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When we realize this, do we not free ourselves from the difficulties which seemed to make the motion of a point over a line an impossible absurdity? The line as revealed in a single experience either of sight or of touch is not composed of an infinite number of parts. It is composed of points seen or touched least experiences of sight or touch, minima sensibilia.
These "sensibilia" which are not data to anyone are therefore to be taken rather as an illustrative hypothesis and as an aid in preliminary statement than as a dogmatic part of the philosophy of physics in its final form.
Thus we can only say that the sense-data are found to permit a hypothetical complement of "sensibilia" such as will preserve continuity, and that therefore there may be such a complement. Since, however, we have already made such use of hypothetical "sensibilia," we will let this point pass, and admit such "sensibilia," as are required to preserve continuity.
What makes the patient, in such cases, become what others call insane is the fact that, within his own experience, there is nothing to show that the hallucinatory sense-data do not have the usual kind of connection with "sensibilia" in other perspectives.
The motions which are regarded as occurring, during a period in which all the "sensibilia" and the times of their appearance are given, will be different according to the manner in which we combine "sensibilia" at different times as belonging to the same piece of matter.
This is effected by means of the correlated "sensibilia" which are regarded as the appearances, in different perspectives, of one and the same thing.
* Ad quartum dicendum, quando unum duorum est ratio alterius, occupatio animæ circa unum non impedit nec remittet occupationem eius circa aliud.... Et quia Deus apprehenditur a sanctis ut ratio omnium quæ ab eis agentur vel cognoscentur: ideo occupatio eorum circa sensibilia et sentienda, vel quæcumque alia contemplanda aut agenda, in nullo impediet divinam contemplationem, nec e converso.
The case of seeing double also belongs here, though in this case the cause of the unusual correlation is physiological, and would therefore not operate in a photograph. It is a mistake to ask whether the "thing" is duplicated when we see it double. The "thing" is a whole system of "sensibilia," and it is only those visual "sensibilia" which are data to the percipient that are duplicated.
In particular, the part played by time in the construction of the physical world is, I think, more fundamental than would appear from the above account. I should hope that, with further elaboration, the part played by unperceived "sensibilia" could be indefinitely diminished, probably by invoking the history of a "thing" to eke out the inferences derivable from its momentary appearance. Arist.
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