A SCHOLASTIC \[KW ()!■ Tl M K. 419 



oi the imagination. We imagine tliai tliinys are sul)jeci to lime, 

 simply because our imagination is. 



Let us examine this position. Does not the same exi^erience 

 that enables us to percei\e the permanence and identity of our 

 own being under its several phases also enable us to realise that 

 we pass through various states of secondary change? Whilst 

 all (Hir lives we feel the same personality, our changes of ex- 

 perience are often very great at different times. It is not 

 imagination that underlines this duraticMi. partK- identical and 

 l^artly different; it is memorv, and memor\- is most sensitive to 

 the reality of time past. 



But a modern Scholastic writer,* wIk^ did not write directly 

 against Bergson in this point, has indicated the element of truth 

 in Bergson's contention. " Apprehendit homo ])er conscientiam 

 memcria adjutam seipsum durantem, proinde suam durationem 

 suum tempus ; postea alias durationes per experientiam externam 

 pcrcipit ; quibus perceptis, mensuram ali(|uam ct-mmunem ex 

 arbitrio eligit. Hac ratione inducitur ad tingendum tempus 

 ([ucddam universale, essentialiter mensurans ideoque relativum, 

 cujus fundanientum extat in rebus experientia notis." 



The concept of a universal time bv which all other things 

 are measured may be arbitrary and fluid, as the many methods 

 of measuring time show. But all our measurements are in some 

 way conventional. What is real in time is the fact of a real 

 duration that can be measured, and is measured with mathe- 

 matical precision. 



Hence one may be pardoned for holding that the Scholas- 

 tics, mediaeval and modern, wnth their master Aristotle, have in 

 this ])oint established a philosophic view of things that has 

 stood long changes of fashion. Time, which eats into so many 

 things, has not consumed their main conclusions, which hold 

 the golden mean between the extreme views, both of which 

 Bergson has succeeded in incorporating into liis astonishing 

 svstem. 



Glycerine from Waste Fat.— It was recently 



officially stated that glycerine is being recmered at the rate of 

 1,000 tons per annum from the waste fat of the food supplied 

 to the x\llied forces on the Western front. This quantity is 

 sufficient to provide propellant explosive charges for about 

 1,250,000 i8-pounder shells. In the earlier stages of the war 

 the meat scraps from the military cami)s used to be destroyed 

 or disposed of for trifling amounts. All this waste is now 

 utilised by collecting and sorting the table refuse for the above 

 purpose. Special plants for the conversion of waste fat into 

 glycerine have been erected both in England and France, and 

 the glycerine thus manufactured is sold by the War Office to 

 the Ministry of Munitions for £50 per ton instead of the £240 

 per ton that glycerine imported from the United States W(nild 

 cost. 



" Creteriolcgia,"' by R. Jeanniere, S.J., p. 374. 



