CHAPTER II

TIME AND SPACE

I.

The second book of the Physics on time and place is so involved and subtle that its contents must be stated in Gassendi’s own way before any attempt is made to formulate his views.

The title is peculiar and should be noticed. It runs ‘de loco et tempore seu spatio et duratione’; and this duplication of terms persists throughout, adding to the difficulty of interpretation. Gassendi seems to have regarded the second pair as the universals corresponding to the particular or specific terms locus and tempus. He considers these two identical in nature, so that anything we say about space applies to time: we can therefore confine ourselves to the more intelligible subject of space.

The traditional philosophy divides all being into substance and accident, and declares that what is neither of these is nothing. Space however is a reality, and yet comes under neither of these heads. In face of the facts authority must be disregarded and a new classification be evolved. We must recognise as distinct classes

(1) Substances—quae per se sunt. (2) Accidents—quae per aliud sunt. (3) Time and Space.

This third class shares with the first the quality of being per se: they are therefore properly called substances, but the term substance always conveys the idea of corporeal existence, and is therefore objectionable unless a qualification is added. It is not incorrect to speak of an incorporeal substance, and this would meet the requirements of the case: as Aristotle used it of the mind and Epicurus of the void, it is not wholly without authority. Having settled this first step of classification, Gassendi attacks the categories. Quantity is the category that concerns us at present. Space falls under the category of continuous quantity. The tyranny of matter gave rise to the opinion that quantity was an ‘accidens corporeum,’ and as space came under the category of quantity it was also asserted to be corporeal. Corporeal, when applied to accidents, means ‘dependent on a body.’ Length, breadth, and weight clearly require a material something to which they can be referred. Space, according to Gassendi, does not: it is therefore more than a mere quantity, more than so much room: it is not only the place of things, it is a place for things, a difference that must be more fully discussed later. Space, then, may be defined as a quantitative reality independent of matter. The consequences and difficulties of this definition have now to be considered.

(1) The most obvious objection is that a quantity of nothing is nothing; but Gassendi replies that in this case the quantity is a quantity of Space, and space is something. If a body be removed from a given place, the space of that place remains. This argument is greatly assisted by the traditional habit of obtaining a concept of matter per se by abstracting all form: if this is possible why cannot form be abstracted from all matter? It follows that the concept of the void is possible.

(2) As we may think of matter as reduced to nothing, we may also think of it as infinitely great: worlds may be infinite, and therefore space must be.

(3) As space has no faculties or actions, its adjectives must be purely negative. It is infinite because it is not finite, and incorporeal because it is not corporeal. It cannot be a substance in the sense that God is, else there are three equal substances, and the being of God is not superior to the being of space and time.

(4) The origin of space and time is an insoluble problem. Gassendi does not say this in so many words, but leaves it to be inferred. He merely remarks that to say some essences are not properly created by God is worse than admitting time and space to be uncreated—a tortuous method of escaping the dilemma.

(5) Space is imaginary, not in the sense of unreal or fictitious, but as requiring to be constructed by analogy.

The discussion thus summarised is followed by a division of space according as it is (1) outside the world, (2) dispersed among things, (3) collective. The first is space left for new worlds, and is required in order that God may not be limited in creating new worlds; the second is space as it occurs among bodies which do not change; the third is space as it is produced by loss of volume or contraction. This is technically called ‘spatium coacervatum.’ These three kinds of space seem to be really three kinds of vacua: they are rather asserted than proved, and their assertion raises more problems than it solves.

II.

As Gassendi’s doctrine of time is a mere appendix to that of space, it is necessary to form some idea of his views of space before venturing to consider those of time.

