 Though never true of reality these distinctions are not empty because according to McTaggart they have to be taken as appearances of a third series, the C-series, “a series which is not a time series, but under certain conditions appears to us to be one”. This C-series “does actually exist in every case in which there is the appearance of a time-series” (NE §347). McTaggart thinks of the C-series (at least in The Nature of Existence) as an “Inclusion Series” (NE §575) 