But nature includes life; and the way of conceiving nature developed in the preceding chapter has its bearing on biological conceptions as to the sense in which life can be said to be thus included. 64.2 An object is a characteristic of an event. Such an object may be in fact a multiple relation between objects situated in various parts of the whole event. In this case the quality of the whole is the relationship between its parts, and the relation between the parts is the quality of the whole. The whole event being what it is, its parts have thereby certain defined relations; and the parts having all the relations which they do have, it follows that the whole event is what it is. The whole is explained by a full knowledge of the parts as situations of objects, and the parts by a full knowledge of the whole. Such an object is a pattern. 64.3 The discussion of life in nature has become canalised along certain conventional lines based upon the traditional concepts of science. We are aware of living objects. But the phrase 'living objects' is misleading; we should more accurately say, 'objects expressing life,' or 'life-bearing objects.' Namely, the individual life is, beyond the mere object. There is not an object which, after being known as an object, is then in itself judged to be alive. The specific recognisable liveliness is the recognised character of the relation of the object to the event which is its situation. Thus to say that the object is alive suppresses the necessary reference to the event; and to say that an event is alive suppresses the necessary reference to the object. 64.4 We have therefore to ask, what sort of events have life in their relations to objects situated in them, and what sort of objects have life in their relations to their situations? A life-bearing object is not an 'uniform' object. Life (as known to us) involves the completion of rhythmic parts within the life-bearing event which exhibits that object. We can diminish the time-parts, and, if the rhythms be unbroken, still discover the same object of life in the curtailed event. But if the diminution of the duration be carried to the extent of breaking the rhythm, the life-bearing object is no longer to be found as a quality of the slice of the original event cut off within that duration. This is no special peculiarity of life. It is equally true of a molecule of iron or of a musical phrase. Thus there is no such thing as life 'at one instant'; life is too obstinately concrete to be located in an extensive element of an instantaneous space.