Following the hint given by Bernier in the Abrégé, we may take space and the universe to be complementary concepts. Space is infinite in three dimensions, and is the place of all things, whether already produced or existing only in the mind of God. The confusing element in Gassendi’s treatment is its complexity. It is never quite clear whether we are treating space as a given reality which can be directly known or a reality which must be deduced. The statement that space is imaginary is extremely obscure. By imagination Gassendi always means a power of compounding elements given through the senses in such a way as to produce a new representation of some object not actually presented. If space is a pure quantity, its construction in imagination has no principle of limitation, and it will be the subject of an infinite process. Here there appear to be two errors which can only be explained through the tendency of Gassendi’s philosophy to develope rationalistic features. The first error is committed when from the ancient argument that if a vessel is absolutely empty its sides must either collapse or preserve a distance between them in which there is pure space, he infers that a pure space can be given. Here there is a wholly indefensible transition from the distinction of the concepts of space and matter to a distinction of their actual existence. As with the infinity of motion, so here in the cognate subject of space the logical conclusion is converted into a predicate of reality in a way that implies a metaphysic unfortunately not supplied by Gassendi.

The second error consists in supposing that we have any right to regard as valid of reality a process which is subjectively possible.[34] Gassendi undoubtedly commits this error because he uses the property of numbers or mere quantity to enable him to assert that our concept of space cannot stop at any given point but must advance indefinitely. This, however, is true of everything if taken abstractly in relation to quantity, and has no special application to space. The traditional problems gave a wrong turn to this line of thought by putting it into a form half concrete and half abstract. If a man going to the end of all things hurls a spear before him, what are we to think? Common sense replies that he was probably not at the end, but tradition says that it follows that an end of space is unthinkable, and the concrete reality of the spear gives the space, imagined as its place, a fictitious reality.

We have here, then, a complete confusion between the reality of our thoughts about space and the reality of the space about which we think. Gassendi does not know either how space originated in nature or how it has become known. When he describes it as form he speaks metaphorically; it is not a form either of sense or matter, but an independent reality; it is an immovable whole, otherwise a thing might move and take its space with it, and so not change its place even when moved. In a sense it must be nothing, otherwise two things are in one place, namely the thing and its space; on the other hand, it is a substance in relation to occupants of space. In some cases, _e.g._ God and the angels, the occupant is incorporeal. If a place is space occupied by a body, can an incorporeal being have a space, and if not, can it be and yet not be anywhere? To answer these questions Gassendi says space is ‘quod res locata occupat’; hence the angels have their place where they are, and God is properly ‘in se,’ which appears to mean that He is but does not exist, has being but not spatial being.

This intricate maze of thought becomes entirely unintelligible unless we accept it as the expression of two views in one. In one part we are being told what Space is in itself, in the other what it is in experience. In the former aspect it is real, and that is all we know; definition, if any, must be negative, and its nature must be assumed to be all that it is not irrational to suppose it.[35] Ultimate space is thus really a hypothesis which is proved to be actual, because without it we cannot understand the world of experience. The latter aspect concerns us when we deal with reality as known in the senses. Space, having no activities, cannot be known through the senses except ‘ex parte rei locatae.’ It is combination with the thing that makes space an object of perception and gives the required ground upon which imagination may work.[36]

III.

If Gassendi feels that space is an ultimate that defies exact analysis and almost baffles description, he is still more diffident about time. None the less he feels that his position ought to redeem him from blank despair. The words of St. Augustine sum up the views of one class of thinker;[37] to Gassendi they seem justified only as the conclusion of a false method. For if the corporeal is regarded as primary, and our category of substance is practically confined to the tangible, space and time alike become displaced from reality and drift away through the pages of speculation like homeless phantoms refusing burial. The rock on which Gassendi builds is good foundation: come what may, these two are real, and it is futile to try and explain away what we cannot escape.

