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 TIME' AND ^HISTORY' IN^GONTEM- 
 PORARY PHILOSOPHY; WITH SPECIAL 
 REFERENCE TO BERGSON AND CROCE 
 
 BY H. WILDON CARR 
 
 Read March 20, 1918 
 
 There is a chapter in Condillac's Traite des Senxations^ the 
 significance of which seems to me to have been hardly appreciated in 
 any of the accounts of his philosophy. It will serve me as an illustration 
 of the idea I wish to give expression to in this paper, and also as an 
 introduction to the particular application of that idea which I have 
 in view. The chapter is the short one at the end of the first Book, 
 bearing the title ' Du Moi, ou de la Personnalite d'un homme borne 
 a Todorat'. It sets forth the first general conclusion reached in the 
 analysis. The complete individual mind, and all that is essential to 
 personality, is given in the power to distinguish one sensation from \ 
 another, even though it be restricted to sensations of one sense. In 
 other words, personality consists not in a variety, nor in an abundance, 
 nor in any quality, of sensations, but in the mental activity which 
 relates them. This reveals the direction of Condillac''s speculation. 
 It shows that so far from his being; a mere follower of Locke and 
 popular exponent of the doctrine that all our knowledge is derived 
 from sensations, he is really bent on discovering the nature of the 
 activity which (-haracterizes mind. This apparently insignificant 
 indication becomes of the first importance when viewed in the light 
 of the later historical development. Condillac is generally recognized 
 as the founder of the post-revolution philosophy which goes by the 
 name of Ideology and which initiated the modern philosophical 
 movement in France ; just as Locke is recognized as the founder of 
 what we are accustomed to distinguish as the English philosophy. 
 In the study of every philosopher quite as important as the actual 
 doctrine taught is its orientation. Philosophy offers us no finality, 
 the solution of the problem of one age is only marked by the 
 
 VIII. A X 
 
 387742 
 
^. i:/;J?i?p<;£EI>][N<^S*.OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 emergence of the problems of a new age. Setting aside the over- 
 whehning influence of Kant on the whole of Western speculation, 
 we may, I think, easily distinguish two divergent directions, neither 
 of them very pronounced, but both of them persistent and accumula- 
 tive, one of which marks the English, the other the French philoso- 
 phical advance. Each is a tendency to emphasize a particular aspect 
 of the philosophical problem, a kind of mental bias towards one 
 direction rather than another. The source of the English bias we 
 may trace to Locke, of the French to Condillac. 
 
 This may sound fanciful. Yet in England we have always been 
 conscious of a strong bias in our philosophy towards realism, and 
 there is no less evident in the French development a distinct bias 
 towards idealism, and this notwithstanding the fact that each line 
 can produce representative philosophers of either form of philosophical 
 theory. To a cursory reader Condillac may seem to have no 
 originality, and merely to expand and expound the ideas to be found 
 in his great English predecessor; to a more attentive reader he is 
 turning inquiry into a new channel and giving it new direction. 
 
 This, however, is merely an illustration, only meant to indicate the 
 principle that a philosopher or a system of philosophy cannot be judged 
 as a compendium of special dogmas, however perfect and exhaustive be 
 the inventory. The observation may sound commonplace enough, 
 but it is more than a platitude. The one thing necessary in the 
 study of philosophy is to discern the emphasis in the thought and 
 expression of an individual thinker, the direction or tendency of an 
 intellectual movement. The agreement between philosophers is more 
 remarkable than the disagreement. Philosophies are not to be 
 classified into true and false. Whenever we chance on a philosophical 
 doctrine startling in its freshness and seeming for a moment to 
 revolutionize the whole outlook, falsifying all we have hitherto 
 accepted as true, reflection is certain to show its identity with views 
 which, it may be, at first seemed only related to it by contrast. 
 
 I propose to examine in illustration of this principle two con- 
 temporaneous movements in philosophy which are manifestly in- 
 fluencing the general direction of philosophical development. I want 
 to try smd show that the importance of each consists not so much in 
 any distinct contribution to philosophical theory, great though this 
 may be, as in a particular emphasis on aspects of the reality it seeks 
 to interpret. They are the philosophy of Henri Bergson and the 
 philosophy of Benedetto Croce. In placing these names together 
 I have not the least intention of suggesting that they stand in any 
 direct or indirect relation to one another. Indeed, probably no two 
 
'TIME^ AND 'HISTORY^ 3 
 
 contemporary philosophers whom I could name present greater con- 
 trast and are more completely distinct in the sources of their inspira- 
 tion, in their outlook, and in their aim and tendency. It is only in 
 the emphasis which each lays on a certain definite aspect of life that 
 they seem to me in a peculiar way each to complement the doctrine 
 of the other, and it is in this respect only that I venture to compare 
 them. Were I asked to express in brief what seems to me the main 
 burden of Bergson's philosophy, I should reply : the fundamental 
 notion on which it is based is that\ the human mind, r.^ised to self- 
 consciousness, and Peking truth, finds itself dogged by tin illusion — 
 an illusion contrived to serve, and splendidly servingj'^the practical 
 need of life, but an illusion which obscures every effort to attain 
 clear knowledge — ^the illusion that change is conditioned by things 
 which are changeless. AVere I asked to express in like manner what 
 seems to me the main burden of Croce's philosophy, I should reply : 
 the fundamental notion on which it is based is that the human mind 
 is subject to a persistent illusion which pursues it into every sphere of 
 its activity, the notion of existence as something alien, confronting 
 the active mind, independent of it, to which the value mind creates 
 is something added. ^ 
 
