And as for the infinity of time, may we not ask on what ground any one ventures to assert that time is infinite? No man can say that infinite time is directly given in his experience. If one does not directly perceive it to be infinite, must one not seek for some proof of the fact? The only proof which appears to be offered us is contained in the statement that we cannot conceive of a time before which there was no time, nor of a time after which there will be no time; a proof which is no proof, for written out at length it reads as follows: we cannot conceive of a time _in the time_ before which there was no time, nor of a time _in the time_ after which there will be no time. As well say: We cannot conceive of a number the number before which was no number, nor of a number the number after which will be no number. Whatever may be said for the conclusion arrived at, the argument is a very poor one. When we turn to the consideration of time as infinitely divisible, we seem to find ourselves confronted with the same difficulties which presented themselves when we thought of space as infinitely divisible. Certainly no man was immediately conscious of an infinite number of parts in the minute which just slipped by. Shall he assert that it did, nevertheless, contain an infinite number of parts? Then how did it succeed in passing? how did it even _begin_ to pass away? It is infinitely divisible, that is, there is no end to the number of parts into which it may be divided; those parts and parts of parts are all successive, no two can pass at once, they must all do it in a certain order, one after the other. Thus, something must pass _first_. What can it be? If that something has parts, is divisible, 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.