The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-09-14
Time.

brought face to face with a metaphysi-
cal infinite 1t is something that is not
material, has no spatial characteristics,
Is sui generis, and the core of the ques-
ton involved is curiously avoided by
philosophers of most penetrating minds
Herbert Spencer like his illustration
Of the housewife who prefers receipts
couched in "handfuls' and "pinches' to
exact weights and measures, seems to
consider time sufficiently dealt with
WheH he shows how the concept orlgl-
mated Herman Lott shocks interest in
his philosophy by relegating the whole
thing to a mode or form OF thought, etc.
Here is sought no ncarnated and con-
creted abstract, not the intuition ana
thought mould, but that which caused
intuition and thought form to originate
that objective correlate on which they
rest. Is the objective God? Only so
long as the problem is unsolved and
mystery. What is time itself, what its
warp and wool, it's quddity? What is
! its motion, where does it come from and
go to, what the reel on which 1t is
wound, and why does it break into past,
present and future?
/ ~
ing time, and does the eternal now of
/ Deity mean something real? How is
time related to the other utimates? etc,
etc.
Time is that which is measured by the
I clock. Is that all? Is endurance as
conceived by the rustic all there is to it?
| Are the points of light seen by the In
dian in the night all there is to astrono-
my?
Suppose now that the powers that be
should wish to renair some part of the
universe, that was out of order and IL
able to produce a cataclasm, and should
gear down everything 365,OOO fold. All
things and all in the same relative pro-
portion would have become 365, 600 times
slower or would take $4,000 times more
time than now A day would have be-
come as thousand years and when the
gearing up took place, thousand years
as a day. and no one would know the
difference, How could they?
A man who now takes twenty minutes
to complete his toilet, ten minutes for
morning devotions. two minutes to de-
scend the stairs, and a half an hour for
breakfast. would then dress in fourteen
years, kneel down and pray for seven
years, take about one and one-half
years to descend the stairs. and would
sit down to a twenty-one year break
fast, consuming a half year in get
ting seated
A two minute race horse would come
whizzing down the stretch of the last
quarter at the rate of mile in one year
and one hundred and forty-three days,
and as the audience went off their feet
with excitement they would clap their
hands so q s to bring them together once
in four days No one knows that this
gearing up and down does not take
place, or that the insect that is born
lives and dies IN moment, does not
have wastes of absolute time to do 1t
in In other words. relative time-the
time of the revolution of the earth or
its journey around the SUMS measured
by the clock, but what is the velocity of
absolute time in which man, clock, earth
and sun, all are enguphed? To what
notch above no endurance and short of
an infinite velocity Of time running is
the universe geared? At which end of
the possibilities is the eternal now Of
Deity?
AT 8 o'clock the hour from to is flu
.ure, and from to is past. Divide an
hour into 81 equal parts; when the 31st |
past has arrived and is in esse, 30 parts
of the hour are past, 30 future and only
one part present But the one part al
lotted to the present is dvisible and not
all In esse at once; divide this part into |
81 other equal parts; at the center 80 of |
these parts are future and 80 past, and
We ~ |
present indefinitely, but IL we half any
thing then half the half, then half the |
half of the half, etc, according to math-
ematics, we are approaching limit and
that limit is zero. Does the dfferential !
calculus then mean that as en- attempt |
is made to reach the duration of the ac-
tual present a thin differential result |
that at the limit at the real present, is |
zero, and therefore that there is no
We know the past is dead and |
the future unborn, and fundamentally |
we seem to have annihiated the only |
existant-the present, in which case 1t |
would seem as though time really were |
not an objective but only an intuition |
and thought form.
As Voltaire remarked: when Bish- |
of Berkeley said there is no matter and |
proved 1t, it was no matter what he |
said"
Time Is dynamic. 1t furnishes
to the universe in which
motion Is normal.
The mind goes back to space a $ an ul-
innate of utmates, a foundation of the |
universe, the annihilation of which Is
inconceivable, in which the solidity is
rest.
The mind goes back to time as an Ill
innate of ultimates, q foundation of the
the humiliation of which is
in which strangely
and with equal satisfaction, the
sOidity Is restless motion.
Perhaps here in reality IAN immova-
BILE body meets an irresistible force
and solves the problem
Possibly all action rests upon, is root
cd in. and derives stimulus from times !
dux; perchance force itself is only time
raised to the second power.
If space must haye foruth dimen-
sion it il utterably impossible to con-
ceive of it if held to purely spatial con-
aepts. But it is possible to conceive of |
4 direction, which is no component OF !
+l,o Of /