on, the arc which the moon has described since our last observation,
the movement of the hands of a clock, the amount of sand which has fallen
in the hourglass, these things and such as these are the indicators of
real time. There may be indicators of a different sort; we may decide
that it is noon because we are hungry, or midnight because we are tired;
we may argue that the preacher must have spoken more than an hour because
he quite wore out the patience of the congregation. These are more or
less uncertain signs of the lapse of time, but they cannot be regarded as
experiences of the passing of time either apparent or real.

Thus, we see that real space and real time are the _plan_ of the world
system. They are not _things_ of any sort, and they should not be
mistaken for things. They are not known independently of things, though,
when we have once had an experience of things and their changes, we can
by abstraction from the things themselves fix our attention upon their
arrangement and upon the order of their changes. We can divide and
subdivide spaces and times without much reference to the things. But we
should never forget that it would never have occurred to us to do this,
indeed, that the whole procedure would be absolutely meaningless to us,
were not a real world revealed in our experience as it is.

He who has attained to this insight into the nature of time is in a
position to offer what seem to be satisfactory solutions to the problems
which have been brought forward above.

(1) He can see, thus, why it is absurd to speak of any portion of time as
becoming nonexistent. Time is nothing else than an order, a great system
of relations. One cannot drop out certain of these and leave the rest
unchanged, for the latter imply the former. Day-after-to-morrow would
not be day-after-to-morrow, if to-morrow did not lie between it and
to-day. To speak of dropping out to-morrow and leaving it the time it
was conceived to be is mere nonsense.

(2) He can see why it does not indicate a measureless conceit for a man
to be willing to say that time is infinite. One who says this need not
be supposed to be acquainted with the whole past and future history of
the real world, of which time is an aspect. We constantly abstract from
things, and consider only the order of their changes, and in this order
itself there is no reason why one should set a limit at some point;
indeed, to set such a limit seems a gratuitous