The motion-picture man has also the power to alter the speed of the passage of time as he will by turning the crank faster or slower. Sometimes he is quite too careless in the way he employs this prerogative. If he is behind time on his schedule he will rush through a lazy siesta scene in a Mexican plaza with all the fury of a Mack Sennett farce. But this telescoping of time can be used to advantage as when he shows us the growth of a plant, the unfolding of its flower and the ripening of its fruit, all in fifteen minutes. On the other hand motion may be slowed up by taking twice as many pictures a minute as usual and projecting them at the ordinary rate. For instance, if it is a dog jumping up to grab a piece of meat from his master’s hand, we see the dog rise slowly from the ground and, while poised in mid-air, eye the meat carefully to select the best point of attack, then deliberately take it between his jaws and gradually descend. Now notice that this is just as true a picture of the dog’s jump as any other. The movie man has simply expanded time measurements as he expands space measurements when he shows us a close-up. A close-up with a face covering a sixteen-foot screen is just as true as a smaller picture. It is what we should always see if the lens of our eyes were a bit more convex. We look through the small end of an opera-glass and objects seem magnified. We look through the large end and objects seem minified. This is not an illusion. The opera-glass _does_ actually enlarge or reduce _what we see_. So, too, time intervals can be lengthened or shortened. Take a dose of hashish--no, don’t--I should say, if you did take a dose you would find that your perception of duration was prolonged. If while under the influence of the drug you drop a book it will seem an hour getting to the ground. De Quincey describes such experiences in his “Confessions of an Opium Eater.” But without entering into such abnormal states we all know by everyday experience how time flies or lags according to the number of our sensations. Bergson’s philosophy is built upon the distinction between the idea of duration as experienced by all of us and the idea of time as established by the physicists for comparative measurements. We live in deeds not years; in thoughts not breaths; In feelings not in figures on a dial. --_Festus._ For all we know an ephemeral insect that dies in a day may live a longer life than a Galapagos turtle that exists for two centuries.