60. Apparent and Carnal Characters. 60.1 Are there any material objects in nature? That there are such bodies is certainly an assumption habitually made in the applications of mathematics. But the assumption does not supersede the necessity for enquiry. We may roughly summarise the properties of material objects, as here defined, by saying that they should be continuous both in time and in space. But this is just what ordinary perceptual objects appear to be. Now perceptual objects are what they appear to be; for a perceptual object is nothing else than the permanent property of its situations, that they all shall exhibit those appearances. Accordingly if a perceptual object appears to be a material object, it is a material object. Now here a difficulty arises; for we all know that, according to Dalton's atomic theory of chemistry, any apparently continuous substance is a discrete collection of molecules, and that furthermore, according to the more recent theories, a molecule is a discrete collection of electric charges. Accordingly, as we are told, if we could take the minutest drop of water and magnify it, the phenomena would be analogous to those of a swarm of flies in a room. It would appear therefore that we are mistaken in classifying a drop of water as being a material object. 60.2 The position that we seem to have arrived at is that on the one hand a drop of water is a material object, because it appears to be one and it is whatever it appears to be, and that on the other hand it is really something quite different. Such paradoxes mean that vital distinctions have been overlooked. We must distinguish between the drop of water as it appears, the event which is its situation, and the character of the event which causes the event to present that appearance. Namely, there is the appearance of the drop of water. This is character No. 1 of the event, the apparent character, and is a material object. Again there is the character of the event which is the cause of character No. 1. This is character No. 2 of the event and is its causal character. According to the doctrine of science, character No. 2 is not a material object. 60.3 But why trouble about causal characters? What has pushed science into their consideration? The impelling reason is the complex bewildering relationships of the apparent characters. Apparent characters essentially involve reference to percipient events, and may be very trivial qualities of the events which they characterise. For example, all delusive perceptual objects are apparent characters of events.