Chapter 112
Time and its passage; past, present and future; the brevity of life and use of time.
590 passages · 144 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Time is the medium of every story in the Harvard Classics and the subject of a great many of their reflections. The idea gathers several questions that the books take up at very different levels. What time is, and how it is reckoned. How it stands to eternity. Whether past and future are real. How short a human life is and how it should be spent. What the years do to beauty, fame and grief. How vast the ages are that the earth itself records. It is a great idea for these volumes because nearly every kind of writer in them has had to face it: the Stoic emperor, the Psalmist, the geologist, the dramatic critic, the lyric poet. Each discovers that the shape of a life, an argument or a poem depends on how its time is understood.
The first question is the most stubborn: what time is. Pascal observes that everyone understands the word without definition, though opinions about its essence differ, some calling it movement and others the measure of movement1. A proposition such as “time is the movement of a created thing” is therefore either an arbitrary definition or a disputable claim2,3. Still, he holds that time is bound up with motion, since speed and slowness relate to it necessarily4. Milton plays on the same connection in his epitaph for the university carrier, whom time numbered by his motion5. Berkeley moves time inward: it is measured by the succession of ideas in the mind, so the same motion may seem swift to one spirit and slow to another6. Schiller goes further. Time arises from the condition of dependent beings who are always becoming7. Time begins with the person, not the person with time8, and sensation is time filled, confining man to a single moment9. Among the moderns the inward view spreads. Carlyle reports Schlegel’s opinion that space and time are mere forms of the mind10, and Emerson calls them physiological colors that the eye makes11. Hume raises the old difficulty about divisibility: an infinite number of real parts of time passing in succession is, he says, an evident contradiction12. Pascal, comparing entire space with entire time, accepts that infinite divisibles pass in infinite moments13.
Whatever time is, men must count it. Herodotus records Egyptian reckonings of the year and of generations converted into thousands of years14,15. Plutarch tells how Caesar reformed a calendar that had let festivals drift out of their seasons16. Copernicus notes that the unsettled length of years and months had blocked a later reform17. The moderns turn reckoning into a discipline. Locke commends chronology as giving a view of the whole current of time18. Voltaire, following Newton, averages the length of generations and reigns to replace the vague ancient measures19.
Measured time is not the same as felt time. Dante notes that absorbed attention lets the sun climb unobserved20, while for Spenser’s impatient lover the midsummer day drags21. Manzoni compares time to a capricious horse: minutes were hours while one waited, and now hours seem minutes22. Dana’s sailors devise a system for killing the monotonous watches, in which the bells seem an age apart23,24. Haskell, by contrast, cannot say whether the fighting at Gettysburg lasted minutes or an hour25. Faustus begs the spheres to stand still as his last hour strikes26. Manfred insists that existence is measured by deeds, not years27. These scenes are the experiential counterpart to Berkeley’s theory.
Time’s relation to eternity is posed first in scripture. To God a thousand years are as yesterday, and man prays to number his days28. Augustine says the years flow through God’s “to-day”29. Milton’s God sees past, present and future at once30. Addison’s Mirza is told that time is the portion of eternity measured by the sun31. Browne distinguishes time, which is only as old as the world, from incomprehensible eternity32. Carlyle restates the old faith in modern terms: we live in an element of time and mortality, yet time reposes on eternity33.
Some authors claim that the spirit can rise out of time even while living in it. For Schiller the formal instinct suppresses time and change34. The play instinct suppresses time within time35, and in contemplation fleeting time stands still36. Emerson makes time and space inverse measures of the soul’s force: the spirit crowds eternity into an hour and has no dates37,38. Browning dismisses “Now” as fit for dogs and apes, since man has Forever39. He answers the cry “seize today” by holding that all that is lasts40.
Against these consolations stands time the devourer. Krishna reveals himself in the Gita as Slayer Time, by whom the warriors are already slain41. Marcus Aurelius sees Socrates, Chrysippus and Epictetus swallowed alike42. The hymn sings of time as an ever-rolling stream that bears all its sons away43. Cervantes blames time, devourer of all things, for a lost manuscript44. Milton bids envious time consume itself45. Burns says no man can tether time or tide46, and Tennyson that all things become portions of the dreadful past47.
From the brevity of time follows the dispute over the present. Marcus Aurelius holds that only the present can be lost. The longest and shortest lives therefore lose the same48, and man lives only an indivisible point49. Hobbes gives the doctrine a psychological turn: only the present has being, the past exists in memory, and the future is a fiction of the mind50. Raleigh adds that whatever is past is nothing and the future lies in uncertainty51. From such premises comes the counsel to live in the present, which Marcus repeats often52,53. FitzGerald’s Omar draws an Epicurean version of it: enjoy today, free of regret and fear of tomorrow54. Longfellow draws a strenuous one: act in the living present55. Thoreau preaches “the gospel according to this moment”56.
Pascal’s complaint is the sharpest counterpoint. We never live in the present but always hope to live, recalling the past and anticipating the future because the present pains us57,58. In his letters the same insight becomes a duty: only the present is truly ours59,60. Gray observes that man alone looks before and after61. Burns envies the mouse, which feels only the present62, and Emerson the rose, which has no time and is perfect each moment63. The past, meanwhile, keeps its hold on feeling. Bryant calls it a realm that swallows childhood, empires and friends64, though he hopes it will one day yield its treasures65. Dana, revisiting California after twenty-four years, finds the past real and the present unreal66.
