LECTURE III
THE TEMPORAL AND THE ETERNAL
The world of the facts that we ought to acknowledge is, in one of its aspects, present (so we have maintained) as the Object of Possible Attention, in every act of finite insight. Finitude means inattention to the wealth and organization of the world’s detail.
An obvious objection to this thesis is furnished by the nature of Time. How can Past and Future, which “do not exist,” be in any sense “present,” in the undistinguished unity of the facts which any finite thinker at any instant acknowledges?
In the Ninth Lecture of the First Series, we briefly considered the topic of temporal Being.[1] We have to return to it here with more detail. There is an ancient distinction of the philosophers between the Temporal and the Eternal. It must be plain at this point, that we ascribe to the true world a certain eternal type of Being. Yet how shall we reconcile this with our equally obvious treatment of the world as existing in time? Plainly we have here a question that is of great importance for any understanding of the categories of experience. It belongs, then, in the context of these earlier discussions of our present series of lectures. Moreover, it is one that will constantly meet us later. The relation of Time to
- ↑ p. 407, sqq., pp. 420-421.