 Because I have described the fundamental notion underlying each 
 philosophy as that of an illusion, I am not to be understood as 
 meaning that illusion is the common ground or basis of comparison 
 between them. On the contrary, the recognition of illusion is the 
 common ground of philosophy itself. If, as the naive realist 
 would have us believe, there is no illusion of any kind in cognition, 
 then what is the task and what the problem of philosophy ? 
 Philosophy is based on the perception that things in their essence 
 cannot be what they appear as. Philosophy may be described as the 
 unceasing, untiring- effort to present reality adequately to the mind. 
 What spurs us on continually to this effort is the dissatisfaction with 
 the view of life presented to us in the routine of our daily experience, 
 the impossibility of resting content in the enjoyment of life as it 
 passes, the deep and often passionate desire to discover its source in 
 a reality compared to which the reality of immediate experience is 
 rejected as mere appearance. What the Eastern sages named Maya, 
 illusion, is postulated therefore in the very existence of philosophy. 
 The great philosophical discoveries have always been of the nature of 
 exposures of illusions of the type of Kanfs Copernican revolution in 
 philosophy. 
 
 It is true that in Bergson's philosophy illusion is not a mere 
 negative background, nor is it a particular form of the ancient 
 
 A 2 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF TFIE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 /J^i 
 
 K^ 
 
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 'I 
 
 distinction between opinion and knowledge, between what we now 
 call the unanalysed data of common sense and the reality of reflective 
 and scientific thoufrht. In Ber^son's doctrine a certain static view of 
 external reality is absolutely essential to the practical form of our 
 internal activity, and this prejudices and handicaps the mind in its 
 effort to attain a theoretical concept of the reality itself. An 
 intellectual effort is called for from all who would obtain true 
 philosophical insight, an effort to overcome a bias, which bias is very 
 part of human nature itself. Such an effort would be impossible, 
 even inconceivable, and therefore in the absolute sense absurd, were 
 the intellect the whole of our cognitive nature, were there not also in 
 that nature another cognitive mode. This is Bergson's doctrine of 
 intuition. We not only know intellectually, that is, mediately by 
 the categories of the understanding and the Ideas of reason, we also 
 know intuitively, that is, immediately and instinctively, and this 
 knowledge is one with the act of life itself. The intellectual effort 
 we are required to make is not an effort to annul the intellect but to 
 overcome its practical bias in order that we may obtain philosophical 
 insight. This is the constant theme of Bergson in all his writings, 
 isind it is set forth with a wealth of striking imagery. 
 
 There is no correlative of this theory in Croce. The illusion from 
 which Croce would free us is not a practical utility but a worthless 
 agnosticism. His distinction between aesthetic intuition and logical 
 conception is not parallel with Bergson's distinction between instinct 
 and intelligence as modes of knowing. Intuition for Croce is not 
 instinct. The illusion therefore is not to be compared with Bergson's 
 cinematographical illusion. What Croce combats throughout his 
 philosophy is the idea of reality outside mind, reality in which mind 
 -^ is not immanent but to which it is transcendent, reality which in 
 some way mind overcomes and subjects to its purposes. This illusion 
 is at the basis of all philosophical dualism, ancient and modern. 
 
 The comparison I wish to make and the fundamental agreement 
 I wish to indicate between the philosophy of Bergson and that of 
 Croce does not consist in any material or formal identity or even 
 similarity in their specific doctrines, but in the fact that each has 
 focused the attention on the dynamic aspect of reality and thrown 
 the whole emphasis on the c oncept of activity a s an interpretative 
 principle. I propose to illustrate this by examining what I hold to 
 
 Ibe a characteristic doctrine of each. First, the theory of Bergson 
 that time is a material and not merely a formal element of the 
 world ; a pure quality which is the condition of quantity ; ' the 
 I stuff' of things. Second, the theo ry of Croce that history is identical 
 
^TIME' AND 'HISTORY' 5 
 
 with philosophy, that there are no externaL-evpnts.;. _there is only 
 a pre sent activity of niind ; that the historian, like the^j)hilosopher, 
 is engaged in interpreting a present activit y, and jt hat_ldstorv is 
 therefo re contempora neous. 
 
 Before I try to show the importance of the tendencies which these 
 two doctrines illustrate in contemporary philosophy, let me first 
 defend my position against a possible objection. It may be said that 
 * static ' and ' dynamic ' are strictly relative terms, and that to give 
 either a priority over the other is unphilosophical in the highest 
 degree. Neither term can be deHned except by means of the other, 
 and neither can be conceived without conceiving the other. Further, 
 it may be resented as an unfair aspersion on any school of philosophy 
 to suggest that it has neglected the dynamic side of reality and 
 emphasized the static. And equally the emphasis on the dynamic 
 aspect may be read as a failure to do justice to the static. 
 
 With regard to the first and more general objection that static 
 and dynamic are relative terms, the best answer I can give is to 
 instance the theory of Bergson to which I have already referred. 
 Suppose it be true that the mode of our activity in the sphere of 
 practice depends on our success in staying the flowing, in materializing 
 the formal, in solidifying the fluid, in giving shape and substance to 
 the evanescing, thinghood to the changing, it will surely then follow 
 that the condition of success in practice will impose itself on our 
 efforts in theory and influence our judgement. It will give us a 
 natural bias to the conclusion that the static aspect, so important in 
 practice, is more original in theory, and will make things which 
 change seem more fundamental than change. The task of philosophy 
 will in such case be to deliver thought in its effort to attain theoretical 
 truth from a tendency contracted in its service to practical activity. 
 
