear to the existent, and then 
 takes this account as complete. But you cannot adequately' define 
 a thing by telling its relations to other things. A related term 
 has some individuality of its own. Thus this attempt to construe 
 truth in terms of existence or knowledge turns out to be abortive. 
 
 AVe turn to one final effort. In the Sophist, Plato makes 
 the Stranger put this query to the "friends of the Ideas": "We 
 want to ascertain from them more distinctly whether they 
 further admit that the soul knows, and that being or essence is 
 known." To which Theaetetus replies: "There can be no doubt 
 that they say so." After another question and answer, the 
 Stranger says: "... But they will allow that if to know is 
 active, then to be known is passive. And on this vievr, being, 
 in so far as it is known, is acted upon by knowledge, and is 
 therefore in motion ; for that which is in a state of rest cannot 
 be acted upon, as we affirm. . . . And, heavens, can we ever 
 be made to believe that motion and life and soul and mind are 
 not present with perfect being? Can we imagine that being is 
 devoid of life and mind, and exists in awful unmeaningness, an 
 everlasting fixture ?"^^ Plato not only anticipated all criticism 
 
 ■-■ The Sophist, 248 sub. fin., Jowett's translation.
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 181 
 
 of his own theory, but in this passage he indicated the course 
 which future thought would take in reference to the Ideas. 
 Aristotle, who believed that he had refuted Plato and dispensed 
 with the Ideas, simply endowed them with the activity and life 
 of which Plato had spoken in the Sophist, and put them into a 
 different locus — the intellect of the Prime Mover.^* On its 
 philosophic side, the Scholastic conception of God was descended 
 from Aristotle, and it identified God's omniscience with the 
 Truth. Finally, Leibnitz, a christianized and idealistic Aristotle, 
 made the eternal truths the thoughts of the Supreme ]\Ionad. 
 Such, in brief, are the origins of what we believe the most promis- 
 ing of all attempts to construe truth in terms of existence. Is 
 there any difference between a single complete and enduring 
 knowledge and the Truth ? 
 
 In the case of Historical Truth there seems, at first sight, to 
 be no difference. What, we may well ask, is the truth about a 
 man, but that which would appear after a complete knowledge of 
 him and his influence? To understand the influence of Plato 
 on Aristotle, one must somehow get both within a single unity 
 of apperception. Have these relations any being except just such 
 an understanding of them ? What is the ethical judgment upon 
 a character, except a living appreciation of the man as ho was, 
 together with a comprehension of his ideal — what he ought to 
 have been? Is there any being in the proposition, "Socrates 
 did exist," other than a sense of loss that does not pass away, 
 together with the memory of him? 
 
 Let us elaborate this concept of the All-Knower, in such a 
 way as to fashion it most like the Truth ; then we can judge of 
 it, whether it is only a copy or the original. This Being would 
 possess ideas which reproduce all the past and anticipate all the 
 future. The character of all the persons that had ever lived or 
 would ever live, together with their ideals, that is, togotlior with 
 what they most deeply strove to be, and also the judgment of 
 how far they realized or fell short of these patterns, — all would 
 appear in the ideas of the All-Knower. Thus he would be at 
 once Eecording Angel and Just Judge; only, he woulil a.ssign 
 
 28 Aristotle 's concept of the potential — which is nothing but a proposi- 
 tion about an existent — is another guise in which the Ideas reappear.
 
 182 lhiii'(rsihi«if('ttlifi)nii(iI'iil)li((ilioiis in I'li ilnsopliij. I Vol. 2 
 
 IK) piitiisliiiiriits ()!• rTwai'ds, nor woiiM lir Iwivc any ix-i-ri-fcriccs 
 or emotions lliat were not ('X[)n'ssiv(! of Iho ideals of the wills 
 of the persons tlieinselves ; he would simply understand and 
 sympathize. Oiir rehitimis to him woiiM lie just what oiii- ri-\n- 
 tions to truth and the ideal arc, namely, imitation and devotion. 
 By our ideas we should imitate his ideas, hy our self-knowledge 
 and striving we should seek to realize what he eternally knows to 
 he the intention of our true wills. As Aristotle has descrihed him 
 and our latest Aristotelian corrected and a(Med to the outlines, 
 he would he the Unmoved Mover who attracts hut doas not impel, 
 whom we love, but by whose action we cannot be helped. For, 
 being the reflex of all interactions, he could not himself inter- 
 act with the world. His causation would be ideal or final, never 
 efficient. Our relations with him, of knowledge, or of love, would 
 also be purely ideal ; they would, however, be entities, and so be 
 part of his knowdedge. But they would not make us part of him, 
 for by hypothesis he is ideal being, not transient existence. 
 
