CHAPTER VIII 



TIME— DEFINITIONS— MEASUREMENTS 



A GREAT deal has been said and written about time. When 

 speaking of it we have been obHged to employ current, 

 ordinary words coined for other purposes. This has resulted 

 in paradoxes, misunderstandings, and endless discussions. 

 The majority of words employed to define an object, a force, 

 or a tendency, necessarily imply the notion of time, for they 

 evoke movements, relations, successions. The verb 'to be', 

 which is indispensable, implies the idea of existence, and the 

 idea of existence imposes the notion of time. All words are 

 therefore inadequate, for one can only define a thing accurately 

 by means of words which do not evoke ideas incorporating 

 the very thing which has to be defined. 



We conceive space as something which surrounds us, and 

 time as something which flows beside us and through us. 

 These projections of our thought are at the same time logical 

 and iUusory. Ideas on this subject have evolved, however. 

 We shall attempt to explain them. 



There are notable analogies and also flagrant differences 

 between space and time. It is impossible to separate these 

 two concepts, for we constantly use one to measure the other. 

 A distance, that is to say, a dimension of space, has a mean- 

 ing only if a certain time is needed to cover it. If the distance 

 which separates two points could be covered in null time, it 

 would be rigorously equivalent to a definition of a nuU distance 

 or to the superposition of two points, identical to one. The 

 very existence of matter is inseparable from time by the mere 

 fact that the word 'existence' has been pronounced. It is 

 impossible to conceive a material object existing instantaneously. 



The certitude that we have of finding it similar to itself 

 after a given time, be it ever so short, gives it what we call 

 its existence, its reahty. Just as space marks the coexistence 

 of perceptions at one period of time — we measure the scope 



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