 That there is such a bias in our intellectual nature, and that an 
 intellectual effort is necessary to overcome it, and that few indeed, 
 and they only at rare moments, succeed in overcoming it, is made 
 evident by the history of philosophy. Let any one compare the two 
 great paradoxes of the Greek philosophy, the * nothing moves' of 
 Zeno and the 'all things flow' of Heracleitus, and test for himself 
 which to his own mind is the most contrary to his natural inclination. 
 Zeno by his masterly dialectic and picturesque illustrations has given 
 the world a problem which even to-day is regarded by some as 
 insoluble and denounced by others as a sophism. But it is the dialecti- 
 cal argument, not the proposition itself, which arrests us. The very 
 eternity of that problem shows that the fundamental conception on 
 which it is based is one which the mind naturally accepts. Ileracleitus's 
 
 A 3 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 ^v^ 
 
 doctrine is, on the other hand, to the ordinary mind a direct paradox; 
 it does not depend on dialectical argument, but in its very statement 
 seems, even while we accept it, to cut across the obvious beliefs which 
 underlie and form the basis of all our actions. 
 
 I do not propose to enter here on a critical exposition of Bergson's 
 theory of real duration. I can presume that the theory is familiar to 
 every one interested in contemporary speculative philosophy. I mean 
 
 rthe theory that time, as we employ the concept in ordinary discourse, 
 ,-s-<^ ) ^s ^t enters into the mathematical sciences, as the astronomer conceives 
 
 >v 
 
 
 .V' 
 
 7k>^' 
 
 it, is really space. \^It is a dimension, but it is not even a special 
 non-spatial kind of dimension ; it is itself spatial, and without the 
 spatial category absolutely incomprehensible.") This, however, is not 
 real time, for there is a time which is not a dimension, and which is not 
 conceived spatially. This time is psychical in its nature and psycho- 
 logical in its order. It is non-quantitative, and therefore non-measurable 
 and indivisible. This js du r ation^ and distinguished from the spatialized 
 concept as the true du7 'atiori^ It is not the condition of existence nor» 
 the condition of the knowledge of existence ; it is itself existence. 
 
 I want to call attention to two points in this theory, viz. its 
 psychological basis and its metaphysical character, in order to show, 
 apart from its actual value as theory, its peculiar significance in 
 revealing a philosophical tendency. 
 
 The world of our experience is infinitely complex. To the natural 
 mind it is inexhaustible, an infinite possibility, disordered and chaotic. 
 Understanding is primarily a bringing of order into this chaos of 
 experience — a rough utilitarian order at first, rising afterwards 
 gradually and progressively to a perfect scientific order. Whether it 
 be actually so or not, we certainly all come in the process to believe 
 that the order we have come to know is an order we have discovered, 
 and not an order we have arbitrarily imposed. We suppose it existed 
 in its true nature undiscovered, and that it did not come into 
 being with the activity which disclosed it. This belief constitutes 
 natural dualism, and gives to the problem of philosophy its most 
 obstinate form. Yet the moment we subject this belief to reflection 
 it seems impossible to justify it. We search in vain for any psycho- 
 logical basis for it, and are perforce constrained to base it on reasoning 
 and not on immediate experience. 
 
 Epistemology to be scientific must direct the attention in the first 
 place to the psychological basis of experience. Consciousness in its 
 simplest meaning is awareness of what is affecting us in so far as we 
 are sensitive to it, and cognition in its highest meaning ultimately 
 rests on this. What are the immediate data of consciousness, and 
 
'TIME' AND 'HISTORY' 7 
 
 what are we justified in inferring from them? I do not mean by 
 this question to indicate the inquiry concerning the origin of conscious 
 experience in the new-born individual. We can form no idea of 
 a temporal beginning of experience. Consciousness for us is itself 
 the negation of a beginning of consciousness, for when we are con- 
 scious we are conscious of what vve already know. By the immediate 
 data of consciousness I mean the most original form of our common 
 cxperiei)ce, what for all of us is the basis of our experience, not what 
 actually came first in the chronological order. The answer psychology 
 gives to the question is that the immediate data of consciousness are 
 the data of sense. What are the data of sense ? The data of sense 
 are the immediate objects present to the mind in sensing, and for 
 the psychologist these immediate objects are sensations. The problem 
 for the philosopher is — What is the nature of the reality we are in 
 contact with in sensation, and what do sensations reveal ? 
 
 The answers which from time to time have been offered to us may 
 be regarded under two heads : either, sensations are regarded and 
 treated as a definite species of object, or, they are regarded as sub- 
 jective modes of apprehension. In the first case they are distinguished 
 from their conditions — from the formal conditions they depend upon 
 in the sense organs, and the material conditions they depend upon in 
 the external, physical world, the sensations being themselves the 
 actual present objects from which the conditions (other objects) are 
 inferred. In the second case they are merely regarded as modes of 
 the cognizing act which supposes a relation between knowing act and 
 thing known. A thing is known by its sensible qualities, and these 
 sensible qualities when experienced are sensations. The present 
 controversy concerning new realism seems to me to be between 
 upholders of one or the other of these views. 
 
 It is difficult, indeed impossible, to avoid this controversy when 
 speaking of the immediate data of consciousness. I will therefore 
 say one word upon it, though it is not the problem to which I am 
 directing attention. It has been often remarked in recent epistemo- 
 logical discussion that the terms realism and idealism show a tendency 
 to lose their original clear and sharply defined contrast. Some 
 theories of extreme ' new ' realism are with difficulty distinguishable 
 from the old idealism. The 'non-mental' or 'physical' sense-data 
 which constitute for some of the theories the external reality which 
 the mind becomes acquainted with in knowing, are as strange to 
 common sense and as remote from the ordinary notion of physical 
 reality as are the perceptions which in Berkeley's view exist only 
 when some mind, ours or God's, is perceiving. The dilemma which is 
 