 Thus the life and aspiration of every person would be fixed 
 in the eternal memory or anticipation. These ideas would be, 
 of course, for the most part inactive; they would announce 
 only the ideal being and truth of the past and future ; the ideas 
 wdiich reflected the present would alone have the appearance of 
 activity. These last Avould be the counterparts of existential 
 judgments — they would correspond to the propositions "A is" 
 and ' ' A exists, ' ' together. When the person died, the idea would 
 become inactive and would take on the color of the proposition 
 "A existed." Similarly, the anticipatory ideas would in turn 
 become active and then inactive again, as the future became 
 present and then past. There would be two parts of the eternal 
 consciousness. First, a complete knowledge of both past and 
 future — the data of memory and anticipation fully understood 
 in all their interrelations throughout the entire infinite course 
 of time : this part would correspond to the eternal truths. Then 
 there would be the region of ideas that would simply reflect 
 the past and future, and the present, the latter ideas being 
 active: these ideas would be subject to change; they would 
 embody the existential propositions, which change from "A will 
 exist " to "A exists, ' ' then to "A did exist. ' ' These two regions
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 183 
 
 would exist side by side, just as the flowing river exists alongside 
 of its stationary banks. The Eternal would then be a witness 
 to the drama of life, possess perfect memory of its completed 
 acts, and an accurate prescience of its developments, together 
 with a masterly understanding of the significance of the whole 
 — the most attentive onlooker and the most consummate critic. 
 The ' ' spectator of all time and of all existence, ' ' he would be the 
 perfected philosopher. Unlike Aristotle's Prime Mover, he, utter 
 Citizen of the World and Democrat, would not disdain the 
 most trivial detail: the ideas of "even the meanest things"-® 
 would form part of his consciousness. Unlike the God of popular 
 tradition, he would have no emotion just his own; his would be 
 wholly that of sympathy with the world ; for besides knowing of 
 its joys and sorrows, its right judgments and its errors, he would 
 also completely understand them and what they together verily 
 meant. 
 
 Yet since Being, unlike existences which are many, is un- 
 doubtedly one, for all entities are related, the AU-Knower, 
 besides his acquaintance with existence, would be the complete 
 mathematician and logician, beholding with the mind's eye every 
 universal as well as every individual entity, and aware of all 
 the infinite interrelations of things, including even the "trifling 
 propositions, ' ' every conceivable combination of fancy or caprice, 
 every possibility of existence or thought despised by James and 
 Locke. In this region of pure contemplation, the All-Knower 
 would have a life apart from ours. For whereas our science is a 
 copy of detached squares of the patch-work quilt of Truth, his 
 would be a vision of every piece in its well-stitched place. Only, 
 since this consciousness is the Truth, there would be in it no more 
 emotion or delight, no more fatigue and transition and ill self- 
 consciousness, than there is in sunlight or in a purely ideal 
 triangle. In this region of pure Being would be united the 
 Aristotelian vorjai^ vor)ae(i)<i with the Plutonic"-'^ and Christian 
 concern for the world of change and existence. 
 
 But if the All-Knower is aware of change, must not 
 eternal truth itself change ? Would not the eternal be temporal ? 
 
 29 See the Parmenides, 130, Jowett 's translation. 
 
 30 Compare the Laws, 901.
 
 184 University of Calif oni id I'uhlicatiotis in I'hilosophj/. (Vol.2 
 
 Well, p.'irt (it" llii' Tnilli (hn-s clKiiiLrc. II" time Is, all of triitli is 
 not unalterable. Existential propositions chanf^e, as we have 
 indicated; we eaiinot exclude these from the realm of the Truth. 
 If time is, there is no whole of truth which is eternal; for 
 existential propositions become false. There is only one part of 
 truth which is eternal; namely, the significance and ideal inter- 
 relations of all beings at all points of time. But only after the 
 time process is completed will this eternal Truth be the whole 
 of truth. And is not the All-Knower, as we have described him, 
 true to this side of truth as it is? For he possesses, throu<,'h 
 memory and anticipation, this eternal insight which o'erleaps 
 all time, in addition to the consciousness of time and change. 
 That a consciousness combining felt permanence with felt change 
 is possible, our own finite consciousness exemplifies : we feel, for 
 instance, along with the passing away of elements, and the coming 
 in of new, that what we call our "identity," be it purpase or 
 only some persistent organic sensation, does not change. 
 
