ble, the whole of it cannot pass first. It must
itself pass bit by bit, as must the whole minute; and if it is infinitely
divisible we have precisely the problem that we had at the outset.
Whatever passes first cannot, then, have parts.

Let us assume that it has no parts, and bid it Godspeed! Has the minute
begun? Our minute is, by hypothesis, infinitely divisible; it is
composed of parts, and those parts of other parts, and so on without end.
We cannot by subdivision come to any part which is itself not composed of
smaller parts. The partless thing that passed, then, is no part of the
minute. That is all still waiting at the gate, and no member of its
troop can prove that it has a right to lead the rest. In the same outer
darkness is waiting the point on the line that misbehaved itself in the
last chapter.

28. THE PROBLEM OF PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.--It seems bad enough to
have on our hands a minute which must pass away in successive bits, and
to discover that no bit of it can possibly pass first. But if we follow
with approval the reflections of certain thinkers, we may find ourselves
at such a pass that we would be glad to be able to prove that we may have
on our hands a minute of any sort. Men sometimes are so bold as to
maintain that they know time to be infinite; would it not be well for
them to prove first that they can know time at all?

The trouble is this; as was pointed out long ago by Saint Augustine
(354-430) in his famous "Confessions," [1] the parts of time are
successive, and of the three divisions, past, present, and future, only
one can be regarded as existing: "Those two times, past and future, how
can they be, when the past is not now, and the future is not yet?" The
present is, it seems, the only existent; how long is the present?

"Even a single hour passes in fleeting moments; as much of it as has
taken flight is past, what remains is future. If we can comprehend any
time that is divisible into no parts at all, or perhaps into the minutest
parts of moments, this alone let us call present; yet this speeds so
hurriedly from the future to the past that it does not endure even for a
little space. If it has duration, it is divided into a past and a
future; but the present has no duration.

"Where, then, is the time that we may call long? Is it future? We do
not say of the future: it _is_ long; for as yet there exists nothing to
be long. We say: it _will be_ long. But when? If wh