8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BlUTISH ACADEMY • 
 
 patent in idealism is in my view only concealed, and sometimes barely 
 concealed, in realism. I mean the dilemma, the one horn of which 
 is the impossibility of transcending the immediate object of con- 
 sciousness, and the other the impossibility of knowledge unless the 
 immediate object is transcended. I would suggest, however, and 
 this is the remark for the sake of which I have referred to this problem, 
 that we are in a position to be clear on one point, and that the most 
 important point, for it has been the stumbling-block and rock of 
 offence throughout the whole development of theory of knowledge. 
 Whatever be our view of the nature of the immediate object of 
 consciousness, whether we regard it as in some form or in no form a 
 construction of the mind, we may agree that it is not a tertium quid,- 
 a reality of a distinct kind, mediating between the mind and the 
 physical world and in some way j-epresentative of a reality which it itself 
 is not. If in any respect we are now in contemporary philosophy on 
 a higher plane of epistemological discussion it is in the fact that we 
 are all agreed in rejecting a purely representative theory as impossible. 
 Indeed a philosopher is seldom charged with holding a representative 
 theory except by implication and as a term of reproach. 
 
 With this remark I may turn to the problem of the immediate 
 data of consciousness. For the psychologist these are sensations. 
 There are two views of sensations. One view is that they are clear 
 and distinct individual entities which enter into various associations 
 and combinations, and are the fundamental stuff of which our 
 psychical life is composed. In their own nature they are ultimate 
 and fundamental. They cannot be defined in terms of something else, 
 they can only be referred to, and they are what they are experienced 
 as. As objects of consciousness they can be classified, compared, 
 measured. They are not spatial, and therefore they have no extensive 
 magnitude ; but they have duration, they can be numbered, and they 
 have intensive magnitude. By means of them we are able to conceive 
 the physical stimuli which materially condition them, and the receptive 
 organs of sense which formally condition them. In this way we can 
 make them objects of a special science, psychology. The other view 
 is that sensations are not ultimate irreducible entities which enter 
 into combinations, but the last resultant of the analysis of complex 
 situations or presentations. They are essentially abstractions, and 
 possess nothing whatever of a concrete or individual nature. In both 
 views, therefore, the sensation is ultimate in the sense that there 
 is nothing psychologically or epistemologically more elementary. 
 Whether or not all knowledge be a construction out of sense data 
 there is nothing more fundamental than sensations. 
 
'TIME' AND 'HISTORY' 9 
 
 If now we turn from what I may call the theory of the sensation 
 to the genetic problem of the origin of sensations in the actual 
 experience of the living individual, we are forced to acknowledge 
 that the sensation is not a direct datum of experience. The idea 
 that sensations are first in the order of knowled<;e is not derived 
 from the direct experience that it is so, but is a result of reflection, 
 abstraction, analysis, and ideal construction of experience. We 
 simply assume that if we could be witnesses of the birth of conscious 
 experience we should of necessity see in the first place pure sensation. 
 We ourselves are a developed experience, and therefore in our case it 
 is easy to understand that the notion of the sensible thing or of the 
 thing with its sensible qualities precedes the notion of the pure 
 sensation. For us the notion of the pure sensation is very difficult 
 to attain, and probably is only attained, if it is ever attained, by 
 psychologists very skilful in experimental introspection. Even so the 
 pure sensation is not experienced ; such experience is in its nature 
 impossible, that is to say, in no case could pure sensation be con- 
 sciousness of pure sensation, for consciousness implies comparison and 
 negation. Sensations, therefore, are not the immediate data of 
 consciousness, but our notion of the kind of thing the immediate 
 data of consciousness must be experienced as. 
 
 I come now to my main purpose in this argument, and to the 
 [)oint to which I desire to direct special attention. There is in the 
 mind when it seeks to distinguish the immediate data of consciousness 
 an already formed notion which determines the idea of the sensation. 
 The actual, that is the historical process, starts from the notion of 
 the sensible thing as conditioning sensations, and arrives by reflection 
 and analysis at the idea of sensations as conditioning the notion of 
 the sensible thing. The order of knowing is recognized as being 
 the reverse of the order of being, and vice veisa. I do not arraign 
 the process nor condemn the conclusion ; they could not in the nature 
 of things be other than they are. What I do insist on is that 
 sensations considered as the immediate data of consciousness must 
 and actually do from this very process receive a stamp or mould 
 which gives them predetermined form. They are in fact statically 
 determined in advance. They are endowed as it were, before the idea 
 of them even is reached, with a static nature, with a kind of thing- 
 hood, by reason of and in consequence of the intellectual process by 
 which alone the idea is attained. It is this thinghood of the sensation 
 which the psychophysicist accentuates and exaggerates when he 
 treats sensations as measurable objects. 
 
 The theory of pure duration seems to me the distinct advance in 
 
10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 philosophical theory which Bergson has achieved. In calling our 
 attention to the bias in the intellect towards the statical, and in 
 grounding that bias \n the practical necessity of our living activity, 
 he has brought a new problem to light, and thereby made possible 
 a further progress. Our sensations, which for most psychologists and 
 philosophers are the original data of consciousness, are for Bergson 
 already intellectualized. They enter consciousness with a certain 
 fixity and permanence which does not belong to them of right, but is 
 stamped upon them by the intellect. There is a more original matrix 
 or stuff than sensations, viz. the flow or change or duration of the life 
 itself out of which they appear and within which they are made to 
 assume a shape. They are not constituents or elements of duration, 
 for true duration has no constituents. They are artificial divisions 
 of it, a schematic arrangement of it, made possible by regarding it 
 under a special aspect and in a purposive mode. But the real 
 duration itself — how are we to attain the notion of it? By an 
 intellectual effort which may succeed in setting us free from, or in 
 turning aside, the intellectual bias. We must reverse the scientific 
 method if we would obtain philosophic insight. We must neglect 
 the relatively fixed points in the movement and concentrate attention 
 on the pure movement itself. In Bergson's often-quoted phrase, we 
 niust iiistalL^uirselieswithin the movement. \ 
 
