than this, distinguishing any number of shades in each of the colours
mentioned, but the description would still have to be given in the
same form, that of a series of different colours, or shades of colour,
strung together by relations of before and after. Now the fact which
we know directly does not change so: it forms a continuous becoming
which is not made up of any number, however great, of fixed stages.
When we want to represent this changing fact in terms of qualities we
have to put together a series of qualities, such as red, orange, etc.,
and then say that "the colour" changes from one of these to another.
We pretend that there is "a colour" which is not itself either red or
green or orange or blue, which changes into all these different
colours one after another. It is not very difficult to see that this
abstract colour which is neither red nor orange nor green nor blue is
not a fact but only an abstraction which is convenient for purposes of
description: it is not quite so easy to see that this criticism
applies equally to each of the separate colours, red, orange, etc.,
and yet a little attention shows that these also are really nothing
but abstractions. With reference to the whole changing fact which is
known directly through any period the change in respect of colour is
clearly an abstraction. But just as there is no "colour" over and
above the red, the orange, the green, etc., which we say we see, so
there is really no "red," "orange," "green," over and above the
changing process with which we are directly acquainted. Each of these,
the red, the orange, and so on, just like the abstract "colour," is
simply a fictitious stage in the process of changing which it is
convenient to abstract when we want to describe the process but which
does not itself occur as a distinct part in the actual fact.

Change, as we know it directly, does not go on between fixed points
such as these stages which we abstract, it goes on impartially, as it