and S. X. Sept. 29. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



245 



Masters and his Captain-General of the Se^i and of his 

 Council. ; 



" Xpo Ferens." ' 



Some account of these letters will be found in Murray's Handbook for North Italy, p. 99., edit. 

 1858. W.O. W. 



TIME: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 



The writings of James Harris are characterised 

 by an elegance of arrangement, a perspicuity of 

 expression, and a logical coherence of argument, 

 which causes them to be less read than they de- 

 serve to be in these days of German metaphysi- 

 cians and English spasmodists ; when the magni- 

 Jiciim is sought for only in the ignotum, and depth 

 predicated alone of the waters whose turbidness 

 hides the muddy bed which they scarcely cover. 



I refer especially to the Hermes of this writer ; 

 a work which, though now seldom disturbed from 

 its dusty slumbers on the shelf, was justly eulo- 

 gised by Bishop Lowth, as "the most beautiful 

 and perfect specimen of analysis that has been 

 exhibited since the days of Aristotle." As an il- 

 lustration of the close investigation and sequential 

 reasoning which characterise this work — though 

 a very different estimate, it will be remembered, 

 was formed by Home Tooke — I would point to 

 the disquisition on Time (Book i. chap, vii.) pre- 

 fatory to the author's Theory of Tenses. From 

 these remarks may be gathered the distinction 

 between the grammatical or conventional phrase, 

 "Present Time," and the more philosophical and 

 abstract "Now" or "Instant." Quoting Nice- 

 phorus Blemmides, Harris would^define the former 

 as follows : — 



" Present Time, therefore, 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." 



While upon the latter term he remarks : — 



" As therefore every Now or Instant ahvaj's exists 

 in Time, and without being Time, is Time's bound ; the 

 Bound of Completion to the Past and the Bound of Com- 

 mencement to the Future ; 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." — 

 Book I. chap. vii. 



Thus, logically, " Time Present " must be re- 

 garded as a mathematrcal 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 : — 



iEtas 



dum loquimur fugerit invida 

 . » — Hor. 



And we may ask of it, with its " carpe diem," its 

 manifold attributes and imputed influences, as the 

 poet Young (a secularist and a preferment-hunter, 



perhaps, but author of one of the most sublime 

 poems in the language), does of the King of Ter- 

 rors : — 



" 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 or 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, pre- 

 dominate 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 Future, as having duration or ex- 

 tension with these ; as if we should speak of a 

 series of numbers, ascending on each side of no- 

 thing to Infinity, as being divisible into negative, 

 zero, and positive. I have been struck, neverthe- 

 less, by a few coincident forms of expression, on 

 the part of writers, who have spoken of the "Pre- 

 sent time " in its more precise and philosophical 

 sense. Among these, Cowley, In a note to one of 

 his "PIndarlque Odes " (The Muse), says : — 



" There are two sorts of Eternity ; from the Present 

 backwards to Eternity, and from the Present forwards, 

 called by the Schoolmen ^ternitus a parte ante, and 

 uiEternitas a parte post. These two make up the whole 

 circle of Eternity, which Present Time cuts like a Dia- 

 meter." 



So Voltaire makes his philosopher, complaining 

 like Agrlppa or Faust of the vanity and insuffi- 

 ciency of his studies, says : — 



" Je suis n^, je vis dans le temps, et je ne sais pas ce que 

 c'est que le temps : je me trouve dans un point entre deux 

 eternit^s, comme disent nos sages, et je n'ai nulle idee de 

 r^ternit^." — Histoire d'un bon Bramin. 



I may also quote a beautiful passage from the 

 fanciful and suggestive Expedition Nocturne au- 

 tour de ma Chamire, of Xavier de Maistre. As 

 he hears the clock of the neighbouring church 

 strike midnight he exclaims : — 



" Voilil done un jour qui vient de se detacher de ma 

 vie, et quoique les vibrations d&roissantes du son de 

 I'airain freraissent encore k mon oreille, la partie de mon 

 voyage qui a precede minuit est dejh tout aussi loin de 

 moi que le voj'age d'Ulysse ou celui de Jason. Dans cet 

 abime du passe, les instants" et les slides ont la nieme 

 longueur; et I'avenir a- t-il plus de reality? Ce sont deux 

 niants entre lesqneh je me trouve en iquilibre comme sur 

 le tranchant d\ne lame. En vcrite, le temps me parait 

 quelque chose de si inconcevable, que je serais tent(5 de 

 croire qu'il n'existe reellement pas, et que ce qu'on nomnie 



