The false idea which we have to get rid of is that of nature as a mere aggregate of independent entities, each capable of isolation. According to this conception these entities, whose characters are capable of isolated definition, come together and by their accidental relations form the system of nature. This system is thus thoroughly accidental; and, even if it be subject to a mechanical fate, it is only accidentally so subject. With this theory space might be without time, and time might be without space. The theory admittedly breaks down when we come to the relations of matter and space. The relational theory of space is an admission that we cannot know space without matter or matter without space. But the seclusion of both from time is still jealously guarded. The relations between portions of matter in space are accidental facts owing to the absence of any coherent account of how space springs from matter or how matter springs from space. Also what we really observe in nature, its colours and its sounds and its touches are secondary qualities; in other words, they are not in nature at all but are accidental products of the relations between nature and mind. The explanation of nature which I urge as an alternative ideal to this accidental view of nature, is that nothing in nature could be what it is except as an ingredient in nature as it is. The whole which is present for discrimination is posited in sense-awareness as necessary for the discriminated parts. An isolated event is not an event, because every event is a factor in a larger whole and is significant of that whole. There can be no time apart from space; and no space apart from time; and no space and no time apart from the passage of the events of nature. The isolation of an entity in thought, when we think of it as a bare 'it,' has no counterpart in any corresponding isolation in nature. Such isolation is merely part of the procedure of intellectual knowledge. The laws of nature are the outcome of the characters of the entities which we find in nature. The entities being what they are, the laws must be what they are; and conversely the entities follow from the laws. We are a long way from the attainment of such an ideal; but it remains as the abiding goal of theoretical science. CHAPTER VII OBJECTS