The majority of what has been said about space can be transferred to time. The main conception being the same, only one chapter is devoted to a special discussion of time. Like space, it is a substance in its way, incorporeal in its nature and not in itself dependent on its content. The relation of space to time is to be understood by the analogy of corporeal entities; for as the corporeal has a permanent aspect, its extension, and also a successive aspect, its movement, so we have in the incorporeal sphere a permanent and a successive entity, which are respectively the place of all extensions and the place of all movements. As Space is really the Place of all places, so Time is the Duration of all durations; and as space has some unoccupied or potential places, so Time overlaps the known durations and has its ‘void.’ In opposition to the Epicurean view, which makes out that time would not be if there were no minds or things,[38] Gassendi holds to a lapse of time before the beginning of the world and between creations. He is really nearer the modern view than at first appears; for the Epicurean view did not make time a form of perception, but merely regarded it as dependent on its contents. Gassendi, on the other hand, considers that events derive their order from time, and considers that time must therefore precede change. In the case of space it seemed an easy matter to say that the annihilation of the thing placed was not identical with annihilation of the part of space which formed the place. If we are to preserve the analogy we must say that annihilation of change would not annihilate time. This Gassendi is prepared to say, but it is a hard saying. It would seem as though the assertion of time without change necessitated our regarding time as a permanent entity, which would sacrifice its essential distinction from space. Time moves without any doubt: it is however hardly like a stream: a better simile is that of the flame of a candle, which as it burns changes indeed, but in such a way as not to lose its identity, and so gives us a better idea of continuity and the retention of identity in difference.[39] The point which Gassendi wishes to emphasise is that, if time and change are identical, there is no background to define the movement. If a thing, when it moves, takes its place with it, it moves without change of place, which is nothing at all: similarly, if an event takes its time with it, the time-series is reduced to nothing, a reduction to absurdity which makes it necessary to say that the time is not the change, but the change is in the time. To this point Gassendi clings, but if we seek further for some explanation of the permanence implied in this we can find no answer that satisfies. It is to be feared that, following the analogy of space, Gassendi thought of time as ultimately the sum of all times, and so the time of the universe. This comprehensive term substance was the shibboleth that reigned before the absolute, and it swayed men’s minds to create concepts beyond their grasp. If my life falls within the life of the world, and that again within the life of the universe, it is not unnatural to picture successively widening areas of time corresponding to the span of each existence up to that last time of the Universe, and if we remember that the Universe is indestructible, it will follow that ultimate time and space are infinite indestructible realities. But what is the difference between ultimate time and any other time, and do we get nearer reality by getting further away from our experience? Gassendi seems to have omitted to think over the relation of time to our experience, and that in spite of the excellent hint in a passage quoted from Diogenes Laertius, where we are exhorted to notice not only days and nights, but also ‘passionibus et vacuitate ab ipsis.’ In the absence of definite information it must be assumed that Gassendi did with time what he did with space: he constructed a rational background to the data of sense, and thus furnished himself with a double theory, one part concerned with time as it is, the other with ultimate time as it might be if it were at all.

Gassendi proves puzzling to the thoughtful reader by his trick of abandoning one method for another. It is natural to expect that a rationalistic position will be developed by deduction. Gassendi on the contrary makes no attempt to develope his theories at all, but simply returns to experience for a fresh start. For all practical purposes he has reduced time to a standstill, and the natural deduction is that the present is illusion. Far from accepting this consequence, Gassendi argues that as the present is real time cannot be nothing, and those who consider it to be nothing do so because they erroneously seek in the successive for that which is natural only to the permanent. This can only have one meaning: in the permanent the given points co-exist, and are capable of recurring in experience: in the successive there is no return. Man lives _in_ Space, but he lives _through_ time, and if reason compels us to think of both as wholes, that difference of our experience persists and makes it necessary to form a different conception of each whole.

The analysis of different kinds of time gives us the so-called real and imaginary times. This was the ancient distinction between the time given in actual experience (real) and that which was before the world (imaginary). This distinction Gassendi repudiates. His time is imaginary in the sense that his space was, and the real time is only one section of that. This shows the weakness of Gassendi’s position: for however good his intentions he cannot avoid the conclusion that the time we experience and the time we represent in constructive imagination are identical: which amounts to saying that time is either not experienced at all or is experienced as a whole; but this would most likely be beyond Gassendi, though he would be quite capable of regarding All Time as one object,[40] especially as he must have regarded the experience of time as essentially a reflective consciousness of what a merely sensitive organism could never comprehend.

