Sentence:  Our most elemental and unavoidable impressions , he says , are those of being involved in a large arena of powers which have a <WSD>longer</WSD> past than our own , which are interrelated in a vast movement through the present toward the future . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  primarily temporal sense; being or indicating a relatively great or greater than average duration or passage of time or a duration as specified