 Bergson's doctrine o f duration, therefore, at the same time that it 
 
 forms the psychological basis of his philosophy, involves in it the 
 
 denial of a science of psychology. The psychical fact — life, mind, 
 
 consciousness, reality — is known in its immediacy in being experienced, 
 
 in being lived. We cannot take and analyse this psychical duration, 
 
 form ideas or particular concepts of the separate facts which seem to 
 
 compose it, classif)% measure and calculate these imagined components, 
 
 without thereby altering the character of the fact itself and presenting 
 
 it to the mind as other than it is. When we think we are analysing 
 
 this real duration we always find by our failure that it is not this at 
 
 all but something different, a creature of the intellect, Avhich we have 
 
 I subjected to scientific treatment. In one of Bergson's images, we are 
 
 J ^, ^j- Hike the children who try to clasp smoke by grasping it with their 
 
 ' jv^v^"^"' hands. This fact, that of real duration there can be no science in 
 
 Va_^-^..>'' 'the technical meaning, that is, no mathematics or physics, is the 
 
 '*j ^' burden of the whole argument of Bergson in Les Donnecs ivimkliates de 
 
 ''i la Conscience. In this fact, that duration is psychical reality and not an 
 
 abstract postulate of tiie intellect, lies the whole ground for affirming 
 
 a method of philosophy, distinct and autonomous, itself the ground of 
 
 itl\ method, including that of the mathematical and physical sciences. 
 
 )>■ 
 
 
'TIME^ AND 'HISTORY' 11 
 
 This denial of a science of psychology by confining psychology to 
 
 what is alone in the real sense psychical, and rejecting all schematic 
 
 and artificially abstracted data, whatever their claim to be immediate, 
 
 can only meet the sceptical challenge by affirming against science 
 
 a special method of philosophy. The method of philosophy is to 
 
 concentrate attention on the living, not the dead, on the acting, not 
 
 the acted, on the doing or making, not on the accomplished or already 
 
 made. The method of philosophy is psychological, and psychology—^ 
 
 is not the science of abstract data; in so far as it is pure science, 
 
 it is a science of quality not of quantity, of the concrete not the 
 
 abstract ; a science of science, philosophy. 
 
 I now turn from the consideration of the psychological basis of the ' I 
 
 , ,. . . ii 
 
 theory of duration to its metaphysical character. The distmctive 
 
 mark of the metaphysics of duration is the insistence on the priority 
 of time or of the temporal form of reality over space or the spatial 
 form. What precisely do I mean by this ? Not that we are able to 
 conceive the perception of a pure time while as yet there is no per- 
 ception of a pure space ; nor even, to employ the Kantian terms, that 
 time is the a ptiori condition of space. I mean that there is an 
 intellectual bias towards space which makes it appear to us more 
 original than time. It seems to us that space is in a manner indifferent 
 to time, a constant in relation to which time is an independent variable. 
 To take Bergson's illustration, it seems that space would abide un- 
 altered even though the rate of the time-flow were to vary infinitely. 
 This intellectual bias shows itself in philosophy in very subtle ways, 
 and as tendency rather than dogma. It makes us speak of space and 
 time rather than of time and space. It makes the ideality of space 
 seem more paradoxical than the ideality of time, so that when we 
 tliink we have succeeded in proving the one we are content to save 
 ourselves the trouble of proving the other, satisfied with the general 
 remark that the arguments which apply to space, a.pp\y ceteris paribus 
 to time. 
 
 When we have to do with living action, however, we see that / 
 though space may indeed be the condition of it, time is the stuff of it. 
 In fact we find that in the analysis of living action the conditions are 
 the reverse of those we find in the analysis of physical action. In 
 living action time is the constant and space is the independent 
 variable ; the very opposite of what appears to the chemist or the 
 physicist as the true relation and order of conditioning in the data 
 of the science with which he has to deal. 
 
 The metaphysical import of this fact that for life or living action U 
 time is more fundamental than space in the sense that duration is \ 
 
12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 ^1 essential in a primary meaning in which extension is not, is of the 
 greatest consequence in philosophy. It offers a solution of the con- 
 ; tradiction of dualism ; for it suggests at once that life is not something 
 ! added to nnatter, but that matter is something abstracted from life, 
 j Life Is the more of which matter is the less. There is no way of 
 Laddition by which we can pass from the less to the more, but from 
 the more to the less we can pass naturally by way of diminution, 
 that is, by abstraction or exclusion. 
 
 Lest I seem to any one to be merely juggling with terms I will 
 compare the concrete or philosophic concept with the mathematical 
 or abstract concept. In asserting a priority of time over space, what 
 I am affirming is not the existence of one kind of dimension prior to, 
 and independent of, the existence of another kind. The very for- 
 mulation of such a doctrine, if not actually self-contradictory, would 
 at least be circular, for priority is a term which already presupposes 
 tlie concept of time. The doctrine is that time in the concrete sense 
 /of duration is quality in an original meaning which does not apply to 
 space, even in the concrete sense of extension. The existence of 
 quality implies quantity ; but quality is the condition of the existence 
 of quantity, and not vice versa. Duration is not succession plus an 
 external principle of union. That is the abstract quantitative con- 
 cept. Duration is process in its unity, simplicity, and individuality. 
 Past, present, and future are distinctions within it and not external 
 to it. A process such as we have in any instance of living action 
 differs from another process qualitatively and not quantitatively. 
 There exists no calculus of life. A living action is present in its 
 entirety throughout its development and progress. Unless it be 
 apprehended as a concrete whole it is not apprehended. Such is the 
 concrete concept of duration. 
 