 Such an entity would indeed seem to be indistinguishable 
 from the Truth. But throughout our description of it, we have 
 really given it a false character. We have called it a knower 
 and a consciousness, yet these epithets do not rightly belong to 
 it. For each implies the relation of the object known to some- 
 thing else and different, and this has no place in the eternal 
 being. That being was only the knowledge of its object, between 
 which and its object there was no difference; it had no life of 
 its own to which the object could be assimilated. It was just 
 the complete object itself, and the deceitful plausibility of our 
 procedure was due to the fact that the idea, considered in itself, 
 apart from the rest of the self in which it may exist, in the case 
 of perfect knowledge is identical with its object. Hence, in 
 describing the adequate idea of the Ti-uth, we have done nothing 
 but describe the Truth itself, not a Consciousness in possession 
 of the Truth. 
 
 But has the Truth existence ? This depends on what is meant 
 by existence. If we mean what has been meant in this essay, 
 concrete experience, effective and interactive with other experi- 
 ences, then the Truth has no existence. For the Truth is just 
 the abstract propositions which we have described; there is no
 
 1913] Parker: Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge. 185 
 
 concrete life in which, of themselves and independently, they 
 inhere, and through which they might become effective in the 
 world. The only concrete experience in which they do exist is 
 our o^vn, when we know them. Only there can they briefly dwell 
 and act. "The truth is mighty and will prevail" — but only if 
 we are devoted and striving. 
 
 On the other hand, if by existence is also meant what Russell 
 and Moore (and we, following them) have called Being, then 
 surely the Truth exists. But such existence brings with it, we 
 judge, none of the allurements which men commonly expect. 
 The existence of the eternally abstract warms the heart of the 
 philosopher only. And such an existence merely is proved in 
 the arguments offered by Howison and by Royce. As to the 
 latter, in particular, knowledge of part of the Truth does indeed 
 prove the being of the whole, but not, surely, a living Knower of 
 the whole. 
 
 Hence every attempt to make the whole Truth a part of 
 concrete experience has failed. Yet these attempts have not 
 been uninstructive. For they have led us to a sort of Platonic 
 Realism, the elucidation of which seems to us the way to insight. 
 The view of Plato that there is an eternal reality, the essence of 
 all changing experience, has, we believe, never been refuted or 
 superseded. Only, the details of Plato's view must be altered: 
 the realm of Being must be enlarged beyond the limits of the 
 universals, and the Heraclitan flux must be identified with the 
 immediate. This realism has none of the disadvantages of other 
 sorts ; for its Being is not unknown, since being appears in our 
 ideas. Knowledge and its object are similar. The work of 
 knowledge, as of action, is that of the Artist — to embody an 
 original which (the landscape is full of the soul of the painter!) 
 is part of his very self. And although we refuse to define the 
 Eternal Truth, repeating to those who clamor for an answer to 
 this hoary demand. Truth is Truth, we claim the most intimate 
 acquaintance with it, an acquaintance which grows with increase 
 of knowledge. Because you cannot construe red in terms of any- 
 thing except itself, you do not confess to ignorance of it. Just 
 so, when you understand the proposition, "Plato was the author 
 of the theory of Ideas," or the proposition, "Every asymmetrical
 
 18G University of (Jalifurnia I'ublicalivns in I'liilosopky. L Vd. 2 
 
 relution can be expressed as a symmetrical relation," you 
 apprehend an entity having as clear and luminous a subsistence 
 and cliaraeter. This you should accept as it declares itself to 
 be, without seeking to give it a nalurr you do not fiml in 4t. 
 When you study history or mathematics, you are wandering in 
 the eternal realm, much as you might wander in Africa; and if 
 you explore well, you make as assured discoveries of that which 
 is, and you must take your discoveries as simply in the one case 
 as you do in the other. The philosopher, although he knows 
 more of the world than the common man, often understands it 
 less well, because his ideas become confused through the desire 
 to see our variegated universe all of a single color. 
 
 Beekeley, Calipoenia, 
 June, 1910.
 
 
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