78. Actuality

There is a here and there aspect to the world, as I have said, in terms of space and time. There is also a here and there aspect in terms of event. An event is a group of motion-things and matter-things, seen as one.

The here aspect of the world is in the word is as being, or the word does as motion. What the world is can be seen as what the world does, and what the world does as what it is.

Present time plus here-space plus is-event, is the world as most actual. Actual here means the same as present.

But the here aspect of the world can go with a there aspect of time in the word was; and the here aspect of the world can go with both a here and there aspect of time in the present perfect of is, has been.

The verbs is, was, will be, has been, had been, will have been, are, with various changes of time, of actual event: that is, the world as event is still seen as here.

Something else is present in can be, could be, may be, might be, could have been, might have been.

When we say, for example, “Washington’s father might have stayed in England, and so Washington might have never crossed the Delaware,” we are dealing with a there, or the other aspect of the world as event. This there aspect of the world, in so far as it is part of the world, is, too, and since it affects us when we think of it, is real. Possibility, in other words, is real.

79. Possibility

A person is free as much as the possibilities which will make him what he is wholly, are seen as of him now.