Professor Faraday observes that Time is growing up daily into
importance as an element in the exercise of Force, which he thus
strikingly illustrates:
The earth moves in its orbit of time; the crust of the earth moves
in time; light moves in time; an electro-magnet requires time for
its charge by an electric current: to inquire, therefore, whether
power, acting either at sensible or insensible distances, always
acts in _time_, is not to be metaphysical; if it acts in time and
across space, it must act by physical lines of force; and our view
of the nature of force may be affected to the extremest degree
by the conclusions which experiment and observation on time may
supply, being perhaps finally determinable only by them. To inquire
after the possible time in which gravitating, magnetic, or electric
force is exerted, is no more metaphysical than to mark the times
of the hands of a clock in their progress; or that of the temple
of Serapis, and its ascents and descents; or the periods of the
occultation of Jupiter’s satellites; or that in which the light
comes from them to the earth. Again, in some of the known cases of
the action of time something happens while _the time_ is passing
which did not happen before, and does not continue after; it is
therefore not metaphysical to expect an effect in _every_ case, or
to endeavour to discover its existence and determine its nature.