The brevity of life is measured against boundless time. Marcus calls life a point and fame oblivion67, and sets our interval against the abyss before and after68,69. Pascal asks why he is placed here and now, in a moment swallowed by eternity70. Raleigh finds our lifetime nearly nothing against past and future eternity71. Montaigne answers in a practical spirit that life consists in use, not in number of years72. The images of flight are ancient and constant. Job’s days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle73. Confucius, standing by a stream, remarks how time hastens day and night74. For Macbeth, tomorrow creeps to “the last syllable of recorded time”75, and Omar’s Bird of Time has little way to flutter76.
The stages of life give the theme its most varied treatment. Cicero argues that nothing with an end is long, and that a short life suffices for living well77. Each age, he says, has its proper season78. Beowulf laments that age broke Hrothgar’s might79. Wordsworth’s Matthew weeps at the unchanging stream beside human decay80, though Wordsworth also finds that the years bring the philosophic mind81. Coleridge treats old age as an outstaying guest82, and Campbell notes that the years fly faster as we age83. Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra reverses the lament: the last of life is what the first was made for84, and age, like evening, renders the day’s account85.
If life is short, its time must be husbanded. Pliny describes his uncle counting every hour lost that was not given to study86. Marcus warns that a fixed limit of time, if unused, will never return87. Dante’s Virgil reminds him that this day never dawns again88. Thomas à Kempis teaches that lost time returns not89. Penn, regretting his own wasted years, warns that God will reckon strictly for our time90, and Descartes resolves to husband his remaining years91. Waste is portrayed in Antony’s Alexandrian revels, where he squanders time, the costliest of valuables92. Locke reckons what an idle daily hour might have gained in skill93. Emerson’s “Days” offer gifts, and the speaker takes trifles94. Augustine confesses his own postponement of conversion with “tomorrow”95,96. Montaigne warns that whatever may happen another day may happen today97, and Bunyan compares deferred repentance to a run for one’s life put off to the last hour98.
The same premise yields an opposite counsel in the carpe diem poets. Herrick urges the gathering of rosebuds because prime once lost cannot return99,100, and Daniel urges gathering flowers before they wither101. Marlowe’s nymph replies that time brings winter and gifts wither102. Brevity thus supports both the ascetic and the hedonist, and the texts never settle which conclusion it compels.
Distinct from thrift is timeliness. Ecclesiastes assigns a season to every purpose103. Bacon makes time the measure of business as money is of wares104, and holds that choosing the time saves time105. Machiavelli rejects the maxim of leaving things to time, which brings evil as well as good106. Burke, by contrast, values the slow reform that time assists107. Milton’s Christ answers the tempter that all things are best fulfilled in due time108. Sydney Smith exposes “this is not the time” as a formula for eternal exclusion109. Swift makes punctuality part of good manners110, and Lowell calls time Lincoln’s prime minister111.
Time’s effects on human works are judged in contrary ways. It destroys. Shakespeare sees it confound youth, beauty and towers112. Shelley’s colossus is left to lone sands113, and Lowell finds that nothing abides but Change114. It also heals. Augustine describes how passing time, bringing new imaginations, gradually closed the wound of his grief115. Cicero says no sorrow is beyond its softening116. Pascal explains the healing by the fact that we change and are no longer the same persons117, while Hamlet’s player king turns the same fact against love, which time qualifies118. Time also judges. In Sophocles it reveals the righteous and finds Oedipus out119,120. Bacon’s river of time carries down light things while the weighty sink121. Johnson makes length of esteem the test of works and sees the stream of time leave Shakespeare unharmed122,123. Shelley calls time the redeemer that washes away poets’ errors124, and Ruskin divides books into those of the hour and those of all time125. Poets claim exemption for their verse: Daniel builds trophies against time’s rage126, and Shakespeare declares that love is not time’s fool127.
The nineteenth century enlarges time beyond all earlier imagination. Lyell argues that a mistaken belief about the world’s age prevented men from recognizing uniform causes128. Undervaluing the time elapsed made gradual processes look violent, as a two-thousand-year history read as a hundred would seem romance129,130. Darwin makes vast duration the condition of his theory. Denudation and sedimentation impress the mind with it131,132, and he illustrates a million years by a strip of paper with a century as a tenth of an inch133. Yet he insists that mere lapse of time does nothing by itself; it only gives variation its chances134. On the Beagle the reflection makes his head giddy135, and he calls time all-powerful, able to level even the Cordillera136. Geikie fixes relative chronology by fossils while admitting that absolute age is guesswork137. Darwin weighs Thompson’s estimates of the earth’s age against the time organic change requires138,139, and the question is left open. Older writers had seen not progress but recurrence. For Ecclesiastes nothing is new under the sun140. Marcus holds that a man of forty has seen all that was and will be141, and Montaigne that one day equals all days142.
Finally, the critics dispute time in art. Sidney would confine the stage to one day and mocks plays that compress twenty years into two hours143,144, and Cervantes’ canon makes the same complaint145. Dryden reports the learned computations of the Aeneid’s duration146,147. Johnson replies that time is most obsequious to imagination148, and Hugo that every plot has its own proper duration149.
The conversation remains unfinished. Whether time belongs to things or to minds, whether brevity counsels thrift or pleasure, whether eternity redeems time or only time’s destruction is certain: the ancients, the Christians and the moderns answer differently. The geologists, by making time immense, leave the old lament over life’s shortness more poignant rather than refuted.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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