 To the metaphysician this qualitative distinction is all important ; 
 to the mathematician, on the other hand, it is indifferent. In the 
 mathematical sciences qualitative differences are unmeaning. Priority 
 of. time over space or of space over time is equally unmeaning, since 
 both are dimensions. Space and time are the axes of co-ordination 
 by which any event is described from the standpoint of an observer 
 and its relation to other events determined. The three spatial 
 dimensions and the temporal dimension are represented by symbols, 
 iT, y, z, and t. In the new Principle of Relativity, space and time 
 are not constants but variables. Mathematics has given up in the 
 new Principle the old theory of a framework of absolute space and 
 time within which and in relation to which all movements of trans- 
 lation can be represented. There is no absolute scale of velocity 
 
'TIME' AND 'HISTORY' 13 
 
 M'ith zero as its lower limit. It is more convenient, we are now told, 
 to regard space and time as variable, undergoing alteration with the 
 acceleration of the system of relative translation, and to regard 
 velocity as constant. The convenience is that it accords with the 
 fact, determined by experiment, that to observers in a system of 
 translation undergoing acceleration in relation to other systems, the 
 velocity of the system is constant. As velocity is a ratio of space 
 and time, a constant velocity implies a variable space and time. 
 What alone appeals to the mathematician in this principle is the 
 greater convenience of the calculus ; to the philosopher, however, 
 there arises a profounder problem. 
 
 Space and time are the most abstract concepts of externality, and 
 externality is the philosopher's problem. How are we to reconcile 
 the intellectual paradox of the naive belief of common sense that the 
 mind is an internal reality which knows an external reality independent 
 of it, by means of its own images and ideas ? Bergson's theory oC 
 duration points the way. Time, as we ordinarily envisage it, is a 
 division of reality into existent and non-existent parts. From the 
 reality which now is, is excluded the reality which was and the 
 reality which will be. Duration knows no such distinction. The past 
 exists in the present, which contains the future. The concrete and 
 ever-present instance of duration is life — for each of us living indi- 
 viduals, his own life. How then from life does externality, spatiality, 
 extensity, arise ? How does it come to be posited as an alien world ? 
 By what mysterious means does the living reality become a perceiving 
 reality, and the perceived object stand over against the perceiving 
 act as passive datum of the perception ? Start, as the materialist 
 does, with a priority of matter and spatiality. and there is no possible 
 answer. There is no passage from matter to mind. Try how we 
 will, we are left at last with the necessity of accepting what appears 
 as what is. We are without any principle by which to derive the 
 harmony of the world and account for the success of the sciences. 
 Wonderful, even magical or miraculous, must this harmony appear, 
 perhaps pre-established by an intelligent creator, perhaps unknowable 
 by reason of our limitations. It may inspire us with awe or thrill us 
 with mystical emotion. It may give us religion, but it cannot give 
 us a philosophy. On the other hand, start with duration as the ^ 
 essential quality of life and action, and we find we have a principle 
 from which space, matter, perception, memory, intellect, instinct 
 can be derived because they can be shown to be implied in its very 
 nature. Such seems to me to be the importance and true meaning of 
 the emphasis on time in the philosophy of Bergson. 
 
 / p. 
 
14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 The reflection that materialism may be religion, either in the form 
 of theology or of mystical nature- worship, but that it is not, and in 
 its nature cannot be, philosophy, is the dominant note in Croce's 
 writings, and may therefore serve fitly as an introduction to the 
 consideration of the Italian philosopher. 
 
 In reading Bergson we are hardly conscious of the distinction 
 
 A^jetween scientific and philosophic truth. The sciences only differ 
 
 -^ from philosophy in being partial views or in dealing with particular 
 
 ' I aspects selected from reality, and therefore falling short of philosophy, 
 
 which apprehends reality as a whole and activity at its source. In 
 
 ^reading Croce, we enter at once in philosophy into a special realm in 
 
 which a new order and other principles than those which guide us in 
 
 the natural sciences hold sway. The mathematical sciences are 
 
 abstract, the natural sciences are empirical, and they are founded on 
 
 arbitrary assumptions, pseudo-concepts, philosophically justified 
 
 indeed by their economic utility, but ' sciences ' not ' science ' in the 
 
 strict and only true sense of philosophy. 
 
 There can be no doubt, I think, in the mind of any one who takes 
 up the study of Croce's philosophy, that the guiding interest which 
 has determined its direction is a method of historical criticism based 
 on a new concept of history. It is not a new concept in the sense of 
 being an original discovery ; it is new in its direct application to the 
 problem of philosoph}^ Croce acknowledges that he owes it to Vico, 
 that it is in effect the fundamental idea of that philosopher's Nuova 
 Sc'ienza. 
 
 What is it to be real in the full sense oftheterriLJceality ? It is to 
 be historical. The concept of history is the concept of reallty^as 
 actual concrete fact. History is not chronicle. The records of a 
 dead past, chronicles, the material on which the historian works, are 
 not history. There are no dead facts. All that is is present reality. 
 To be historical is to be an essential part of the living present. 
 History is science, but not one of the sciences. It is the science of 
 the fully concrete reality, and therefore it is one and identical with 
 philosophy. 
 
 Just as in Bergson there is continual insistence on the contrast 
 between the abstract spatialized time of mathematics and concrete 
 duration, so in Croce there is co ntinua l insistence on the contrast 
 between the mathematical and natural sciences, abstract and empirical, 
 and the science of history, concrete and universal. 
 
 First, however, let me tryHbriefly to indicate to those who are not 
 familiar with Croce's philosophy what is its distinctive note and 
 general character. 
 
