22 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise 

 the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom. 



That this is the case may be seen at once by asking 

 ourselves why our feelings towards the past are so 

 different from our feelings towards the future. The 

 reason for this difference is wholly practical : our wishes 

 can affect the future but not the past, the future is to 

 some extent subject to our power, while the past is un- 

 alterably fixed. But every future will some day be past : 

 if we see the past truly now, it must, when it was still 

 future, have been just what we now see it to be, and what 

 is now future must be just what we shall see it to be 

 when it has become past. The felt difference of quality 

 between past and future, therefore, is not an intrinsic 

 difference, but only a difference in relation to us : to 

 impartial contemplation, it ceases to exist. And im- 

 partiality of contemplation is, in the intellectual sphere, 

 that very same virtue of disinterestedness which, in the 

 sphere of action, appears as justice and unselfishness. 

 Whoever wishes to see the world truly, to rise in thought 

 above the tyranny of practical desires, must learn to 

 overcome the difference of attitude towards past and 

 future, and to survey the whole stream of time in one 

 comprehensive vision. 



The kind of way in which, as it seems to me, time ought 

 not to enter into our theoretic philosophical thought, 

 may be illustrated by the philosophy which has become 

 associated with the idea of evolution, and which is ex- 

 emplified by Nietzsche, pragmatism, and Bergson. This 

 philosophy, on the basis of the development which has 

 led from the lowest forms of life up to man, sees in progress 

 the fundamental law of the universe, and thus admits the 

 difference between earlier and later into the very citadel 

 of its contemplative outlook. With its past and future 



