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There is no other _nature_, no other whatness
than this absence of break and this sense of
continuity in that most intimate of all conjunctive
relations, the passing of one experience
into another when the belong to the same self.
And this whatness is real empirical 'content,'
just as the whatness of separation and discontinuity
is real content in the contrasted case.
Practically to experience one's personal continuum
in this living way is to know the originals
of the ideas of continuity and sameness, to
know what the words stand for concretely, to
own all that they can ever mean. But all experiences
have their conditions; and over-subtle
intellects, thinking about the facts here, and
asking how they are possible, have ended by
substituting a lot of static objects of conception
for the direct perceptual experiences.
"Sameness," they have said, "must be a stark
numerical identity; it can't run on from next to
next. Continuity can't mean mere absence of
gap; for if you say two things are in immediate
contact, _at_ the contact how can they be two?
If, on the other hand, you put a relation of
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transition between them, that itself is a third
thing, and needs to be related or hitched to its
terms.
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