 \l^' 
 
'TIME' AND 'HISTORY' 15 
 
 Croce conceives mind as ^activi ty. This activity is not confronted / ^ 
 with an independent matter to which it is passive. Passivity is a L 
 pure negation, and so enters into and is included in the concept of 
 activity. Tliis mental activity is reality, and the science of it is 
 philosophy. Mind, because it is essentially activity, cannot be studied 
 as one of the sciences, and by the method we adopt in mathematics 
 and physics, for these cannot exist until the mind has posited for 
 them static data. The data of the mathematical and natural sciences 
 are posited by a direct act of the mind itself which abstracts them from 
 concrete reality. Philosophy is the science of the activity itself. It 
 has no elements out of which, or by the adding together of which, it is 
 formed. It is quality, not quantity. It has degrees, and its degrees 
 have an order, and its degrees and their order determine the divisions 
 of philosophy into the philosophical sciences. These degrees are the 
 four moments of the development of mind ; their order is twofold. The 
 terms 'four-' and 'two-fold' do not imply discreteness, for mind is never 
 discrete, and the terms are not employed in the arithmetical meaning 
 of an enumeration. The whole reality is in each moment, but while 
 each moment expresses explicitly one distinct nature, the other moments 
 are implicit in each. The order also is not chronological but logical, 
 the first degree being only first in the sense that it conditions the 
 second, and the second only second in the sense that it depends upon 
 the first. The first actiY i^"y "^ "^^''^^ ^^ a t^p^ retical activity of 
 knowing, and upon it dep ends a practical activity of doing. Theory^ /^ 
 is to __practi£e- a first degree , and practice is depe ndent on theory^ 
 Each of these, theory and practice, is again itself subdivided and 
 subject to the order of a twofold degree. Theory is aesthetic, then 
 logical ; practice is economic, then ethical. Hence are distinguished 
 four philosophical sciences, each representing a moment of explicit 
 expression in a developing activity. Two are theoretical, aesthetic 
 and logic ; and two are practical, economics and ethics. The object 
 of philosophical study, therefore, is the universe presented as value 
 created by mind, and conversely as mind in its essential activity, 
 comprehensively and concretely expressing itself in the pure concepts, 
 beauty and truth, utility and goodness. 
 
 If we accept this scheme of a philosophy of mind and the principle 
 of its division into philosophical sciences, the question at once presents 
 itself, how are we to subsume under it those pure products of mental 
 activity which are preserved by us and for us in fixed and determinate 
 forms — the plastic forms of art and the literary forms of poetry, 
 history, natural and mathematical science, each distinguished by its 
 own peculiar method ? And not only the artistic and literary forms, 
 
16 TROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 but the concrete facts themselves — facts which find expression in 
 a deeply marked if unscientific classification of lives into those of 
 scientists and philosophers, poets, artists and men of letters, historians, 
 inventors, men of action, saints and heroes — all these must find their 
 ground and justification in a philosophy of mind. 
 
 When we consider the accumulated heritage of the human race 
 preserved in its literature and communicable in its language, there is 
 one broad and deep division which receives general recognition. This 
 is the distinction between literature and science. Employing a wide 
 generalization, we may say that the first expresses the theoretical 
 activity, the second the practical activity of mind, and that they 
 correspond therefore to the theoretical and practical moments of the 
 life of mind. But such a generalization, though illustrative, would 
 be of little actual use to philosophy, the purpose of Avhich in dis- 
 tinguishing moments is to make manifest what is pure in each, and no 
 actual expression is pure in the sense that it presents the character of 
 the moment free from any admixture of the other moments which go 
 to make its concrete life. 
 
 From this general sketch of Grocer's scheme of the philosophy of 
 mind or spirit, I now turn to consider the concept in which it seems 
 to me Croce shows profound insight, and also indicates a new direction 
 of philosophy — the concept of history. Histor y is j-eality in its 
 most universal, most concrete meaning. What is historical is actual, 
 and what is actual is historical. The matter of fact, the content of 
 history, is wholly ideal? In history, therefore, we have reality which 
 is ideality, and we are able to see that ideality is the only true 
 reality. Philosophy, therefore, is history, and the historiographer 
 conscious of his purpose is the true philosopher. In this theory of 
 
 \ the identity of philosophy and history we have a dynamic concept 
 of reality analogous to Bergson's doctrine of true duration, and 
 with it indicating a new direction in which the modern mind is 
 moving. 
 
 / The ordinary notion of history is that it is a particular form of 
 ffterature which has for its subject-matter events which occurred in 
 'the past and are now without living interest; and for its ideal the 
 presentation of what was most likely true about these events. We 
 discuss, perhaps, whether it ought rightly to be regarded as a science 
 or an art, for it seems to be afl[iliated to both spheres, and also to 
 compare unfavourably in either sphere with the recognized arts and 
 
 ' sciences. As art it is limited by the objective nature of the events 
 it records, and in consequence cannot be, in the pure meaning of art, 
 imaginative. As science it is limited by the barrenness of its objective 
 
'TIME' AND 'HISTORY' 17 
 
 material of chronicles and records when these are divested of artistic 
 imagination. 
 
 In claiming that history is philosophy, Croce raises it at a bound 
 to a dignity which sets it above comparison with the arts or the 
 natural sciences. History introduces us straightway into the absolute 
 sphere of mind, and by this is meant that in history reality appears 
 as mind, as spiritual, in its actual nature, and not as in physical 
 science something independent of mind and confronting it. When 
 once we attain this standpoint the nature of the physical and mathe- 
 matical sciences leaps to view, and the concepts of reality they are 
 concerned with are seen to rest on a practical and not on a theoretical 
 necessity of thought. 
 
