Harris, in his _Hermes_, in his disquisition on Time, gives the
distinction between the grammatical or conventional phrase, “Present
Time,” and the more philosophical and abstract “Now,” or “Instant.”
Quoting Nicephorus Blemmides, Harris would define the former as follows:
“Present Time is that which adjoins to the Real Now, or Instant, on
either side being a limited time made up of Past and Future; and from
its vicinity to that Real Now, said to be Now also itself.” Whilst upon
the latter term he remarks: “As every Now or Instant always exists in
Time, and without being Time is Time’s bound; the Bound of Completion to
the Past, and the Bound of Commencement to the Future; and from hence we
may conceive its nature or end, which is to be the medium of continuity
between the Past and the Future, so as to render Time, through all its
parts, one Intire and Perfect Whole.”
Thus, logically, “Time Present” must be regarded as a mathematical
point, having no parts or magnitude, being simply the end of the Past,
and the beginning of the Future. Thus, perishing in action and eluding
the grasp of thought, it is a nonentity, of which, at best, an
intangible and shadowy existence can be predicated:
Dum loquimur fugerit invida
Ætas. _Hor._
And we may ask of it, with its _carpe diem_, its manifold attributes,
and imputed influences, as the poet Young does of the King of Terrors:
Why start at Death? Where is he? Death _arrived_
Is _past;_ not _come_, or _gone_, he’s never _here_.
_Night Thoughts_, iv.
It is, however, in the more conventional sense that the phrase “Present
Time” is generally made use of in writing and conversation. So Johnson,
in his well-known passage: “Whatever withdraws us from the power of our
senses, whatever makes the _past_, the _distant_, or the _future_,
predominate over the _present_, advances us in the dignity of thinking
beings,” &c. Here we have “the Present” invested with the dignity of
individual existence, and compared with the Past and the Future, as
having duration or extension with these; as if we should speak of a
series of numbers, ascending on each side of nothing to infinity, as
being divisible into negative, zero, and positive.
Among coincident forms of expression, on the part of writers who have
spoken of the “Present Time” in its more precise and philosophical
sense, is the following by Cowley, in a note to one of his “Pindarique
Odes:” “There are two sorts of Eternity; from the Present backwards to
Eternity, and from the present forwards, called by the Schoolmen
_Æternitas à parte ante_, and _Æternitas à parte post_. These two make
up the whole circle of Eternity, which _Present Time_ cuts like a
_Diameter_.”
Carlyle, in his _Essays_ (“Signs of the Times”), has this knowledgeful
passage: “We admit that the present is an important time; as all present
time necessarily is. _The poorest day that passes over us is the conflux
of two Eternities_, and is made up of currents that issue from the
remotest Past, and flow onwards into the remotest Future. We were wise,
indeed, could we discover truly the signs of our own times; and, by
knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in
it. Let us, then, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look
calmly around us for a little on the perplexed scene where we stand.
Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity may
disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more
clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true
aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer.”[1]
Lord Strangford has left these pathetic stanzas:
Time was—when all was fresh, and fair, and bright,
My heart was bounding with delight,
It knew no pain, it felt no aching:
But o’er it all its airy woes
As lightly passed, or briefly staid,
Like the fleet summer-cloud which throws
On sunny lands a moment’s shade,
A momentary darkness making.
Time is—when all is drear, and dim, and wild,
And that gay sunny scene which smiled
With darkest clouds is gloomed and saddened;
When tempest-toss’d on passion’s tide
Reason’s frail bark is madly driven,
Nor gleams one ray its course to guide
From yon o’ercast and frowning heaven,
Till peace is wreck’d and reason maddened.
Time come—but will it e’er restore
The peace my bosom felt before,
And soothe again my aching, tortured breast?
It will, for there is One above
Who bends on all a Father’s eye;
Who hears with all a Father’s love
The broken heart’s repentant sigh,
Calms the vexed heart, and bids the spirit rest.
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Footnote 1:
Abridged from an excellent Communication, by William Bates, to _Notes
and Queries_, 2d series, vol. x. p. 245.
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