Fourthly, both Space and Time are indeed essential constituents of all
our perceptions, thoughts, actions, at least in this life. Yet Time is
perhaps the more real, and assuredly the richer, constituent of the two.
But this rich reality applies only to Concrete or Filled Time, Duration,
in which our experiences, although always more or less successive,
interpenetrate each other in various degrees and ways, and are thus more
or less simultaneous. An absolutely even flow of equal, mutually
exclusive moments, on the contrary, exists only for our theoretical
thinking, in Abstract, Empty, or Clock time. Already, in 1886, Professor
James Ward wrote: 'In time, conceived as physical, there is no trace of
intensity; in time, as psychically experienced, duration is primarily an
intensive magnitude.'[35] And in 1889 Professor Bergson, in his _Essai
sur les Donnees Immediates de la Conscience_, gave us exquisite
descriptions of time as we really experience it, of 'duration strictly
speaking', which 'does not possess moments that are identical or
exterior to each other'.[36] Thus all our real soul life, in proportion
to its depth, moves in Partial Simultaneity; and it apprehends, requires
and rests, at its deepest, in an overflowingly rich Pure Simultaneity.
Fifthly, Man is Body as well as Soul, and the two are closely
interrelated. The sensible perception of objects, however humble, is
always necessary for the beginning, and (in the long run) for the
persistence and growth, of the more spiritual apprehensions of man.
Hence Historical Persons and Happenings, Institutions, affording
Sensible Acts and Contacts, and Social Corporations, each different
according to the different ranges and levels of life, can hardly fail to
be of importance for man's full awakening--even ethical and spiritual.
Professor Ernst Troeltsch, so free from natural prejudice in favour of
such a Sense-and-Spirit position, has become perhaps the most adequate
exponent of this great fact of life, which is ever in such danger of
evaporation amidst the intellectual and leading minority of men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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