 We are accustomed to regard the reality presented to us in the ' 
 
 concepts of the physical and mathematical sciences as bedrock, the 
 
 solid basis upon which the whole structure of knowledge is raised and 
 
 supported. Ideality in contrast to this reality seems like the baseless 
 
 fabric of a vision. We bring this same criterion of reality to our 
 
 judgement of historical events. It seems to us that the reality of 
 
 history consists in physical fact, and the ideality of history is a more 
 
 or less fantastic embellishment of fact. The essential condition of 
 
 physical and mathematical science seems to be the presence of 
 
 external fact confronting the knowing mind, and this also seems to 
 
 be the essential condition of history. Does it not depend on 
 
 documents and records ? Are not these the matter of history ? 
 
 Is not history the study and interpretation of these in order that 
 
 past, dead, external events may be preserved as a true chronicle ? 
 
 Has this chronicle any living use other than that it may serve 
 
 as an example or warning, or at least as an idle interest to those 
 
 engaged in military, political, or imperial experiments.'* So history 
 
 then is a science, comparable in its methods with physics and 
 
 mathematics, and like them having both a pure, or theoretical, and a 
 
 practical, or applied, form. The comparison, so far as scientific ' 
 
 standards are concerned, moreover, is to the disadvantage of history. 
 
 , A very little reflectio n, howeve r, will convince us that the reality of 
 
 history is of another order and different from that of the reality of 
 
 science. DocumentsT^records, chronicles are not history. They are . 
 
 the instruments or tools of the historian, not the matter of history. / 
 
 They are not even comparable with the pigments the painter uses, 
 
 or with the gases, metals, and salts the chemist uses, or with the 
 
 figures and symbols the mathematician uses, "The reality of history 
 
 is not recorded dead past event, but present living action. History 
 
 is not something we have, it is something we are. It is a reality 
 
\ 
 
 / 
 
 18 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 I unlike the empirical concepts of physical science and the abstract 
 concepts of mathematical science, for it is a reality which is abso- 
 lutely universal and absolutely concrete. All that is is history, not 
 merely the abstract past. Present reality is not in external union with 
 past reality, the present holds the past in itself, it is one with the 
 past and it is big with the future. Not only does every new present 
 action modify our judgement of the past, it reveals the meaning of 
 the past, and even in that external sense the past is not dead fact to 
 be learnt about, but living development changing continually. Con- 
 sequently the historian who is interpreting the past is interpreting the 
 acting living present, and there is no finality in historical interpre- 
 tation. The reason why we can have no final history is the reason 
 why we can have no final philosophy. Reality is life and history. 
 This concept of hjstor y^as prese nt reality is_the leading motive in 
 ' Croce ^s phi losophy. We may make the concept clear to ourselves by 
 reflecting on the great world events in the midst of which we are 
 living and in which we are taking part. We know that this world 
 war will furnish to future generations the subject of historical 
 research. Yet we distinguish. We suppose that we are making 
 history, but that the history we are making is not history for us ; it 
 
 I will be history only to those for whom it is past accomplished fact. 
 
 / To the philosopher this is not the pure historical concept. History 
 
 ( is what we now are and what we are now doing, it is not a character 
 our actions will assume only when they have receded into the past. 
 The basis and the substance of this concept is that our present actions 
 lose their meaning the moment we regard them as new existence 
 externally related to another and past existence. We carry our past 
 in our present action, we do not leave it outside and behind us. Not 
 only is there no break between the present and the past, but both 
 the form and the matter of present reality, what we now are and are 
 now doing as individuals or as nations is in its essence history. 
 - It will be seen then that the two philosophers whose writings 
 I have had mainly in mind, reach, by entirely different routes and 
 from entirely different standpoints, practically one identical concept. 
 I do not think this is a mere coincidence. It marks a tendency to 
 emphasize the dynamic aspect of reality as more original and more 
 explanatory than the static aspect, and also to recognize that the 
 astati c is derived. 
 
 There is every indication that a new concept of the fundamental 
 nature of reality is emerging, and that its acceptance will mark a 
 distinct advance of the human intellect to a new stage in its search 
 for self-knowledge. It is not only in philosophy, but very definitely 
 
'TIME' AND 'HISTORY' 19 
 
 in the mathematical and empirical sciences that the old concepts 
 which have served us hitherto are being discarded and giving place to 
 new. The change, moreover, is distinctly in one definite direction. 
 In physics we have witnessed in recent years the birth, development, 
 and complete establishment of the electron theory. We are now 
 able to demonstrate the intimate nature of the equilibrium of the 
 atom. The stability of the atom does not consist in rigidity. The 
 equilibrium of its constituents requires an adaptability which enables 
 them to respond to every disturbance. (I have in mind the recent 
 experiments of Sir J. J. Thomson on the composition of the atom.) 
 In mathematics we have witnessed the sudden and surprising revolution 
 of ideas which has replaced the Newtonian concepts with the new 
 Principle of Relativity. In Biology it is true we are still without 
 any decided issue of the controversy between mechanists and vitalists 
 as to the nature and origin of life. There has, however, been quite 
 recently some experimental work which seems to me to indicate that 
 we may have to revolutionize the concepts on which this controversy 
 depends. (I have in mind the investigations of Dr. J. S. Haldane 
 into the physiology of breathing.) The living principle appears to 
 manifest itself primarily in the maintenance of a constant normal 
 against the opposition of a continually varying environment, and to 
 this end structure and organic function seem to be wholly subservient. 
 What is common to all these scientific theories is that in every case 
 the ultimate existence is a formal equilibrium actively maintained in 
 conflict with disruptive forces. If in this we have the essential 
 principle of life itself, then we may see why matter is subservient to 
 form, structure to function, nature to mind. We see in fact that the 
 concept of mind or spirit, if it be the concept of pure activity, 
 universal and concrete, immanent and not transcendent, can be all- 
 inclusive and all- explanatory where the old concepts have failed. In 
 philosophy it seems at last to open to us a final way of escape from 
 the stultification of the Cartesian dualism. 
 
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