Chapter IV (part 4)

43 little bit of that present, and this alone we count as existent, denying a real existence to everything else. If we admit this, then our view of everything with which we are surrounded will change very considerably. Usually we regard time as an abstraction , made by us during the observation of really existing motion . That is, we think that observing motion, or changes of relations between things and comparing the relations which existed before, which exist now, and which may exist in the future, that we are deducing the idea of time. We shall see later on how far this view is correct. Thus the idea of time is composed of the conception of the past, of the present, and of the future. Our conceptions of the past and present, though not very clear, are yet very much alike. As to the future there exists a great variety of views. It is necessary for us to analyze the theories of the future as they exist in the mind of contemporary man. There are in existence two theories—that of the foreordained future, and that of the free future. Foreordination is established in this way: we say that every future event is the result of those which happened before, and is created such as it will be and not otherwise as a consequence of a definite direction of forces which are contained in preceding events. This means, in other words, that future events are 'wholly contained in preceding ones, and if we could know the force and direction of all events which have happened up to the present moment, i.e., if we knew all the past, by this we could know all the future. And sometimes, knowing the present moment thoroughly, in all its details, we may really foretell the future. If the prophecy is not fulfilled, we say that we did not know all that had been , and we discover in the past some cause which had escaped our observation. The idea of the free future is founded upon the possibility of voluntary action and accidental new combinations of causes. The future is regarded as quite indefinite, or defined only in part, because in every given moment new forces, new events and new phenomena are born which lie in a potential state, not causeless, but so incommensurable with causes—as the firing of a city from one spark—that it is impossible to detect or measure them. p. 44 This theory affirms that one and the same action can have different results; one and the same cause, different effects; and it introduces the hypothesis of quite arbitrary volitional actions on the part of a man, bringing about profound changes in the subsequent events of his own life and the lives of others. Supporters of the foreordination theory contend on the contrary that volitional, involuntary actions depend also upon causes, making them necessary and unavoidable at a given moment; that there is nothing accidental, and that there cannot be; that we call accidental only those things the causes of which we do not see by reason of our limitations; and that different effects of causes seemingly the same occur because the causes are different in reality and only seem similar for the reason that we do not understand them well enough nor see them sufficiently clearly. The dispute between the theory of the foreordained future and that of the free future is an infinite dispute. Neither of these theories can say anything decisive. This is so because both theories are too literal, too inflexible, too material, and one repudiates the other: both say, "either this or the other." In the one case there results a complete cold predestination: that which will be, will be, nothing can be changed —that which will befall tomorrow was predestined tens of thousands of years ago.