A few more notes must close this summary. Gassendi praises Posidonius for not taking the present as a mere point. He argues against Aristotle that time is not the measure of movement existing only for the calculator, time does not depend on movement, for plurality of movement does not involve plurality of times, nor does a plurality of worlds. In a subordinate sense movement may be said to be the measure of time, as the movement of the sun marks out periods of time. All points of space have one time, _i.e._ every moment is the same everywhere. On the other hand every point of space has all the points of time, _i.e._ persists through the whole series of moments.[41]

These remarks cannot be put in any connexion, for Gassendi gives none. He does not properly distinguish the different views of time which they imply. The most noticeable feature is his omission of any distinction of the psychological aspect, an omission which compels us to take his ‘moment of time’ as an absolute quantity. While he is clear about the artificial measurements of time, he does not oppose them to the subjective measurement of time, as modern psychology does, but to real parts: a proceeding which is certainly consistent with his view of time as a whole in some sense substantive.[42]

The discussion of eternity which closes this chapter is really concerned with the meaning of timeless, though somewhat indirectly and perfunctorily treated. Eternity might be defined as the time of God, which is to say that it was popularly conceived as the duration of God’s life. The notion had passed into philosophical treatises with all its crudities unanalysed. Gassendi furnishes an analysis which dissipates the common notions. He has however a further interest which must be pointed out. The popular idea dissolves into nothing if we examine the phrase, ‘duration of the life of God’: it at once becomes clear that the foremost idea is that of life, and the understanding of the problem as it concerns time is obscured by the other notions introduced. But over and above this trifling proposition we find a real difficulty in reconciling the concept of God with our concept of time. We must perforce think of God as one to whom past, present, and future are always present: for whom therefore All Time exists at all times, so that ultimately time must be again reduced to a standstill and our distinctions of times to illusion. This attack touches Gassendi very nearly because of the way in which he is compelled to maintain that time is a totality: the nature of God seems to turn the scale finally in favour of a static totality. His reply is subtle, but not futile or perfunctory. He says, in brief, that God’s being is purely qualitative, not quantitative, and he is only related to time extrinsically, which practically means not at all. God’s being is in fact not an experience at all in our sense of the term. It may therefore be a timeless experience, but it is not an experience of the timeless. The latter phrase would imply that the timeless was a possible object of any experience: the former is one of those negative determinations which, like inhuman, insensible, Gassendi delights to regard as positive. The way in which this can be understood will be best explained if we recall an example by which Gassendi explains how the nature of God is related to space. After remarking as to the place of God, that ‘Deus in se est’ (I. 191), he quotes the statement ‘deum esse habendum prout est in se,’ and criticises it by saying God is unlimited, ‘sed haec illimitatio seu infinitudo non est quam nomine proprio appellamus immensitatem.’ The perfection of God, in short, must be conceived qualitatively: ‘ut in lacte aliud est summe candidum esse, aliud esse valde copiosum’; and what is thus explained in relation to space must be analogously applied to time. The idea of substituting intensity for extensity was excellent: it opens up wide possibilities for speculative minds. Gassendi, having made it, leaves it alone, thereby showing much wisdom. It is much easier to understand an intensity which does not involve quantity of space than to comprehend an intensity which avoids quantity of time. It is true there is not more whiteness in the milk when there is more of the milk: and similarly we may say that God is not more wise because He is wise for a greater time. This evades the real problem, which lies in the assertion that if God were God for less time, He would be less a God. So long as time pertains to the nature of God at all, it must pertain as a whole: to answer that it pertains not wholly, but none the less completely by being intensively perfect, is either to talk nonsense or to confuse time and thought.[43]