A SCHOLASTIC Xll'.W Ol-' 'I'lMI-:. 



Bv Rev. SmxKv Rkad Wklcii. B.A., D.l).. I'li.l). 



The thirteenth centur\- was in some ways one of the most 

 remarkable in the history of human development. I'rom the 

 politieal and religious standpoint it was a creative epoch, but 

 it also marked the zenith of the evolution of the Scholastic 

 Philosophy, one of the most complete systems which the world 

 has seen. 



I wish to draw attention to a minor chapter in that ):)hiloso- 

 phy. its treatment of the vexed question of the nature of time. 

 Two thirteenth-century treatises are extant in Latin, which 

 deal with this subject, and are usually ascribed to the great 

 St. Thomas Aquinas. They hold the most im])ortant contri- 

 bution made from that cjuarter to the subject. 



I propose not only to give an idea of what this teaching 

 was, but also to trace it back to its foundation in Aristotle's 

 works, and forward tt) its development among the Neo- 

 Scholastics. 



Every exponent of the Scholastic theory in its various 

 sch(X)ls took his stand in Aristotle as far as possible. It is said 

 that they only read him in Latin translations, but with the Greek 

 text before us to-day we note that their "rasp of his meaning 

 was wonderfully close. 



The Aristotelian teaching, which is mainly contained in the 

 last chapters of the fourth book, ^vaiKt]'; WKpoda-eco<;, may be 

 summarised under three headings. I shall not take them in 

 Aristotle's order, but in one more convenient for the present 

 purix)se. 



The present moment is the only part of time which actually 

 exists. For us it is the point which takes us to the boundaries 

 of time.* It is the end of the past, the starting-point of the 

 future, and the whole of the present. Hence he also calls it the 

 link of time ( o■v^'e%ta ;i^poi'OL'). We are conscious of time when, 

 standing in the present moment, we become aware that the past 

 is slipping away by moments, which are indivisible, as the 

 Scholastics glossed the text. 



The instant constantly moving along the course of time 

 recalls the analogy of the moving point, which by its motion 

 constitutes the line.f If you take any given point in a line, 

 you can see what is before and what after; and so at any given 

 instant, where you hapjien to be, you can measure " before and 

 after"' in time. The one point enables us to gauge distances in 

 motion, the other reveals the existence of a duration in motion, 



* oXfo-i Trepas; -^povov iariv (ch. xiii., n. l). 



Ka( ofioLco:; 8r) rij aTi<yp.i] to (^epojxevov, (p rrji/ Kivrjcnv 

 yv(opi^ofM€v Kai TO TTporepov h> avrfj kuI to varepov (ch. xi., n. 8). 



