THE LAPSE OF TIME. 97 



son, of things as occurring out of time and independently 

 of it, any more than we can think or reason of matter as 

 existing independent of space. Every occurrence takes 

 time : and yet we may not leap from this fact to the 

 conclusion that a countless multitude of occurrences will 

 re'quire a vast duration of time. Professor Tyndal, in 

 his Lecture on the Scientific Use of the Imagination, 

 refers to waves of light less than 3^^-^ of an inch in 

 length. How many do you suppose of such waves 

 would be required to compass a mile ? How many to 

 accomplish the 185,000 miles which light travels in a 

 second ? Each undulation is a separate occurrence, so 

 that we have millions of millions of occurrences follow- 

 ing one upon another in a second of time. In studying, 

 therefore, the complete fabric of the globe, or even of 

 the whole material universe as far as it comes within 

 our ken, the problem for solution is not whether these 

 great results could or could not have been brought to 

 pass in an indefinitely short space of time, in the twink- 

 ling of an eye, as one might say, but whether the space 

 of time employed in their production has actually and 

 in fact been indefinitely short or indefinitely long. We 

 ought also to bear in mind that the terms we use when 

 we speak of long and short, are relative not absolute 

 relative to the duration of our own lives, or to some 

 other arbitrary standard which we are pleased to set up 

 for purposes of comparison. Thus a year is long com- 

 pared with a minute, but short compared with a millen- 

 nium ; a thousand years would be an enormous length 



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