42 TIME 



is obvious to me that the remoteness is not only of 

 different degrees but of different kinds. Some events 

 spread away towards what in a general way I call the 

 Past; I can contemplate others which are distant in 

 the Future; others are remote in another kind of way 

 towards China or Peru, or in general terms Elsewhere. 

 In this picture I have only room for one dimension of 

 Elsewhere; another dimension sticks out at right angles 

 to the paper; and you must imagine the third dimension 

 as best you can. 



Now we must pass from this vague scheme of location 

 to a precise scheme. The first and most important thing 

 is to put Myself into the picture. It sounds egotistical; 

 but, you see, it is my frame of space that will be used, 

 so it all hangs round me. Here I am — a kind of four- 

 dimensional worm (Fig. 2). It is a correct portrait; 

 I have considerable extension towards the Past and 

 presumably towards the Future, and only a moderate 

 extension towards Elsewhere. The "instantaneous me", 

 i.e. myself at this instant, coincides with the event Here- 

 Now. Surveying the world from Here-Now, I can see 

 many other events happening now. That puts it into my 

 head that the instant of which I am conscious here must 

 be extended to include them; and I jump to the con- 

 clusion that Now is not confined to Here-Now. I there- 

 fore draw the instant Now, running as a clean section 

 across the world of events, in order to accommodate all 

 the distant events which are happening now. I select 

 the events which I see happening now and place them 

 on this section, which I call a moment of time or an 

 "instantaneous state of the world". I locate them on 

 Now because they seem to be Now. 



This method of location lasted until the year 1667, 

 when it was found impossible to make it work consist- 



